Walmart Delivers Operational Excellence by Scaling with Wrike
Walmart Canada's Continuous Improvement team started off where many organizations do – using a spreadsheet to manage multiple complex projects and a rapidly changing operation. Tasked with developing new business recommendations for their Transportation department, along with managing thousands of employees, stores, vendors, and supply chains, the Continuous Improvement team quickly realized they needed a solution that provided the visibility and scalability needed to succeed. Since it integrated Wrike into their systems, Walmart Canada has been able to better consolidate, view, and accelerate their workflows across the board. They've also reduced project approval times to near zero and cut the number of regular status updates and calls significantly. The Continuous Improvement team utilized Wrike to create their ideal workplace of the future, customized to work exactly the way they want. Today, their success with Wrike has led to its deployment across other Walmart teams. We recently took some time to chat with Francis Lalonde, Vice President of Transportation at Walmart Canada, and Carolyn Lum, Director, Transportation Continuous Improvement at Walmart Canada, to get a better understanding of how they discovered Wrike, their integration journey, and how it’s helped them do their best work. Carolyn Lum, Director, Transportation Continuous Improvement at Walmart Canada Q: What drove you to find a new work management solution? A: “We needed to make our process better. Walmart is innovating in so many ways, and we saw this as an opportunity to get even better.” Q: Why did you decide to use Wrike? A: “Walmart moves at such a fast pace, and decisions and directions can change within even the same week. It allows us to make the changes as we want on our schedule without having to rely on any sort of third-party development team to make those changes for us.” Q: What Wrike feature or functionality do you love most? A: “Multiple views — so no matter what tool someone is working in, they can easily and seamlessly work within this one tool. And Reporting is a big deal as well. My executives really wanted a high-level, bird's-eye view of where we are. And the fact that we can do that in real time is amazing. We also use Wrike Analyze a lot. It's live, it's in real time, and we can report on any custom field we created.” Q: What does the future of Wrike look like for Walmart Canada? A: “Every day, on our internal application store where we have our Walmart desktop app, I'm getting emails asking — can you talk to me about this tool? Can you talk to me about this solution? Can you walk us through how you're using it? The fact that everyone wants to implement the same ways of working that we have is really quite remarkable.” Q: How did the Continuous Improvement Team come about? A: “I created the Continuous Improvement Team two and a half years ago. What I really wanted was to have a team that would help create that culture of continuous improvement … so it's not just a team of project managers. I wanted to build a team that would create a support network for our entire ecosystem. Their responsibility is to support teams with reporting, analytics, and everything they need to deliver on their initiatives. And that's what the team has been doing brilliantly.” Q: What do you love most about your job? A: “I love a million things about my job. I love that I get to service all of our customers on a daily basis. I love that we've built a team that’s relentlessly focused on people. And that's one of the things that I'm most passionate about, seeing that our people are growing, they're getting to a different level in terms of maturity in terms of performance, and have the chance to transform the business as well.” Q: What do you love most about Wrike? A: “Wrike is scalable and easy to use. And it really brings everything together. I'm also not the most technical guy, and my team will tell you that I'm using it every day. It's easy for me to navigate through all the details. So if dinosaurs like me from the system side are able to go in and really adopt it, everybody else can go in there and use that solution in a very easy manner.” Q: Where do you see your journey with Wrike taking you? A: “The fun thing is other departments now want to get on the journey. We've been giving demos, probably once a week, for about a year and a half with other folks because others want to get on the program.” Learn more about the success of Walmart Canada and how they use Wrike to achieve operational success by watching the full video.
