I’ve been meaning to follow up on Koral for a while but it wasn’t until I saw this excellent review and explanation by John Wilson that I really got stuck into the service. As with many of these services, basic usage is free and you can get going pretty much immediately.
When first faced with services like this it is sometimes difficult to figure out where to start. The embedded video gives you a solid overview about how Koral works and the way it changes the game by offering brain-dead ease of use. Once I’d seen that, together with John’s assessment, the penny dropped immediately.
I played with this for a while and found it quickly becomes addictive but for all the right reasons. Koral is allowing me to work on a set of related projects for a client in a much more efficient manner than would have been possible in the past. I am able to ensure that information is consistent across the projects. These projects have a number of external files I need to consult but they’ve turned up in email in dribs and drabs. Having a single place where I can store, access and tag makes life a whole lot simpler. In fact I reckon I became productive in about 30 minutes.
Koral is also offered as an add-on service for Salesforce.com so if you’re using SFdC for client management then you can easily enrich shared knowledge by attaching documents to client records. One thing John didn’t mention is that rather like a wiki, the service will ensure that you’re always working with the latest document version.
For me this is a great example of how easy it can be to extend application services to give you what’s needed to run a business. This could be a real boon for professional services businesses and especially those organised around project or subject matter teams.
I really like this method of working. It shows enormous promise.
Technorati Tags: collaboration, document management, innovation, Koral, SaaS
