Podio

Podio is being used at our company for all aspects of day-to-day tasks. It is being used as a project management tool, a time tracking system, a resource management tool and even an inventory management tool. Its open architecture allows us to create any number of applications that are custom managed for our company and addressed specific problems or processes.
For our clients, it's a valuable tool for project management, approval process system, communication portal and resource handling.

Podio is used across each department within AIESEC United States. We initially started using Podio for information management purposes and have since then used it for many other purposes - application process management, task management and tracking, CRM, financial tracking, and many other areas. It allows us to operate transparently as an organization and also have a resource where any member of the organization can find whatever information they need.

Podio is still under evaluation at Apartments247.com, but we are using it to track Leads, Deals, Sales and Cancellations for the Sales & Marketing Department. The initial hope was that it could also work for Development and Production, bringing 3 departments under a single, streamlined system. That remains to be proved one way or the other, however.

We initially tested Podio as a CRM and project management tool. Our choice was driven by the need to integrate these two functions as much of the information and communication retained at the lead/opportunity stage is needed later in the project lifecycle. Currently we are using Podio as an integrated CRM, project management, and knowledge base platform. We are currently using Podio for operations and marketing and may use it to interface with accounting in the future. Podio addresses the problem of tracking communication within the organization. The platform does a good job of breaking up into functional workspaces and keeping tasks and emails in order.

I use Podio for communicating both with clients and with contractors I work with on any given project. Over time I've also used it to track personal tasks as well because it is very well organized. The problem Podio solves for me is 1) clearly communicating with clients (making sure they are aware of deadlines, etc. and 2) it creates a living, transparent repository for all things related to the project that can even be referred to after the project is completed. I upload all files (design comps, keyword research, have discussions about tricky issues we've worked out on a project) to Podio and the best part is I have had multiple clients (even non technical ones) say they really like using it because it is so simple. It also is customizable in that you can build your own apps for it so I've developed a core of apps that I use on every project which saves me time and keeps project management uniform across all projects.

We use Podio to manage our real estate agency in Japan; it helps us manage customers, suppliers, and sales (CRM), manage properties, projects and marketing.

I work for a property management company with several properties across several states. Everyone I work with is remote. We're using Podio in three ways:
1. For our regional marketers to request materials (flyers, etc) from the graphic designers and for the designers to get most of the pertinent information in one form (as opposed to 5 emails just to get basic facts, quantities, etc)
2. For our properties to let the designers know what events are being planned on properties so we can support them with flyers, social media, etc
3. For our social media marketing team to access the event information from the properties to fill their editorial calendar and write posts/review before scheduling

Podio is the core cloud based tool used by Think to Act. All workflows and communication is in Podio and we link to other cloud based tools for specific actions eg Google Apps for Business for gmail, calendar, contacts, google documents etc and specific cloud based tools like Lucidchart.

We used Podio at my last employer, 3 Birds Marketing. 3 Birds is a marketing company that caters to automotive dealerships. There are multiple departments at 3 Birds and several were in need of having a good, solid project management tool to juggle multiple daily tasks. Two other colleagues and me chose Podio because of it's cost-efficiency and it's flexibility. We spent two and-a-half months building the tool to serve as a single source for internal company announcements, for projects that needed to be handed off from one department to another, and as a storage space for images and other, internally-important projects. As far as I know, the entire company is still using Podio, even after I left the company for another opportunity in August, 2013.

At 3 Birds, Podio primarily addressed two business problems: one, the lack of organization for every project and two, the clarity to see "who is working on what" at any given point in time. Prior to implementing Podio at 3 Birds, dozens of projects were sold by the sales team to the client base without checking in with the production / feasibility of the deliverables. Clients' expectations were bloating out of control and the production team(s) - namely, the writers and graphic designers - scrambled to gather details to start and deliver projects, often on the same day. The stress level was unnecessarily high. Podio addressed this - and the other challenge - who is working on what - by giving all affected teams a clear, bird's eye view of all of the projects lined-up and who they were assigned to. We built apps that represented each type of project and made many fields required in those apps. All of those apps were linked to one app, called "projects quick view" that required an assignee and a due date. The manager could then add someone to the project in projects quick view and all details had already been entered in respective apps.

Whole organization. Addresses business problems related to an increasingly distributed & fragmented workforce-- different time zones, geographies, and roles.