Google Apps

Vakil Housing is looking for ways to improve it’s efficiency using Technology. In the past we’ve taken several initiatives, and now we’re pleased to announce that our IT infrastructure is based on Cloud Computing using Google Apps.

We’ve been test driving Google apps for more than 2 years, and have found it very useful in several situations:

* Tracking progress of construction on Site (Google Spreadsheets)
* Providing Customers with information (Google Docs)
* Creating Department Portals to mange documentation & targets (Google Sites)
* Managing events related to Property Management (Google Calendar)

The key feature of real time collaboration has reduced the time it takes for information to flow between individuals & teams, and has also reduced communication errors.

We’ve noticed over the years, Google consistently releases regular updates to it’s suite of applications, and has also opened up it’s architecture to integrate with other applications via the Market Place.

With the constant innovation taking place, our team is excited to use Google Apps in the work place!

http://www.gtdtimes.com/2008/10/03/vakil-housing-makes-gtd-history-in-india/

2003: Online Chat with our Property Advisor
2003: Online booking service using a Credit Card
2004: Online access to receipts & payments
2005: Live Availability status on the website, linked directly to our ERP Software
2007: To have a Blog
2007: To give Online status of Villa construction for each customer
2008: To be trained in GTD across the whole company

Fresh out of the oven, today we have a new first!  We’re pleased to announce that if you’re our customer you can now pay your Property Tax online, from the comfort of your home.  The Process includes 3 simple steps:

1. Fill in the Property Tax online form,
2. Find out how much you need to pay based on the tax payment chart of the respective Projects. The link to the payment charts can be found on the Property tax form page.
3. Send us the payment using any one of the payment methods.

Once we’ve received the amount, we’ll email you a confirmation and your request will be under process. It will take 3 weeks to process the tax payment, after which we’ll send you the Original Tax paid receipt to the address specified in the form.

You can always contact our Customer Care department for any queries.

Keep visiting this Blog as we have some new ‘First in India’ lined up for you!

Since the beginning of this year, we’ve been eagerly awaiting this training to take place and last week it finally happened. Dream Com True!  Through Linkage Incorporated, Leslie Boyer Harradine an associate with the David Allen Company, was down here for a whole week for an intensive training session, exclusively for Vakil Housing. Other than Training our staff in this methodology, Leslie, also trained a couple of us to be Trainers ourselves. So that this would not just be a one-time thing, but the practice and training will continue inhouse so that eventually a GTD culture sets-in.

Would like more information on what’s GTD? Well, GTD stands for Getting Things Done. It’s compiled by this genius of a guy, David Allen, who’s authored a book by the same name. Here’s a modified excerpt from my an earlier Blog Post of mine, that explains GTD in a bit more detail.

The Principle of GTD in a nutshell is that, your effectiveness is directly propotional to how relaxed you are. And how can anyone relax if there are 50 to 100 undone tasks (from unsent emails to incomplete reports to file) munching your mind to mush. Hence, the solution to get maximum effectiveness would be to have a system in place where anything…literally ANYTHING that comes to mind (be it via a task assigned to you by someone else or something that popped in your head regarding something that needs to be done), is instantly captured within 10 to 30 seconds in a system that you’re confident and absolutely and positively certain from which the same information can be retrieved at anytime within 10 to 30 seconds.

Therefore now imagine a scenario that you’re early at work, hoping to finish a report before everybody comes in. While you’re at the report, you get a call from home, you grudgingly temporarily put away the report to take the call, it’s your spouse online asking you to do/get something for her/him. As soon as you put the call down and before you can do anything about it, your boss comes in and asks you to step into his office for a n urgent meeting. Does this scenario sound familiar? Well,…instead of going numb of all these new tasks being fired at you and dealing with just the latest and loudest, you immediately record all these unfinished tasks ( i.e. your incomplete report, input from wife’s call & meeting notes from Boss) within 10 seconds from the moment it arrived in your life into a system; so that you can retrieve that info (within 10 seconds) when you are in the position to Get iT Done. And when you do that for every single thing in you mind….it would feel as if someone has lifted a mountain that you were carrying on your head for all these years and gently placed it aside.

I’ve listed further resources on GTD, on the same blog post that you can see by clicking here and scrolling down towards end of the post.

Oh well. This is just the beginning. To have this truly set-in to our culture will take time and a lot of work. Till then, let’s just enjoy at the photographs of the Training that took place, shall we?