Wrike Helps Yourbiz Earn 25% More Revenue With 10% Fewer Resources

July 24, 2023 - 7 min read

Brandon Weaver

“How do you Wrike?” It’s a common question we ask customers in our customer advocacy program Wrike Stars. As you can imagine, the answers vary across industries and use cases, but we love hearing the variety of responses!

In today’s ‘How I Wrike’ interview, we meet Pietro Poli, the Chief Operating Officer of Yourbiz, a marketing agency based out of Treviolo, Italy. Get an inside look at how Pietro and his colleagues integrate Wrike into their everyday operations to streamline tasks, create order out of chaos, and deliver exceptional services to clients across the globe.

“Thanks to Wrike, we solved many of our problems and generated 25% more revenue with 10% fewer resources.”

How’d they do it? Let’s dive in to get the details.

What does your company do?

PP: My company Yourbiz works with manufacturing companies that produce in Italy and sell worldwide, especially in the B2B market. We help them acquire, nurture, and transform potential customers into paying customers via demand generation activities.

What department do you work in and how is your team structured?

PP: I work with two departments: marketing and content. The marketing team has two branches — demand generation and ecommerce. This department has two team leaders and six people who work alongside us. I'm also the team leader for the content department, which has four copywriters, two SEO Specialists, and two SEM specialists.

What is your job function? Describe a day in your life using Wrike.

PP: I am the Chief Operating Officer at Yourbiz. My responsibilities span three different categories:

Collaborating with my colleagues to support their marketing or content endeavors, provide guidance on technical matters, and help them achieve their goals.
Overseeing the entire team's workload through Wrike, actively assisting colleagues in resolving any bugs, monitoring incoming intake requests, and creating informative dashboards for efficient information retrieval.
As a trainer, I frequently attend events and webinars and visit prospect and customer companies to educate them on demand generation and HubSpot, sharing valuable insights and knowledge.

Which Wrike features do you feel most knowledgeable about?

PP: Wrike no longer has many secrets for me as I'm becoming an onboarding partner. I especially love:

Workload chart

The ability to see in real time how much teammates are loaded with work and to be able to make forecasts on what can be sold to obtain an optimal load.

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Wrike Analyze

Even though I don't consider myself a true Wrike Analyze guru, having a background as a marketer and data analyst, I spend a lot of time creating new data visualizations and discovering trends that I never would have seen in other ways.

Automations

Coming from the CRM world, marketing automation, and CRO, being able to create automations to simplify and execute the work is a huge benefit for all our teams love. We save a ton of time and can focus more on impactful work for clients.

Please provide 2-4 examples of processes you use Wrike to support.

PP: As I mentioned in the Wrike Community, we use Wrike throughout all our business processes. Whether it's a website development, marketing campaign, or strategic analysis, we have implemented and continue to implement and maintain specific processes and blueprints to help us in the work.

Example #1: Integrating other software

The process I’m most proud of in Wrike is integrating TimeLog with our billing software. It combines information on the budget available for each project with the hours that we schedule (effort) and the hours used. This process lets us know in advance if we’ll "overrun" when entering the project. It's incredible!

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Example #2: Customizing project workflows

One of our web agency’s most important services is creating client websites. All departments are involved in these activities (sales, product marketing, content, developers, graphics, etc.). It took me three weeks to implement the process — designing a large workflow, defining all the dependencies, and all the possible activities (optional and otherwise). Only at that point did we create the blueprint. Every six months we do a review because things change quickly.

Example #3: Wrike request forms

We use Wrike custom request forms for a variety of reasons, but here are the top two.

Request for quotes with new clients

We ensure a seamless and efficient client onboarding process through a dedicated request form that our sales team utilizes when approaching new clients. This form contains a comprehensive set of interview questions that our salesperson can refer to during the client meeting. By using this form within Wrike, our team avoids the need to work with external files, and all the information gathered is conveniently stored within the platform.

