These tools allow companies and their partners to log in and exchange data without engaging internal systems. Each team sees only the project that it’s working with. So the platform is secure and requires no integration with internal applications.

As a product development company, Catalyx Inc., of Anaheim, Calif., needs to share information with its clients at all stages in the product lifecycle, from initial design through production. For years, the company used primitive tools. “We’re a small firm. In the past, we didn’t have collaborative tools, so we used phone, fax and e-mail.” says Saleem Munir, Catalyx’s chief executive officer. “That’s OK when you’re collaborating with one person, but now we have a few people on the internal side and a number of people on the customer side.”

Munir solved the problem with a SaaS collaborative platform developed by Clarizen Inc., an Israeli company with offices in San Mateo, Calif. Catalyx and its customers can log in and see all of the communication and progress on the design, development and production of each product. “Everyone can see what products are done. We get visibility in scheduling, and we see the engineering data coming in and out,” says Munir. “It provides accountability, showing the progress and the milestones.”

The Clarizen platform lets all participants view communication and documentation both present and historic. “The program works to put everyone on the same page. It’s a project repository,” says Avinoam Nowogrodski, chief executive officer and co-founder of Clarizen. “If you want to see an e-mail, you can view it immediately. You get full traceability on the discussion of each specific task. It’s not just documents floating around.”

Related Feature - Collaboration is Connecting Plants Inside & Out
To read the feature article relating to this story, go to www.automationworld.com/feature-4435.