About SKMurphy, Inc.

SKMurphy offers business development services for software entrepreneurs. The company specializes in helping software startups transform their technology development focus to a customer development focus and accelerate their business with scalable sales, marketing and business operations.

The Challenge: Inefficient Document Collaboration

When developing materials for their clients, SKMurphy's consultants often had to come to an agreement on content against a tight deadline. There were typically 5-10 people contributing so managing this process and maintaining version control was challenging. Having to email documents back and forth and keep track of the last person to edit was extremely inefficient. SKMurphy had experience using wikis to collaborate but found them limiting because they could not use it to save documents in one place.

The Goal: A Versatile Platform for Internal and External Use

SKMurphy needed a solution that could act as a central repository for files as well as allow them to collaborate on documents efficiently.

The Solution: Central Desktop as a Document Management Solution

SKMurphy evaluated dozens of collaboration platforms but ultimately settled on Central Desktop because of its version control capabilities and workspace model. Central Desktop's workspace model allowed SKMurphy to easily set up workspaces for each client by using the cloning feature. Each new workspace took less than 5 minutes to set up.

After implementing Central Desktop, SKMurphy was able to move its collaboration process away from being dependent on emails. The company eliminated any version control issues by having all edit history and past versions saved in one online location. Additionally by using the email notification feature, the team was alerted as soon as changes were made, prompting next steps and speeding up the review process and the decision making time overall.

SKMurphy also integrated Central Desktop into its client offerings by using it to deliver workbooks, one of its proprietary solutions. Workbooks, which were part of SKMurphy's workshops, were created as a Central Desktop workspace and used by clients as a planning tool. The workbooks were designed to be interactive and included exercises and questions for clients to answer, as well as a space for them to jot down their own ideas. SKMurphy also offered the workbooks as PDFs but found that the online format using Central Desktop workspaces was much more useful because it was editable.

Tips for Other Central Desktop Users:

SKMurphy suggests using a wiki page as a meeting agenda, then allowing it to evolve to include meeting notes that all participants can contribute to. This way, all information related to the meeting is kept in a single location that can easily be referenced and searched.