After the interview, if a quote is needed, a different form is filled out, specifying objectives, client budget, and analysis requirements. Wrike then automatically creates tasks and subtasks for each analysis. It’s a manual process, but our goal is to automate it in the future, ensuring more efficient client onboarding.

Transfer of new contracts

Every time a contract is signed, the salesperson must use a specific form to pass it over to operations, the administrative office, and the PM. The PM confirms the salesman's request, with an approval, and completes all the missing information in the created task using a custom item type. At this point, the operations and administration teams receive an approval. They create the job in Wrike and ERP software and kick off the tasks.

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Which Wrike features or use cases do you want to learn more about?

PP: Working with production companies that produce in Italy and sell all over the world, it would be very useful to know how other similar manufacturing companies have leveraged Wrike to communicate the value of the software even to more structured companies.

What’s your story?

Want to tell your Wrike story and be featured in a customer spotlight?

Join our exclusive customer advocacy program where you can connect and network with other Wrike users. When you do, you’ll get your chance to earn points, badges, and rewards by completing fun activities, participating in the Wrike Community, and amplifying the Wrike brand.

Brandon Weaver

Brandon Weaver is a former Senior Content Marketing Manager of Wrike. Early in his professional career, he worked with Conan O’Brien and ate breakfast at his house. He shares a birthday with Elvis, loves traveling, appreciates a great tagline, has a healthy obsession with the Golden State Warriors, and his favorite quote is “Keep smiling, it looks good on you.” At Wrike, he wrote about collaboration, project management, and how automation makes work not only easier, but better. Isn’t that what we’re all here for?

