Flexibility and control are two concepts that seem incongruous with each other. The dictionary describes the first as having the “capability to adapt to new, different or changing environments." The latter is characterized by the “power or the authority to guide or manage”; or a “skill in the use of a tool, instrument, technique, or artistic medium.” Despite their opposing natures, project managers need to exercise both effectively in order to complete the projects they're responsible for. What’s more, their chosen software tools need to be able to extend those abilities and make it easier for them to do their job. Unfortunately, that’s quite often not the case.

Before Arkit, project managers in the oil and gas industry primarily relied on spreadsheets to store, organize, and collate data in order to track development. There aren’t a lot of platforms that specifically serve this industry, and spreadsheet software allows users to house and organize data in pretty much whatever manner they wish. It’s familiar, and it’s powerful. However, imagine the scenario where the project manager leaves or is replaced. When the next manager takes over from where the previous person left off, who will be there to explain how their Excel workbooks were set up? Important aspects such as how the data had been previously organized and managed, the naming conventions used, or perhaps the content written in a shorthand that only the last person understood?

This, in fact, happens a lot.

As Chris Kam, founder and CEO of Fieldshare relates, “When I was out working in the field, first as a junior, then senior project manager, there was no course to teach you how to do this, and so the only tool was Excel. So whether it was budgeting, costs, tasks, man-hours, estimates, or invoicing it was all done there and I could set it up however I wanted. So when my boss told me, “You’re now in charge of several more projects”, I could whip up something in Excel that would house and organize all that data. But if I were to become ill or unable to continue, the next person would go through enormous amounts of stress trying to figure my workbooks out at the same time overseeing the projects that they were hired for.”

So how does Fieldshare improve the project management experience? By giving unparalleled flexibility and control over your data. Fieldshare uses dynamic fields, customizable views, powerful filters, and real-time tracking to turn your raw data into a holistic, up-to-date assessment of where your project is at. Its scalability allows you to combine any number of different data sets and extrapolate the information needed to help you guide your project to completion. Where managing your data once may have meant manually cross-referencing several Excel workbooks, Fieldshare does all of this for you, easily and intelligently.