One would be forgiven for thinking that the last thing the world need is yet another task scheduling web application. Between Asana, Do.com and the plethora of other solutions, it’s a particularly busy area. But one company, Australian based startup TiimFocus (yes, it’s a terrible name), believes it has its own hook to differentiate above all the noise.

Like many similar solutions, TiimFocus was borne out of the founder’s frustration running their own business. Co-founder Kevin Withnell began developing the product two years ago, and initially created the product for internal purposes for his 12 person development company. His company used the systems that most small shops use – and tried to manage their workflow via emails and physical meetings – seeing the ball dropped on a project once to often made Withnell think about better ways of doing things. Seeing the results of what he’d created inspired Withnell to move to developing the product commercially and now, two years and $500k in angel funding later, the company is getting ready to start generating some buzz.

Their initial way to do that is by being critical of arguably the highest profile company in the space. Asana, which was started by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz is firmly in TiimFocus’ crosshairs. Says Withnell:

(Asana’s) greatest strength (an easy-to- use product), is also it’s largest weakness (minimal functionality). We outgrew Asana within a month. TiimFocus was built to be the world’s most complete collaborative task system. Companies will not be able to outgrow TiimFocus

TiimFocus’ main angle of differentiation from most of the other tools, is the depth of its offering. In particular TiimFocus is particularly strong on mapping the individual tasks to resource planning and organizational workflow. The workflow functionality allows individuals to determine and push tasks that have been sitting idle and are causing bottlenecks while application metrics help workers focus on completing the right tasks at hand.

Specific functionality the company wants to call out includes:

  • Tasks – Tasks can have as little or as much information as your business needs with the ability to add as many fields as you need
  • Workflows – Workflows enable users to start with a standard workflow and progress to a fully customized workflow that matches their exact needs. For example, with Workflows driving tasks users can ensure all tasks to go via a Quality Assurance, Marketing or Accounting approval step
  • Metrics – Metrics give users a visual snapshot of the status of all their tasks. Metrics also help identify where the bottlenecks are in the Workflow
  • Searching – Search allows users to show just the tasks they need to work on right now or to get the details on all tasks using custom search filters
  • Cross Platform – Cross browser and compatible with all PCs (Windows and Mac), as well as Tablets and Smartphones including Apple, Android and Windows devices
  • Customizable – TiimFocus is fully customizable to the needs of the business. From Workflows through to Task fields and Reporting, it is all completely flexible
  • Sharing – Invite anyone to see or interact with Workflows. TiimFocus is built around collaboration. By sharing workflows and inviting others users can focus everyone’s energy on the common goal

Interestingly TiimFocus is scheduled to release a public API later in the year which will mean organizations can embed project management and planning functionality within their third party applications.

TiimFocus is free for the first 10 users, and charges a monthly subscriptions for subsequent users. The company also provides customized enterprise solutions.

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

1 Comment
  • Just like asana, proofhub is another online collaboration tool that helps to manage project at one central place by providing full control to users to keep the identity hidden or public.

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