For many people, contact management involves writing names on scraps of paper and Post-It notes or creating a record in Microsoft Outlook about a person or organization. If a group of people need to share contact information, they may start by creating a spreadsheet and sharing it, but pretty soon they will discover that these approaches have severe limitations. Post-It notes get lost, most Outlook contact lists are not shared and a shared spreadsheet can only be updated by one person at a time.

Podium On-Demand, a web-based "Software-as-a-Service" offering from The Socrates Group is a simple but powerful tool for managing projects. It is much simpler than full-blown project management systems like Microsoft Project, but much more than a tool for managing a list of tasks, like Microsoft Outlook. But what exactly is Project Management?

There are many ways Podium can be customized to the specific needs of a business. User-defined fields can be configured for both people and organizations. Many of Podium's behaviors can be configured by simply changing application settings using tools built into Podium.

Podium's menus can also be completely customized using the Security tool build into Podium. Many of Podium's tools also alter their behavior based upon the "capabilities" granted to users. For example, users with "Edit Person" can alter a person's record, while users who have only "View Person" capabilities can see, but not alter information about a person. Capabilities are also managed with the Security tool.