Ashley Coolman, Author at Blog Wrike
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Ashley Coolman

Ashley Coolman

Ashley is a former Content Marketing Manager of Wrike. She specializes in social media, dry humor, and Oxford commas.
15 Suggestions to Improve Your Marketing Operations from Leaders
Marketing 7 min read

15 Suggestions to Improve Your Marketing Operations from Leaders

Learning about, and focusing on, improving marketing operations is becoming more critical for digital marketing teams trying to get ahead. Understanding your customers, implementing customer data properly, and measuring campaign performance are all key steps in building out your marketing ops. .In addition, marketing ops focuses on (1) managing the technologies that the marketing team purchases, and (2) measuring marketing effectiveness across the board. It’s not just your marketing techniques, but rather, it’s what goes on behind the scenes to make sure your campaigns reach their goals. . No one knows successful marketing operations better than the experienced marketers and business owners of today. Here are their secrets for improving your marketing ops:   1. Establish a cross-department workflow “The most important piece of improving your marketing operations is establishing a project workflow between marketing and the rest of the organization. The internal workings of individual teams can be heavily influenced by how other departments request projects and/or expect projects to be done. Once your workflow is established, using a tool to help task assignments, set deadlines, and follow up is critical.” —Daniel Bliley, Marketing Director, Passport 2. Work with your audience in mind “One issue with marketing, especially in digital, is the noise. There are so many companies saying the exact same thing, and companies don’t really do the proper research to figure out who they are, what their message is, who needs to hear that message, and how to get that message out.   Start from the top down. Take the time to explore your analytics and the data, interview your customers, pay attention to social media conversations & get involved, then create content that aligns your goals with your audience’s goals, speak to your audience in a unique way, and constantly review & tweak.” —Patrick Delehanty, Digital Marketing Strategist, Marcel Digital 3. Know your customers “The vast majority of the time, people make bad marketing decisions because they don’t have the right information about their target audience. To remedy that, I’ve worked hard to tie our CRM to our email marketing to our signups to our web traffic, so when we’re reaching out to someone, we have a complete understanding of them.” —D. Keith Casey, Jr., Director of Product, Clarify.io   4. Align all consumer insights "I think in an ideal state there is a dedicated consumer insights team, but a team that doesn’t work in its own little silo. A team that is interactive not only with the marketing team but also the product team, as well as with others who touch the customer technology. They have to understand the full circle of customers’ curiosities so they can put together a real, robust view for those who need it."  — Patrick Adams, CMO, PayPal 5. Establish your key marketing metrics “Establish 2 to 4 key metrics that will guide all your marketing efforts. Without establishing these benchmarks, your marketing team won’t have anything to shoot for individually or collectively. Unfortunately, many marketing departments don’t get creative with the metrics that serve as benchmarks for performance; their main metrics usually revolve around leads generated, sales, etc. However, there are usually more telling metrics for measuring your marketing effectiveness. For example, percentage of leads (free trials) vs. unique Website visitors; percentage of leads vs. conversions (paid customers); monthly recurring revenue.” —Jeff Kear, Owner, Planning Pod 6. Prioritize content development "We have a dedicated team that’s focused on content strategy and on creating what I call the content supply chain, mapping out where all the sources of content come from. Do we have the content already? How do we create new content? Who creates the content? It may be internal, it may be external. What format does that content take? Then, how do we work with the appropriate teams to get that content in the market?  — Rishi Dave, CMO, Dun & Bradstreet   7. Stay on brand "Ultimately [integrated planning] is a function that’s run through the marketing team. We establish the brand voice and try to create and implement consistency across all of our efforts, all of our communications channels, and all of our internal divisions/business units."  — Evan Greene, CMO, The Recording Academy (The GRAMMYs) 8. Focus on the ROI of your campaigns “Focus on ROI and user retention. By measuring the return of each campaign, we’re able to identify which ones are actually working and prioritize those. Our ROI has grown from 35% to 200%. Now, we have more money to invest in other projects to continue growing.” —Gabriel Stürmer, Chief Marketing Officer, Cupcake Sweet Entertainment 9. Implement Lean methodology to discover which campaigns work “Implement the Lean methodology (build, measure, learn). In essence, during planning sessions, we develop a list of hypotheses & prioritize based on expected impact. We then devise bare-bones methods to test these hypotheses. In this way, we get data-driven feedback quickly, allowing us to invest more heavily in winners and cut losers.” —Ryan O’Donnell, Director of Marketing, Avalara TrustFile 10. Use a Scrum board to focus weekly priorities “Enhance your weekly task delegation through the implementation of a Scrum board. Scrum is an Agile framework for handling tasks, originally developed for software development teams to easily delegate tasks. There is nothing worse than being inefficient when it comes to marketing, so a Scrum board helps us develop a weekly plan of attack, and lets everyone know what they should be working on.” —Jake Lane, Growth Analyst, LawnStarter, Inc. 11. Keep experimenting with new marketing techniques “Great marketing is about experimentation, testing, and measuring different approaches to find what works best. An issue many marketing departments face is that everyone has their discrete responsibilities, so it’s left to the marketing director or VP to initiate new programs. However, this should be everyone’s responsibility. Your team should meet regularly to brainstorm and come up with one new idea to apply and measure. It can be big or small, as long as you try something new — otherwise, you may never find that one golden opportunity that makes your revenue curve bend upward.” —Jeff Kear, Owner, Planning Pod 12. Build a long-term marketing plan “Set in stone a comprehensive 12-month marketing strategy and goals for the next five years. Developing a strategy with clear action items and setting both short-term and long-term goals pushes you to assign team members and actually implement the tasks.” —Beth Gard, lotus823 13. Hire a strategic analyst “The first hire in the marketing operations role should be a strategic analyst. This role is focused on developing ROI measurements for marketing. Once the tracking is in place, then everything else within marketing should be aligned.” —David T. Scott, CMO, Scott on Marketing   14. Continue to manage customer data "We’re building a centralized marketing profile that is at the customer level and becomes the common definition used by marketing teams across the organization to drive their campaigns. Getting the data house in order, making it real-time, and managing it at the attribute level is what’s important. As is making sure that the experts who are really close to the products have the ability to control what’s most important to them in that profile. This allows us to federate it out and take a much more efficient view across the organization, rather than be a big centralized behemoth that is too slow and ultimately doesn’t work." — Steve Ireland, SVP/MD, JPMorgan Chase   15. Remain accountable "In order to be effective, marketers need to have credibility. Because they have to do a lot of leading by influence, they have to do a lot of aligning and engaging and evangelizing, and that only works when people trust you. They only trust you if you deliver the goods and are accountable; you do what you say and you say what you mean. — Peter Horst, CMO, The Hershey Company     More marketing resources Marketing operations is a relatively new field, and there’s always more to learn. Here's a list of some of our resources for marketing leaders and teams (including our eBook, The Digital Marketer’s Guide: How To Drive Success at the Tactical Level) to help bring your next campaign to success. eBook: 7 Habits of High-Performance Marketing Teams Infographic: How to Choose Marketing Software eBook: The CMO’s Formula To 3x Your Digital Marketing Campaign Results Blog: The “We” in “Teamwork": How Marketers Can Drive Cross-Team Collaboration eBook: How to Avoid the Eight Pitfalls of Marketing Campaign Planning eBook: 5 Steps to Transforming Marketing Operations for Maximum Growth