#Wrike Customers #Wrike Features

Wrike Tips 7 min read

Customer Spotlight: Educational Insights’ “How I Wrike” Story

Customers are at the heart of what we do at Wrike. Over the years, customers have provided feedback and valuable insights that have led to us releasing some of our best features to date. We love hearing their feedback and take every opportunity to highlight their experience and stories in case studies, testimonials, and our customer advocacy program Wrike Stars. Today we’re highlighting Kelly Recinos, Project Coordinator for the creative department at Educational Insights, a 60-year-old educational toy company based in Torrance, CA that produces learning toys, games, and educational materials. What department do you work in and how is your team structured? KR: I’m the Project Coordinator for the creative department. We recently went through a massive growth spurt, which inspired us to look closely at our processes as we brought in new talent. We had Wrike blueprints already created from the previous year's production cycles, so we dove right into process mode and built RACI charts for each type of asset we generate. We spoke with the stakeholders in every process and got their feedback. I then updated our request forms and blueprints to mirror more closely what actually happens during development. I use Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed custom fields in the blueprints to add the roles our stakeholders hold in each project. Since the infusion of new talent, we now have a brilliant copywriter and two widely skilled creative teams. Our digital team creates assets for marketing, social media, eCommerce, video, photography, and our website. Our print team designs packaging, guides, and products in tandem with the product development team along with catalogs and sales collateral of every type. Our Sr. Creative Director guides our brand strategy and ensures our design aligns with product positioning. What is your job function? Describe a typical workday using Wrike. KR: I usually start every morning with my Wrike inbox. Most of the messages roll in before 9 a.m. and after 2 p.m. Clearing the inbox first thing in the morning gives me a few hours to attend to other priorities. My inbox has three main priorities: Automated notifications: These alert the assignee (and me) of any potential risk. The triggers are tasks due in three days, approvals in review for three days, and anything overdue. New requests: We have a request form for each type of asset we create. I verify that we have the information needed to get to work right away. I either assign the tasks to the designers or hand them off to the design managers to alert them of anything new. Questions, comments, and general project management: After the first two priorities are addressed, I review all other messages that require my response or feedback so that work can continue moving forward. After clearing my inbox, then it’s meetings, non-Wrike communication, and general project management. I spend a little time each day reviewing allocation so we can reassign tasks if necessary. For that, we’ve just started using Wrike effort to track capacity in our teams. At the moment we estimate, but I expect to track real numbers by this time next year. Next, I check in with Wrike Stars to hear about updates and see what the black belts are up to. I get the best ideas from the workarounds and processes posted in Community. The rest of my time in Wrike is spent building or learning to refine tools and features. Try Wrike free Which Wrike features do you feel most comfortable using or most knowledgeable about? KR: I love a really robust automated request form! Anything that provides the information we need to get right to work without multiple rounds of clarifying questions — that’s my kind of feature. The project intake process is wonderful, but Wrike’s approval feature is what sold us on the platform four years ago. The ability to assign specific approvers to review a file with a deadline and notifications is helpful. An asynchronous review platform with tools to mark up the file and comments linked directly to the marks on the file? That’s a game-changer. The approval feature easily cuts 25% off the time it used to take us to review designs. Having all comments collected in iterative versions is the icing on the cake. In the last six months, I have become a huge fan of Spaces. Each department now has a dedicated Space for better access in finding their files. Users can now see specifically what they need to see and not an avalanche of all the projects and tasks of the last four years. Since Wrike is very robust and includes a ton of useful functionality, I always build a “How to Use Your Space” guide with screenshots showing their views and tools. What are 2-4 examples of processes you use Wrike to support? KR: Our new product design work is seasonal. We start working on the new product line in March for release in September. Late summer is extremely busy as we are finishing packaging and product and submitting every piece for approval. At Educational Insights, 95% of our approvals happen in Wrike, with the final sign-off meeting being face-to-face with the executive team. As we are finalizing the new product line, we are ramping up the marketing launch. Photography, video, eCommerce pages, website landing pages, GIFs, giveaways, every type of marketing asset, and thousands of words of marketing copy are captured and managed in Wrike. And that’s just the new product! The digital team is working on these marketing assets for our existing product year-round. Our OEM team creates “exclusive” versions of our products for big retailers. OEM projects have a concept phase and a design phase so they needed a Space due to their interrupted product cycle. We create concept artwork the sales team presents to buyers at big retail stores. The concept project sits until we hear from the buyer. If the project is picked up, the concept goes to development immediately. The OEM team Space has a calendar for meetings, reports, folders for each product phase, and their user guide. When we have a very big project outside of standard production, I create a Space for it, so it doesn’t get mixed into the standardized requests. So far this year, we’ve designed the interior of our new office, written an enormous brand book, and launched a robot pet (Meet PYXEL!) each with its own dedicated Wrike Space. This year we started with Wrike Analyze and I spend as much time as possible learning how business intelligence streamlines project management. Recently, I earned the Wrike Report Mastery Silver certification and build analytics boards of all sorts looking for the best visuals to illustrate the work we’re doing. Try Wrike free Which Wrike features or use cases do you want to learn more about? KR: Custom item types, in particular, because I use a recurring meeting template that creates three active tasks at a time. I created a meeting workflow and when I change the status to Next Meeting, a message is sent to the managers so they can add to the agenda. I’d like to create Custom item types for some of our quick-turnaround asset requests to make them simpler and differentiate them from other tasks. I need to see examples of ingenious Custom item type templates on their own, not just in Space templates. I also want to keep up the continued development in dashboards and analytics board widgets. I haven’t even started to use all the fantastic new updates added this month, but I will because creating clean, visual stories for my stakeholders is critical to my success. How do you Wrike? Want to join Wrike Stars or be featured in a customer spotlight story? Join our exclusive customer advocacy program that celebrates top supporters! Once you’re a member, you can earn points, badges, and rewards by completing fun activities, participating in the Wrike Community, and amplifying the Wrike brand.

