Solid product at a reasonable price !

We purchased SmartDraw to simplify the creation, editing & sharing of org charts for Caravan Health. As a start-up company, we had a limited budget for such technology, but were growing so quickly that two years ago we realized attempting to manage org charts using Word, Excel or Powerpoint was far-too cumbersome. The product we purchased at the time (Lucidchart) was inexpensive and was represented as simple to use and easy to share with others; sadly, in our experience both representations did not pan out. Sharing an org chart file presented many challenges for us when the CEO, COO, CFO or myself were on the road and attempting to access using laptops or iPads... and creating a printable version which was actually readable proved impossible. This created significant frustration at many levels, from managers to the executive team to our Board, as the perception created was one of inefficiency (or inability) within the HR team. Escalations to the provider proved useless, as the only means of communication was via email (no Account Manager to be able to reach out to, no phone number), and when we would receive a response, the most-common direction was provided by pointing us to an FAQ on their web site (rather than responding to and providing a resolution for our specific issues). Once the frustration finally boiled over and we started searching for an alternative solution, SmartDraw was a name I heard from several other HR leaders in my network, so we requested a demo of their product. The demo revealed a product which appeared to be intuitive and provided both a desktop and cloud-based version... both of which were important to us in our use. Implementation and uptake was quick and easy, which were also critical success factors for us, given our rapid growth and limited amount of time many leaders were willing to devote to something most felt should be as "simple" as org chart management.