7 Tips to Nail Your Annual Review
Leadership 3 min read

7 Tips to Nail Your Annual Review

We asked our faithful Wrike users for their own tips on how to nail your annual review. Some tips are for managers, other tips are for employees. See what they have to say, and apply what seems wise in order to get through your annual review with minimal stress. Annual Review Tips for Managers We asked: "As a manager, how do you make sure you run a fair, efficient, and effective process?" Managers from various industries gave us their best tips to make sure everyone comes out of the review process feeling like they had a positive experience. 1. Be fair and consistent "Make sure you are reviewing everyone on appropriate standards." — Matt Graf "Have appropriate and fair measures in place." — Karien Bredenkamp 2. Communicate the process and goals  "Set clear and objective goals." — Nick Stelmazuk "Daily communication with everyone and planning ahead." — Sammy 3. Have tough conversations early on "Daily communication about tasks, even if they're conversations you don't want to have (i.e. when your employee isn't performing)." — Mitchell Moss Annual Review Tips for Employees We asked: "As an employee, what are some things you do to make sure you nail your annual review?" Employees from around the globe shared tips on everything from dress code to how to prepare so you rock your annual review meeting. Decide which tips will work best for you. 1. Prepare in advance "Prepare early, track goals throughout the year." — Nick Stelmazuk "Spend enough time preparing - don't try to 'wing it.'" — Karien Bredenkamp 2. Dress for the occasion "Look snappy, and be honest." — Tory Dirk Trone 3. Show proof of results, don't just tell  "Be honest about my standing of where I am with my projects, and what I have completed and how." — Matthew Miller "Give a detailed and honest description of how I've accomplished the things I worked on, and how I've completed the tasks that have been assigned to me. Also, I track the time I spend on each task so I can have some physical proof of my work." — Ivana Reyes "I make sure that I quantify my job with my tasks in Wrike." — Christina Anstett 4. Set new goals for the next year "Review or renew my short/medium/long-term goals; Put a wish list of things I'd like; Have questions for how I can improve." — Mitchell Moss What tips can you share? Not every piece of advice on this list will be applicable for you, but hopefully you've found something useful to nudge you in the right direction. Help out your peers by sharing your annual review best practices in the comments below. Read Next: Don't Become a Project Manager from Hell!

Download Get Things Done with Wrike (eBook)
Productivity 3 min read

Download "Get Things Done with Wrike" (eBook)

  You read our How to Set Up GTD Using Wrike post. You've been following the conversation around our interview with David Allen, father of GTD. Still can't sate your thirst for everything related to the popular "Getting Things Done®" productivity process? We don't blame you. GTD is a great method for organizing everything on your mind so that you can stop worrying about "what's next?" and focus your energy on completing work. A New GTD Guide Our productivity coach, Errette Dunn, created a step-by-step guide for setting up Wrike to help you implement your favorite productivity process. It introduces the GTD methodology, discusses the three key principles, and outlines the exact process for taking your project from concept to completion within Wrike. Our "Get Things Done with Wrike" eBook is now available as a FREE download. Share it with your productivity-loving co-workers so they can improve their workflow as well. Did you know...? GTD and Teams David Allen says that GTD is not something you can just apply to teams. Instead, it is a process and a mindset that you must teach to the individuals of a team in order to facilitate a more productive organization. If you want to improve your team's results, try out "Getting Things Done" and Wrike. Download our free GTD+Wrike eBook, and if you still aren't using our productivity-enhancing tool, don't wait any longer — you can start your own free Wrike trial today.

