This is an unusual time we are living in right now. Our private lives and our working environments are impacted due to restrictions, and those affect us all. It’s likely that the societal effects of this pandemic will be felt for years.
Here at Assetti, we want to ensure not only our customers and partners but also future clients, that our work will continue as normal as possible.
We want you to get a better understanding of how we handle our customer projects, customer requests, and deployments as part of our normal workflow.
By providing you with some of the best practices for it, we hope to bring transparency to the way we work – for, and with, our customers.
Project Management at Assetti
The focus of project management is on the delivery of a product or service. For years now, we have run several customer cases online. Every project is different, and that is why we have a solid deployment workflow in place – from initial customer meetings, requirements gathering, testing, to onboarding the users.
«Online meetings are effective, you can go through the issues and no time is wasted.»
Emma Kyyrä, Project Manager at Assetti
The four pillars of our deployment process have kept us on track and are all adaptable to online mode.
We always start with our “Kick-off” meeting; here we give the project team an introduction to the client, define the objectives, and complete the planning and requirements gathering for that client. Several of these projects have been conducted online. Our team works from four different locations every day, meaning that not just customer projects but also our internal projects are regularly handled online.
We do like to meet the people we are working with. Currently, we have customers located in seven countries, making meeting face-to-face difficult at times. We see face-to-face meetings not as a requirement, but more as a chance to act faster and react quicker to customer requests and to introduce ourselves to each other – and to do some social bonding, which is quite natural to human nature.
However, we have executed deployment projects with multinational customers and we have deployed large portfolios with countless properties to Assetti with just a couple of online calls. In addition gathering requirements for custom integration and partnerships for integrations can be done without meeting face to face.
Which brings us to the second pillar: The Setup. In that phase, we take care of the Data aggregation and analysis as well as the system setup – we prepare the environment so that you can start working with Assetti. What does that mean in detail?
- We analyse and structure initial data set
- We prepare the system & settings
- We import data
- We create users and enable access
- We conduct a data review meeting
In this stage, we can make integrations for our customers which imports their entire environment: including Properties, Buildings, Plots, Units, Leases, and Contacts. To get an idea of the typical amount of data we are talking about: for one of our customers, 3 117 leases are updated or imported every day via integrations.
Additionally, Assetti has a public and free RESTful API called Assetti API. Our customers can use this to integrate with your in-house systems and any other third-party system.
The right tools
Within our team, we have always been flexible when it comes to the location that one wants to work from. Remote working is part of our company’s NDA and by that, giving our employees flexibility and freedom. To support this, having the right modern SaaS tools make all the difference.We work with Google tools: Drive for Data Management, Calendar for arranging meetings, Hangouts (Meet) or Zoom to join conversations online. Or we just pick up the good old phone.
Internally we use GitLab and Trello for project management. In Pipedrive we make sure that we have the necessary information for account management. Together with customers, we use Asana, OneDrive or Basecamp for project management.
We use the scrum methodology to run our customer projects and development work. Through the process, we have systematic planning and review on the project-related work. For the planning we have our project and development backlog prioritized with the customer, we decide the content of the iteration and after the iteration review the work for collecting the feedback.
We are here to help
Your Assetti account is up and running! Great, now we will provide you with the needed Training. We deliver user training for both administrators and any other stakeholders using the application.
We can do these meetings in person, but frequently they are done online. Online, the Assetti team can share their screen and show step-by-step how to use Assetti. Clients can also share the screen so they get real-time answers as they go through their accounts.
Assetti is a Web App that guarantees you easy access from anywhere, anytime. We see that as a big advantage: during training, both the customer and the Assetti team are working with the same data when needed.
Finally, we offer continuous Support to get to know the new features as we keep Assetti up to date with market demands. Our support team follows up with our customers on a regular basis and responds to any customer questions within 24 hours. We are always asking for more info and making sure that everybody understands what is agreed.
We offer online tools for our clients and potential clients to receive further support. We use web-based product documentation that customers can find user manuals and frequently asked questions. If the Assetti Helpdesk is not providing you with the answer, there is a chat option on both the website and app to contact our support team directly.
We are also happy to receive support emails at support@assetti.pro.
And when major changes come to the Assetti app, we send out a newsletter to current users to let them know about the changes.
Data security – not just a promise
During the deployment project and onboarding of our customers only named people with customers consent has permission to access customer-related data. Named people will include only the people involved with the project team.
Assetti organises internal training for the team and updates information security policies annually. The app is really safe and you can read more about it on our Information Security page: https://assetti.pro/infosec/security/.
We use a strong password and two-factor login for our tools like Slack, email, Hangout, and Gitlab. Furthermore, at Assetti people only have access to client data on a need-to-know basis and through a separate written permission.
