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ThirdDream

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

ThirdDream from Nihilent Technologies is a DIY (do-it-yourself) application that marks the commodification of knowledge management and management consultancy. Built around the USP of “Having your own strategic consultant”, the software has four modules: planning (Dream Planner), collaboration (Dream Dialog), e-marketing and website creation (Dream Designer) and deployment (Dream Web). They interconnect to provide an apparent seamless system.It is projected as an all-in-one toolbox to help with the SME/entrepreneur/SOHO user’s immediate business management efforts.

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Along with the purchase of this product, you are also allotted database and file storage spaces on the ThirdDream servers.

Each of these applications post whatever data is published to these servers and databases. The data is served to other users of the system from there. The vendor claims that they have ensured the security and discreetness of individual customer data.

Dream Planner is the main module of this product suite. It allows for a wizard-based designation of the business’ mission and its performance criteria. Based on this, quite a number of management techno-jargon questions are thrown at the user. Once the user has chosen and prioritized his needs from these lists, a basic action plan is presented, which can then be published on the website or emailed to the designated users of the system. Major drawbacks of this system are that a user would outgrow the product quite quickly and the wizard driven steps need to be periodically revisited and the answers refined to reap any benefit out of it.

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The planners can then assign a set of tasks to each of the users of the system and send them off via email. These users can then post their progress back to the Administrator (this is usually the head of the company, but can be setup to be any capable user).

The software has a clean and intuitive interface

The vendor claims that the product negates the need for a personal management consultant, but given the amount of training and time that one needs to spend in learning the software, consulting a human specialist may be a better idea.

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Dream Designer, which is a lightweight website creation tool, can work in an offline mode and upload data when connected. You can use Dream Web to publish the content that you generate from Dream Designer. Dream Dialog works only over an active Internet connection and enables email and polling features. It also builds and manages online forums on your website where users can air their opinions and provide feedback.

You can use the Dream Designer to create online campaigns and host them off your Third Dream account. You can also capture these through the Dream Dialog web app and send them off to various interest groups–like your users, vendors and customers. Whenever you create a poll with Dream Dialog and send them on, the users get such poll invitations via e-mail.

They click links on this email to cast their vote in favor of a particular answer. The initiator of the poll can watch the results of the poll as they come in.

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There are still some technical hiccups, though, with the product–a single installation can manage only one ThirdDream account. This makes it highly unsuitable for houses that have multiple interest users–according to the vendor such firms would need to purchase additional copies of the software. There is currently also a branding issue (the vendor has promised to look into it), which becomes a problem with the collaboration and e-marketing tool (Dream Dialog). At the present time, the website package can create and serve only static content. To use the website tool one must necessarily use the ThirdDream webspace and cannot use accounts with another provider.

The Bottom Line It may be an excellent tool for entrepreneurs heading single interest linear firms but provides only a starting point. Lot of hands-on training and technical management skills along with loads of Internet time, are necessary to use the product fully. The company has included some training as a part of the package.

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Price : Rs 11,000 (five-user license)
Meant for : Entrepreneurs at SOHOs, SMEs
Key specs : Four interesting packages for collaboration and knowledge management. Good wizard driven interfaces
Pros : Don’t need a lot of computer knowledge to use the software, good clean interfaces, mostly intuitive packaging
Cons : Need some management know-how to use the Dream Planner application
Contact : Nihilent Technologies, Pune.
Tel : 6052253.
E-mail : sales@thirddream.com

Sujay Sarma and Sumit Sharma

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