Ho-Ho-How Santa's Workshop Manages Christmas
Project Management 5 min read

Ho-Ho-How Santa's Workshop Manages Christmas

Santa Claus: one of the most well-known, eagerly anticipated, and incredibly successful entrepreneurs in history. Each year he oversees the production and distribution of toys to every single child on his Nice List — and with over 1.9 billion children on Earth, that's a lot of toys! He hasn't missed a year yet, but that's not to say it's all sunshine and snow angels. I met Mr. Claus for a cup of hot cocoa and he shared a few tips about how he runs the most successful toy workshop out of the North Pole. Not surprisingly, the big man has taken some project management training courses.  From the jolly good fellow himself, here's how Santa's workshop manages to pull off Christmas: Plan and evaluate every day leading up to the Big Give. We always start our new year of toy production by outlining the requirements and scope for pulling off a successful Christmas. That means outlining all 365 days leading up to the finale, not just the 12 days that everyone sings about. It's a long process, but it sets the workshop up for another successful year. Our planning meetings are supplemented by many glasses of milk and platters of cookies to get all the elves excited. We review "The List" from years past to see how many gifts we gave, and predict how many children will make the Nice list this year.  We do some market research to guess what toys will be high in demand this year. Yes, even Santa goes online! We set up benchmarks to hit throughout the year. How many dolls will we make by February, March, April, etc.? We also calculate the projected workload compared to how many elves we have employed this year, and then see if we need to hire additional help to meet our goals. Santa's Crumb of Wisdom: Take time to plan out every step of your project, and make sure you have the resources necessary to fulfill your goals. Consider every voice, big or small. I get letters from children all over the world 365 days a year. Billy wants a puppy; Jane wants a Princess Elsa doll. Since they take the time to send me their wishes, I read what they have to say and take their letters into consideration. If we're already making Princess Elsa dolls, I will certainly give one to Jane — why not please her when it's easily within my power? Billy is difficult though, since we typically let parents give out the new pets. Sometimes I have to upset a few children by deciding to say no, but I always make sure to listen first before rejecting their ideas.  Santa's Crumb of Wisdom: Hear and actually consider what everyone — especially every customer — has to say, and THEN make your decision. Prepare for changes to The List. The real challenge at my workshop is managing fluctuations of "The List." Wishy-washy children have a tendency to change what they want ("I don't like Princess Elsa anymore, I want Olaf!"), or jump back and forth between Naughty and Nice, and the number of toys we need to produce changes accordingly. Every year we further refine our Nice-to-Naughty List algorithm, but it is still impossible to control these outside influencers! Our solution has been to insert some padding into our toy production timeline so that we don't miss our benchmarks even when the children are unpredictable. Santa's Crumb of Wisdom: Analyze your project risks and plan how you will deal with them ahead of time. Clearly communicate processes — from who's in charge to how to wrap a gift. My Head Elf manages the whole project, from start until Christmas Day. She's responsible for closely tracking our project progress. Accordingly, she dictates what's on the production lines each day. If we need more bricks or dolls, the elves in those departments hear it from her, no one else.  Personally, I check in with her weekly to get a progress update, and I let her know if there are any changes to The List via our project management tool so she can properly adjust the toy production plan. Santa's Crumb of Wisdom: Set up communication guidelines in advance so everyone knows whom to go to with questions or problems. Schedule snow days. I think it's important to reward my elves with well-deserved breaks. It builds loyalty to the workshop so that they'll come back again next year. Cookie breaks: We frequently take cookie breaks together for a mid-day sugar rush of productive energy and some bonding time — which is important when you spend so much time together. Celebrating achievements: When we hit our half-way benchmark last year, the elves celebrated with a huge snowball fight that lasted over 4 hours! I did not win — those elves are nimble! Holiday breaks: After we've finished our delivery, December 26th until January 1st is always a company-wide holiday as a thanks for 360 days of hard work. Every elf is encouraged to relax, spend time with their families, and go reindeer-back riding. Santa's Crumb of Wisdom: If you want to keep your team happy, make sure they know you appreciate them! Actions speak louder than words; group outings make for fun bonding time. Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! Don't want to rely on Santa to bring everyone gifts this year? Read this next: 34 Holiday Buys for Productivity Junkies (Gift Guide)

Take Our Survey on Mobile Productivity & Enter to Win!
Productivity 3 min read

Take Our Survey on Mobile Productivity & Enter to Win!

These days, workers turn to mobile devices to get things done and increase work productivity while on the go. In 2014, 36% of smartphone users and 45% of tablet users had purchased at least one app for their mobile device. But are these apps actually making us more productive, or are they just eating our money? We need your help in exploring how mobile devices help or hurt work productivity, and how today's mobile productivity trends are expected to fluctuate over the next few years. You're invited to share your valuable input in this 5-minute anonymous survey to help us all better understand mobile productivity and usage. After the survey period concludes, we'll be publishing a full report of the results, so you can also see what's happening in the world of mobile productivity — and perhaps adjust your business plans accordingly. Click here to take the survey now! What's more, you can enter to win an iPad! In the spirit of holiday generosity, we're giving out an iPad to one lucky participant who completes the questionnaire. Just make sure to fill out the contact form at the end of the survey to register to win! The survey will be open until: December 23, 2015. Thanks in advance for participating, and we hope you look forward to reading the results!

