PBWorks is today launching another custom edition of its enterprise collaboration software. The Agency Edition is a customization of the standard PBworks product, this time specifically tailored for advertising, PR, marketing and design agencies. PBworks’ Chris Yeh told me that the product was created because of the specific nature of these sorts of organizations requirements – they’re often collaborating outside of the firewall, have some requirements around digital assets and also work in a highly dynamic, project based way – all challenges for collaboration software offerings.
I spent some time talking with Chris Yeh from PBworks, getting the low down on what this offering really means, and why it came to be. Yeh told me that PBworks had some existing agency customers but that the way agencies work is fundamentally different from other types of organization. Agencies have a rapid project lifecycle, a reliance on digital assets and a high level of project based work that includes people both within and outside the organization – PBworks agency edition aims to meet their needs. The Agency edition build on top of the standard PBworks product and gives specific functionality including:
- Client dashboards: Personalized dashboards that let clients track progress and deliverables across many different projects
- Inline video: Users can upload raw video and audio files; PBworks will automatically transcode them and make them embeddable in PBworks pages
- Workspace organization: Client relationships are complex and can include tens of divisions and hundreds of projects; PBworks provides the flexibility to match the agency’s collaboration environment with the client’s organization
PBworks is playing the market smart and aiming to fill distinct verticals within the enterprise collaboration space. It’s a strategy that makes sense, this week being Enterprise 2.0 week we see just how many different products compete in this class of software – this fact is borne out by something Yeh mentioned to me, PBworks was up against 20 other collaboration vendors in a recent RFP – with that number of competitors, differentiation based on vertically specific offerings makes total sense.
In terms of pricing, existing PBworks customers can upgrade for a one time flat fee, for new users, the Agency Edition is priced at $30/user/month. As would be expected, external access (from clients or partners) is free.
