Let’s set the scene. You’ve just been made project manager, it’s an exciting new challenge. You’ll be responsible for meeting important deadlines, training your team on the new online collaboration tools, and maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction.

Hard to explain, soft value and not something you can add to a spreadsheet: company culture, this all-encompassing “feeling” of a workplace or organisation. It can be how to behave, how things are done, customer care, and a myriad of other factors and definitions.

Have you ever had the experience of not being able to get the information you need because it was locked up in a filing cabinet in another office? Or the knowledge disappeared with Fred, when he left the company? Or it’s on a system in another country, where the office is now closed? If so, you will already know the value of having the right information available at the right time.

For any SME, the decision over whether to use cloud software or install an in-house server is a big one. The difference in cost could be significant, it could have a large bearing on how efficient a number of operations are, and there are other areas, such as speed and security, that could be seriously affected one way or the other.

Collaboration software and sleep – two concepts that you rarely see together in the same sentence. But the nature of your free time will definitely have an impact on your work performance, and sleep is one of the areas where many people suffer. 

I’ve found this week rather frustrating. A group of us have been struggling to produce an agreed statement paper for an important aspect of technical development. Our group consists of members belonging to several, external organisations. We’ve been using email to collaborate but it’s become a major headache.

It is estimated that we started domesticating animals to keep as pets over 20,000 years ago, and ever since then dogs and cats have been trusted companions in many of our lives. But nowadays, as we increasingly spend long hours at the office, our beloved pets may be suffering at home.

342 unread emails in your inbox, 5 different stacks of documents on your desk, meetings and excessively long to-do lists. To make matters worse, Steve from down the hall is merrily chatting away about his latest weekend trip to Spain.

We've all been there. It's not you, it's me. I need some space.

In their report on the 2015 project management (PM) software marketplace, software review experts Software Advice, found that among first-time buyers of a Glasscubes-style solution, the three most important drivers for the move away from manual methods (such as email and office suites like Microsoft Office) were the need for better organisation, the streamlining of processes, and transparency for project tracking.