Wrike Hosts an #HourofCode to Support Computer Science Education Week
News 3 min read

Wrike Hosts an #HourofCode to Support Computer Science Education Week

Last Friday, Andrew Filev, Wrike CEO and development champion (he was Wrike's first developer, after all!), brought an "Hour of Code" to the people he spends time with every day — Wrike employees. Curious Wrikers joined Andrew to learn the basics of coding a computer game using Code.org's "Hour of Code" online program. What is "Hour of Code"?  As career opportunities in the field of engineering and software development continue to appear at a growing rate, the non-profit Code.org wants everyone, regardless of age, gender, or location, to have the chance to jump on board. "Hour of Code" is a week-long effort to bring the basic principles of engineering to children and adults of any age. They teamed up with Computer Science Education Week and teachers from across the globe to bring the program to over 3 million students in just 5 days. You can see more about their program in this video: Why Wrike Joined the Movement As Wrike's first developer and founding father, Andrew has been passionate about software engineering since he was only 6 years old. After reading about the "Hour of Code" program online, he offered to spend his lunch break teaching curious Wrikers a few basic software engineering principles in one of our bi-weekly "Lunch & Learn" education sessions. Folks from the sales, marketing, and customer success team all joined Andrew in a BYOL (Bring Your Own Laptop) session of introductory coding, errors, and laughter. Keep an eye out for new features developed by our newest software engineers! ;)

How to Use Wrike for Goal-Setting and Tracking
Wrike Tips 7 min read

How to Use Wrike for Goal-Setting and Tracking

The end of the quarter (and another year) means it's that time again: time to set new goals. Not just annual business goals, but also quarterly goals, monthly goals, and especially personal new year resolutions. One part of your mission when setting goals for your company, departments, or teams should be to share those established goals with the rest of the company. It will let everyone know what direction they should be rowing. If you're already working in Wrike, you and your team can also use it to create visibility into established goals and track progress on the way to achieving them. Building Annual Plans in Wrike Annual planning is an essential part of a successful business. It provides direction for the entire organization, defines what teams will focus energy on, and synchronizes activities of different departments to maximize resources. But in order to do all that efficiently, the entire company needs visibility into the annual plans. You can build annual plans in Wrike following our suggestion, or using your own format. Our recommendation: Create a folder called "2016 Annual Plans" at the top level of your account and right-click the folder name to share it with the entire company. Inside that folder, create project folders or tasks for all of the different priorities and big initiatives of the year. You can assign responsible directors or managers to the work, so everyone knows who to talk to if they have questions about that objective. From there, you can drill down into immediate key actions by building out tasks, setting deadlines, and assigning the steps to the appropriate parties. Finally, use Custom Fields to make notes on budgeting — data in Custom Fields can be restricted to only show for certain user groups in your account, so your private information stays that way. If you don't have access to Custom Fields, just write information you'd like to share with the entire team in your task descriptions. Establishing Quarterly Plans in Wrike Since quarterly plans only cover 3 months instead of an entire year, it's easy to brainstorm new ideas right in Wrike. On the Wrike content marketing team, we create a project folder called something like "Q2 Ideas", and then individuals on our team can create a new task for every idea they have inside that folder. Inside their task descriptions, team members can add pertinent details if their idea requires a more detailed breakdown, or they've suggested a completely new undertaking and they've already thought out a majority of the work and substeps needed to make the idea a reality. This method of brainstorming and sharing also allows our team to see if someone else has had a similar idea, so we can combine efforts and dump our parallel brainstorms into one big task. After everyone has input their ideas, we have a meeting to vet those ideas for go-no go decisions. We project the "Q1 Ideas" folder onto the big screen in our meeting room, and then discuss all of the propositions as a group. We can assign task owners and schedule due dates for ideas we definitely want to proceed with; defer ideas we think are good for a future quarter; or cancel tasks that just aren't in line with our overall vision. Once we decide what ideas we're moving forward with, we reorganize those tasks into our main work folder structure, and build out complete project plans with subtasks for the big ideas. Tracking Progress Using OKRs If you're someone who loves quantifying goals and hitting numbers, consider implementing OKRs and using project tracking tools to monitor progress. "OKRs" stands for "Objectives and Key Results." It's a system for setting goals (Objectives) and the steps necessary to achieve those goals (Key Results), popularized by Google. It's something we do at Wrike. You can set up an OKR like this: O: Publish regularly on blog KR: Write at least 3 blog posts every week KR: Research 10 new post ideas at least once per week KR: Build a backlog of 10 posts to publish later when inspiration fails Notice how the Objective is broad, and the Key Results are more direct supporting steps toward reaching that goal. You can read all about OKRs in our post on using OKRs for quarterly planning. In the meantime, here are a few quick tips on OKR creation: Start every O and KR with a verb. This ensures they are actionable. Make sure every KR includes a number. This ensures it is a measurable action that you can finally mark as complete. Make sure your goals are slightly out of reach. They shouldn't be laughably hard to attain, but if you make them just a little more difficult than you typically would, it will inspire you to work harder to go the distance. We wrote an entire post detailing exactly how you can implement the OKR system at your company using Wrike. Take a look. Setting Personal Goals Using Wrike It can't always be about work, work, work! Every person should set some personal improvement goals to help maintain that work-life balance. When you decide on what yours will be, track them where you're already tracking the rest of your work — in Wrike!   You can create a private folder at the top level of your Wrike account that no one else will be able to see. Turn each of your resolutions into a task, and if you know what it will take to turn those resolutions into a reality, break down those steps into subtasks. Create recurring tasks for things you know you'll need to do every week to reach your goal, assign them due dates for the end of each week, and mark them as complete as you make progress. Are you one of those people who never knows what to set for your New Year's Resolution? Here are some examples of what Wrikers are aiming to improve in 2016: Practice a new language at least 3x week using the Duolingo app Get better at doing Read 10 business-related improvement books Volunteer at the dog shelter at least 1x per month Keep one plant alive all year Reconnect with old friends Using Wrike for Goal-Setting Are you using Wrike to set and track your goals? Tell us your story and share how it has helped keep you on track in the comments below! If you have questions about best practices for goal-setting in Wrike, ask away in the comments and we'll get back to you with our advice.