Collaboration 5 min read

Intelco Unlocks Operational Efficiency with Wrike

Here’s a story we’re sure you’ll like because it’s one that you can probably relate to or stirs up past memories. Intelco is a software house that provides services for large industrial groups such as the motorway, airport, engineering, retail, textile, and many others. Based in Gussago, Italy, they’re a true strategic partner for companies that outsource personnel administration. The company offers a wide range of services thanks to the "tailor-made" customization of the IRIS software, an Intelco-owned platform made up of about 42 modules to optimize, rationalize, and digitize human resource management processes. Back in 2019, the company faced an all-too-common scenario. Their teams worked out of disparate systems, needed more visibility, and couldn’t track work efficiently or see work in progress or a historical record of completed projects. They were determined to find ways to optimize their processes and work smarter. Change management was needed. Although change seemed intimidating, they knew it had to be done to reach their end goal — improving collaboration and streamlining processes. We talked with Mattia Ronchi and Paolo Baiamonte, Project Managers at Intelco, to learn more about their workflows, major pain points, and what led them to choose Wrike. How did Intelco manage and track work before? MR & PB: We used to manage all our work via spreadsheets and handwritten notes. Our service team, in particular, relied on email and phone calls because clients couldn’t initiate new requests without first emailing or calling the service team. So any time a bug needed fixing or a change request was sent, the service team was inundated with inbound inquiries. It wasn’t ideal, and we knew there had to be a better way. What motivated your team to look for a better solution? MR & PB: It all started with upgrading our ticketing system and fielding new requests. The glaring problem was with multiple channels to accept requests. There needed to be a consolidated, easy-to-track system to handle everything. But we also wanted to streamline processes, enable more teams to have visibility into the work being done by all departments and collaborate. And here’s the big thing — we wanted to achieve everything in one place. What was your evaluation process, and what sold you on Wrike? MR & PB: Implementing organizational change isn’t easy, but we knew change management was in order, so we sought a work management solution. We sat through multiple product demos to determine which solution best fit our needs. After all the demos, we weren’t impressed because every provider was too niche, the software was too clunky, or it was not customizable to what we needed. Once we saw Wrike, it was clear how robust the platform was and how we could customize it to how we preferred to work. The other platforms were not as flexible as Wrike, which made all the difference. For instance, the request form is everything we hoped for and more because it simplifies the process and auto-assigns the right teammate instantly. Our request forms help us to prioritize work so that every morning when our teams arrive, they can easily see a prioritized task list in Wrike of what they have to do, so they’re not guessing what needs to be done. Which Intelco teams use Wrike to manage work and collaborate? MR & PB: Along with the service team, our project management team was the first group into Wrike because I helped spearhead the change management process. Once we saw immediate success, word traveled fast to other departments like marketing, legal, finance, and IT. Fast forward to today, and the entire company works inside Wrike. That’s another wonderful aspect of the product — each department at Intelco has its own dedicated Space where we set up projects and can track activities. It’s great because all our work can be kept separate yet still housed in Wrike. What Wrike features do you recommend most? MR & PB: With request forms, we can tie them to Blueprints and launch full-fledged projects in a few clicks, so that’s great! And before using Wrike, we didn’t track time spent on work, but now we do with timesheets — we couldn’t live without them! We can monitor the time spent per task in real-time. We can better plan and forecast easier because there’s more visibility and a record of time spent. Speaking of visibility, other features we love include the ability to create custom dashboards via Wrike Analyze. Everyone, including managers, can see which projects are being released and their respective statuses. No more digging through emails, spreadsheets, or handwritten notes because it’s all in Wrike. Not only is all our work and collaboration in the platform, but these features specifically have helped us quickly understand which teams are performing the most compared to others and where we need to improve. What’s next for Intelco using Wrike? MR & PB: Every new employee gets onboarded into Wrike from day one, and we plan to use Wrike Integrate to sync our Salesforce account and others from our tech stack. Check out the full case study There’s more to the Intelco story; you can get the complete details here. You’ll see how, with Wrike, they deal with 90% fewer emails, can complete bug fixes 50% faster, and save 30% time in progress meetings. Read the full case study here.

Project Management 5 min read

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Wrike Helps Yourbiz Earn 25% More Revenue With 10% Fewer Resources

What does your company do?

What department do you work in and how is your team structured?

What is your job function? Describe a day in your life using Wrike.