About CDS Global

CDS Global is a technology-driven company that provides customer information and data management solutions to the world's leading publishers, direct marketing firms, financial institutions, nonprofits, municipalities, utilities and product manufacturers.

The Challenge: Internal Collaboration and Data Management at an International Company

CDS Global's client projects often required team members across various departments and different offices to work together. As a global company with over 2500 employees in 14 office locations and four countries, the process of collaborating across continents and time zones quickly became increasingly difficult to manage. CDS Global employees had to rely on either emailing files back and forth or saving documents to the network drive, which restricted remote access to only those employees with VPN.

The Solution: Managing Projects and Clients with Central Desktop

Although some departments within CDS Global were using various project management and collaboration tools, there was no consistent solution that the entire company standardized on. When CDS Global researched Central Desktop, the company knew that it was the right solution for them.

For CDS Global, one of Central Desktop's biggest strengths was the platform's flexibility and ability to suit a variety of different use cases. With approximately 400 workspaces set up, CDS Global's use of Central Desktop varies from department file sharing to project and client workspaces. In order to manage such a large deployment, CDS Global established a process for setting up workspaces, as well as set up a Central Desktop training program. As part of this training program, the CDS Global training department distributed handouts with Central Desktop usage tips and held in-person and web meeting training support for all employees.

CDS Global's use of Central Desktop continues to evolve but using it as a client management tool is becoming more common. In this type of workspace, Central Desktop's Files & Discussions tab is heavily used to share relevant project documents. The online calendar is also used to document production run schedules. But perhaps the most valuable feature is the ability to set up databases and a corresponding workflow to automatically assign tasks and due dates. CDS Global teams found that implementing this process helped the company become more efficient, reduced the chance for error and saved time.