Integrating with Wrike Is Easy: API v.3 & Brand-New Developer Site
News 3 min read

Integrating with Wrike Is Easy: API v.3 & Brand-New Developer Site

In our latest Dynamic Platform Release, we've made it easier for developers to integrate with Wrike by releasing our new API v.3 and a new Developer site. Now building your own custom integration with Wrike takes less time and effort. Some of the most important improvements in Wrike's API 3.0 include: Organized using REST principles making it more robust and easier to use. Added the most popular request methods including: Custom Fields, Subtasks, and more account management functions Migrated to OAuth 2.0 protocol for authorization to align our API with industry standards. Our API is designed to be used for Enterprise grade applications. In fact, we've built our own mobile apps and Zapier integration using our API v.3, so it's possible to build very robust applications with API v.3.  Today, we also launched our new Developer site, developers.wrike.com, which provides quick access to API Documentation and developers can now request API keys directly from the developer site without having to contact support. Visit Developer portal to start working with the new API and share your experience in comments.

Everyone's a Project Manager — Yes, That Means You (Video)
Project Management 3 min read

Everyone's a Project Manager — Yes, That Means You (Video)

When you think about the term "project manager" who comes to mind? Your boss? A colleague on a different team? The guy who literally has "Project Manager" on his LinkedIn bio? Here's something to think about: we're all project managers — you, your teammate, even the intern on the other side of the office. Whether you consider the client side project manager definition or the definition of a receptionist's role, both have their responsibilities which fall under the umbrella of project management. According to David Allen, father of the popular productivity system Getting Things Done (GTD), a project is ANY multi-step action. Which means that every time you work on something that takes more than one step, you are managing a project. Creating a new ad campaign. Hitting your sales goal. Buying a new car. Making a 3-course dinner for your in-laws. These are the types of daily projects we manage. What does this mean for how we approach work? We need to look at everything we do from a different angle. If we come at our daily tasks and projects with the mindset, "I can do this in a structured, organized way," then the outcome will substantially improve. How to Approach Life Projects Using GTD: 1. Identify what you're working on. Stake your claim that this is now a project you're managing. Simply changing your mindset can make a difference in how you approach the work. 2. Envision your intended outcome. 3. Make a list of the actions it will take to get you to the end goal. 4. Map out the flow for all your action steps. 5. Single out your very next step and set aside everything else for later. See what David Allen says about everyday project managers in a contributed post on his website about the natural planning model, and in our recent one-on-one interview: Interested in managing all your daily projects more efficiently? Start your own 2-week free trial of Wrike project management software today. Related Reads:• 4 Ways David Allen Applies GTD to Teams• How to Set Up GTD Using Wrike

