September 25th, 2007
PlanHQ: Collaborative business planning
PlanHQ has a focused plan–to provide startups, established businesses, investors and advisors with a customizable, on demand planning tool. It’s not exactly project management with Gantt charts or an Excel spreadsheet, but more of a living, breathing wiki that captures and manages the elements that make up a strategic plan.
For example, VCs or business advisors can use PlanHQ to eliminate getting plans in a variety of formats via email from each portfolio company.
Launched today at DEMOfall 07, PlanHQ has four tabs to capture the essentials of business planning–Dashboard, Opportunity, Goals and Financials. It also has a basic spreadsheet for inputing and analyzing financial information.
The PlanHQ Dashboard captures the actions and status of goals for a business plan.
PlanHQ has a quick overview of how business goals are tracking.
PlanHQ isn’t a service that breaks new ground with grand innovations, but does something really useful with the available technology. It shapes the planning process in a collaborative context and gives each team member a personalized dashboard. It would be more useful if it could import spreadsheets and attach documents that are relevant to a plan. You can export a PlanHQ plan to Microsoft Word or as a PDF file.
Pricing starts at $9, for 3 users and 5 active goals. A “small” version includes 5 users and 10 active goals. The Pro version $49 per month for unlimited users and active goals, as well as secure SSL and customization capabilities.
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
