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It is all Steve Jobs fault!

Colin Manson, CEO, Xergy Group
Design Work Management
steve jobs

I blame Steve Jobs. Can you remember living B.A. (Before Apple). Everything was……..crap. That’s harsh; everything functioned – just. You were happy to use a bug riddled Windows Application running on a spectacularly slow, beige computer about the size of a small car. You didn’t bat an eyelid when it crashed ten times a day with a message saying “<unknown> has caused an error in <unknown>. <unknown>will now close. If you continue to experience problems try throwing your computer out of the window.” I made that last bit up. And then Apple came along.

They simplified everything, they made everything look good, and everything just worked.

Why talk about Steve Jobs?

This isn’t an Apple advert, far from it, however, look around you at all of your technology products. Every phone is a knock off of an iPhone, every computer resembles an iMac or a MacBook and Windows has finally morphed into OSX. Every website looks like Apples, and I suspect every pair of wireless headphones will soon resemble the Apple Airpods. Look at the new Fitbit watch – it’s an Apple Watch in disguise. I am sure some companies do it better than Apple; however, that is not my point. Apple changed the World by making everybody else look so terrible that they had to change. So for us, as consumers, life got a whole lot better. Products worked, they looked good, and they made your life a lot easier.

So what does this have to do with Proteus?

Everything. Proteus is all about taking an existing idea that works, and works quite well, and making it spectacular. The difference is that the Proteus product is your working day. Like Apple, we have looked at every bit of your working day, and we have improved it. Take this small example.

You are a contractor working for an oil and gas consultancy. Every week you fill out a timesheet (trust me some of you still do this in a spreadsheet). At the end of the month, you count up your hours, produce your invoice and submit it to your boss (trust me some of you still do this manually). It eventually gets signed, makes its way to accounts and you get paid. I suspect most people are good at this as it involves getting paid. Proteus makes it better, much better. In fact, it all happens automatically. You still have to fill in your timesheet (although I read of some US companies inserting chips into their staff so they can track them – scary) and from there everything happens without any paperwork changing hands.

A minor point you may argue, however, apply this logic all the way through and everything becomes simple and efficient. Every workflow simplified, every action improved, every cost reduced. Oh, and one more thing. Proteus stole another one of Apples core values – it’s beautiful.

How to get Proteus

Proteus’ project management software is a cloud-based system designed for businesses of all sizes to handle projects of unlimited complexity. Each Proteus feature is aimed at making bottom line improvements by improving utilisation, streamlining workflows, providing quick and efficient access to resources and reducing overheads. One of the unique advantages of Proteus is that we offer a free onboarding consultation service to ensure the company account is set up according to your company’s needs. This makes getting your company up and running on Proteus quick and easy.

We recommend getting setup on a free trial. Proteus operates under a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. We offer Enterprise packages and flexible pricing solutions: contact our team to learn more.

We designed Proteus to be simple, and that means you can get up and running on Proteus without an IT team or support from a programmer. You will want to spend a bit of time configuring the admin console so that you have everything set up to suit your company structure, but it’s very intuitive and you don’t need a PhD in IT. However, we want you to get the best out of what is a brilliantly powerful tool, so don’t hesitate to ask for our support. We have a team of product experts who are ready to help you with the configuration process, so get in touch today.

As we hope you have understood from this article, we are passionate about driving real value through Proteus. Contact us if you would like us to estimate the business value we could bring to your company.

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Read more to find out more about how using a project management software such as Proteus to help you drive profit, or get in touch with our team today.


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