5 Virtual Documentation Mistakes You're Making
Collaboration 5 min read

5 Virtual Documentation Mistakes You're Making

Your bank is trying to get you to do it. And so is your insurance company. It sometimes feels like the whole world is trying to save trees (a good thing) and trying to get you more organized by making documentation virtual. But virtual documents are no more helpful than packets of real paper if you don't do it right — and can be one of the pros and cons of working from home. Here are 5 mistakes that many people make with virtual documentation and how to fix them by storing documents the 2014 way. Mistake 1: Not storing documents in the cloud What happens when documents don't live in the cloud? They die with old hard drives. They're accidentally deleted from personal computers. You can't access them once you leave the office. If you save work-related documents in a cloud software such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or Box then your important documents won't be dependent on the existence of your computer. If your hard drive crashes, your documents live on. If you leave the office but suddenly need to look at that customer-related file, you can check it from your phone. Putting documents in the cloud means your work belongs to you, not to your computer. Cloud Storage Suggestions: Google Drive, Dropbox, Box Mistake 2: Exchanging documents through email Manually attaching a document to an email leads to a host of problems: the file size is too large, the email gets lost in the recipient's inbox, old file versions can't be deleted out of inboxes and people still reference them after they're outdated. This tip goes hand-in-hand with keeping files in the cloud. Sharing documents online is easier than ever, so there is no reason to resort to email exchanges. Instead, give your colleagues links to easily-updated, cloud-hosted files and avoid all those email challenges. Mistake 3: No standard file organization methods Just because your documentation is virtual doesn't mean you stop worrying about where  your files are stored. Virtual documents are just as easily lost as slips of paper. Virtual files are slightly easier to find if you're willing to put in the search-and-rescue work, but you can prevent wasting that time altogether with a little bit of planning. Set up a logical folder structure to store documents (e.g. a "Customer-facing" folder split into subfolders for specific types of files), and make sure everyone knows how to navigate them. If only one person understands how to document everything correctly, files will still get lost. Creating a standard method of organizing files — and teaching everyone those standards — means you won't worry about losing your customer NDAs. Software Suggestion: cloud project management solutions with file attachment capabilities help you store and organize your files into project folders Mistake 4: Process documents aren't immediately updated If you're part of a company that doesn't document processes, this point may not apply. But for companies that document workflow and development processes, failing to properly implement change management can trip you up. When processes change, updating the relevant documents must happen concurrently. People responsible for maintaining documents should be involved with process update meetings from day one. As soon as final decisions are made, those documents need to reflect the new changes before the decision is officially rolled out to the company. Mistake 5: Old versions of documents aren't deleted Are you a file packrat? When documents become outdated, they either need to be replaced or deleted completely. Leaving old documents in your cloud storage or project management tool creates room for mistakes. People will inevitably reference old versions of your file and make mistakes based on outdated knowledge. If you need to be able to reference old versions, collaboration software can track document changes or allow you to version your documents. You'll be able to keep previous versions around for reference and simultaneously understand which file is the most recent. Use cloud file-storage or project management storage for better virtual documentation What other virtual documentation mistakes has your team made, and how did you fix them? Teach everyone a new thing or two in the comments.

8 Project Management Infographics You Have to See
Project Management 3 min read

8 Project Management Infographics You Have to See

You just became a project manager, or you've been in the field for a while but you're ready to learn more. These great project management infographics from sources all over the net provide interesting education for PMs and PM-wannabes. Check out all these infographics and learn something new about how to define a project. 1. Bust some project management myths you probably believe Myths about remote collaboration, PM certification, paperwork, meetings, and project failure. This infographic busts 5 common myths with cold, hard facts. See the 5 Project Management Myths Infographic. 2. Learn the basics of being a project manager Ever wonder what steps are involved in each project management decision? This infographic breaks down the four important considerations for project managers: scope, resources, timeline, and budget. See the Project Management Level: Legendary infographic on Pinterest. 3. See how to balance hard and soft skills for better project management Discover both the hard skills and the soft skills you need to be a successful project manager, complete with advice on how to improve in those areas. See the Balance of Hard Skills & Soft Skills infographic on Pinterest. 4. Choose between different project management methodologies Once you're working on projects, you'll need to decide which methodology you want to adopt for your team — and Agile or Waterfall project management are not the only options. This infographic covers 16 popular PM methodologies. See the 16 Popular Project Management Methodologies infographic. 5. Know the common causes of conflict in project management You're going to be a project manager, and you're going to have a team of people that will not always get along. It's important to be aware of the most important causes of conflict so that you know how to battle them when they rear their ugly heads. See the Causes of Conflict in Project Management infographic on Pinterest. 6. Everything you need to know about PMOs Who uses PMOs? What kind of challenges and benefits do PMOs bring to their companies? Learn all this and more in a simple infographic. See the What is a PMO? infographic. 7. A rundown of Gantt charts You keep hearing about Gantt charts, but you aren't really sure what they do or why you would use them. This infographic breaks down the history, anatomy, and benefits of Gantt charts for your project planning. See the What is a Gantt Chart? infographic. 8. Lessons in project failure from the Death Star Projects fail. It happens. The best way to bounce back is to learn from those failures. Learn vital lessons from the management mishaps of the Death Star. See the 10 Reasons Projects Fail: Lessons Learned from the Death Star infographic. Which is your favorite?  Which infographic is your favorite? Or what new infographic would you like to see us create? Let us know in the comments.

Wrike + Salesforce = Happier Clients and Teams
News 3 min read

Wrike + Salesforce = Happier Clients and Teams

You live in Wrike and your Sales team lives in Salesforce, but you still need to work together. Now, you can collaborate without having to jump back and forth between tools or bombard each other with email. Today we're announcing our integration with Salesforce to help you manage your customers and your tasks all in one view. Wrike's Salesforce integration makes collaboration between Salesforce users and other teams in your company faster, easier, and more accountable. Salesforce users can create and assign new Wrike tasks directly from Salesforce, and also check the latest status of all tasks you've associated with your Salesforce pages. Meanwhile, you can work in Wrike and any changes you make are instantly reflected in Salesforce. This eliminates time spent reiterating information in Salesforce and Wrike, avoids dropped handoffs, and saves you from toggling between systems. Wrike’s Salesforce Integration lets you: Add a Wrike Tasks module to any record type in Salesforce such as Leads, Opportunities, or Cases Create and view Wrike tasks without leaving Salesforce Instantly reflect in Salesforce any changes made in Wrike   How might you apply this to your team? Here are some common use cases, but of course these are just a few of many: 1) Implementation teams – Often winning a new deal is just the beginning. For teams who work on post-sale implementation projects, client consulting engagements, or other fulfillment work, managing these projects in Wrike is easier and more effective. Now these projects can be linked to the client records in Salesforce for quick and easy reference by your account teams. 2) Marketing teams – You support Sales with campaigns, pitch materials, and competitive analysis. Now Sales reps can submit requests as a Wrike task directly from Salesforce — forget about emailing! You can easily communicate and share files directly from Wrike, and you have a full record of all the support you’ve provided Sales to quickly report on the impact of your work.   3) IT help desk – The Salesforce integration isn’t limited just to Sales teams, it works with any Salesforce Object. Let’s say your IT Help Desk uses Salesforce Cases to track tickets such as lost computers, network issues, and new employee setup. Now you can easily manage any tasks or projects related to these cases in Wrike while keeping Salesforce as your record system for cases. Getting started: Salesforce Integration is available to Wrike Enterprise accounts. Ready to give it a try? If you're on Wrike Enterprise, contact our Support team for the installation package. If you’re not on Wrike Enterprise, start a free trial and then contact our Support team and ask for the Salesforce Integration to try it out. Any other questions? Reach out to our Support team! They're standing by and ready to help. More great integrations are coming soon, so stay tuned with Wrike! Subscribe to our blog to stay in touch with all the latest product updates.

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