How the San Francisco 49ers use Wrike
All great teams require an aligned game plan and flawless execution. Unfortunately, the complexity of today’s work environment makes both a challenge. But with the help of its innovation partner Citrix, the San Francisco 49ers are removing the complexity and noise from work, and empowering their team off the field to be as successful as their team on the field. When the 49ers first partnered with Citrix more than six years ago, the team was looking to streamline its operations and fuel collaboration. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they enabled remote work for their employees quickly to support a dispersed workforce and keep its operations running, using digital workspace solutions to stay connected and collaborate. The addition of Wrike to the Citrix portfolio was great news for the 49ers — the team was already a customer. For the past three years, the 49ers have used Wrike’s project management solution to support production of video and media assets. They turned to Wrike because they were looking for a more efficient and effective way to serve internal partners who needed these assets. “We are a fully functioning creative agency housed within the 49ers marketing department,” says Nate Steele, Manager of Production and Media Assets. Steele’s team produces everything from sponsorship videos to images for the team’s social media channels. With games almost every weekend, from September to January, plus preseason and postseason, and requests for assets to support sponsors, community engagement, and more, having a tool that could enable effective communication and the quick turnarounds required was critical to managing the flow of work. And Wrike delivers. Improved communication and visibility Before Wrike, requests and follow-ups were getting buried in inboxes, leading to miscommunication and wasted time and effort. Now, requesters complete a customized form when they need help with production of video or other media assets. The information comes to Steele’s team, and the work can move forward without multiple follow-ups, speeding the process. “We were looking for a more useful way to get information amongst 49ers internal teams. This platform allows dialogue between our team and the project requestor. It provides a robust tool for tracking effort on project request and allows collaboration on edit requests and approvals” Steele says. For example, he can provide feedback to his video producers directly in the asset, which helps to streamline the review cycle. He can also track the time spent on projects, getting valuable insights into the amount of resources used to complete a request. Blueprints Wrike’s Blueprints feature has been one of the biggest advantages for Steele’s team. Blueprints enable users to manage projects, folders, task templates, and more, and the feature is especially useful for recurring work. They were able to cut the majority of phone calls and emails around projects, while still supporting mutual decision making, from which changes need to be made to whether a project should even go forward. Blueprints helps the team to get the information they need on the front end and eliminate barriers so they can do the work. “What we were doing here was buying back time for our team of content creators,” Steele says. Ready for remote Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the team worked together in a single location, and providing feedback on projects could be as simple as a face-to-face conversation. Having Wrike in place, Steele says, was a win for his team because they were already set up to support remote collaboration. They didn’t have to scramble at the onset of the pandemic to figure out how to engage remotely (and effectively) with content requestors and keep their content creators on track as they approached the 2020 season. Learn more Learn how Citrix helped to keep the 49ers connected and collaborative as they prepared for the 2020 season. Check out the video below to learn more about Citrix and Wrike and get your free trial of Wrike today.
Our Customers Rock in Collaboration 2.0
We’re excited to share a presentation that was created by one of our loyal customers – Joseph Andrade, owner of SayitRight Marketing Solutions. Joe is speaking about his best practices for implementing Collaboration 2.0 in his marketing agency. It’s a great pleasure for us to let you know that our project management software became the core element of SayitRight’s online collaboration strategy. Have a look at this interesting case study and learn a real-life war story of online collaboration done right. Ready to share your own story with us? Contact us at [email protected]
The Best Enterprise Project Management Software Success Stories
The best enterprise project management software goes beyond grocery-list functionality and offers workers unparalleled collaboration. Consider these success stories when selecting your next enterprise tool.
Award-winning Marketing Communications Agency Efficiently Manages Multiple Projects with Wrike
To improve the collaboration on multiple projects, Viva’s managers started looking for easy-to-use project management software that would help to manage the workload. Members of the distributed team at Viva Creative needed a convenient way to stay up-to-date with project schedules and a handy tool to track their own assignments. For the managers, it was hard to monitor the team’s progress and get a global overview of all the activities. With Wrike, team members at Viva Creative have found an easy and efficient solution to keep the dynamic workflow well-organized. “Wrike has become an irreplaceable tool that we rely on as we grow our business,” says Lorne Greene, CEO at Viva Creative. Read the whole interview with Lorne to discover why Wrike has become such a valuable tool for Viva Creative and how the team members benefit from using this innovative project management software.
Customer's Tip of the Day: Cut the Routine Work; Get Your Web Requests Turned Into Tasks Automatically
We hope that Wrike’s e-mail integration is a time-saver for you and your team. But do you know that you can also leverage it for working with the requests from web forms? From our customer’s story, learn how you can easily redirect them to Wrike and instantly get all important details logged into the system. Customer’s background Geo Spa makes it easier for travel agents to quickly find exactly what their clients want. A large variety of tours, honeymoon trips and estate catalogues from more than 2000 Italian travel agencies are collected on two websites maintained by the team. A team of 20 people currently maintains a platform being used by more than 2500 people. Geo Spa Tip: Use automated web forms to save your team’s time Geo Spa’s team uses a simple web form to collect all customers’ requests and the bugs that customers have found on their website. Prior to adopting Wrike, they had to manually sort and process all requests, which took hours of work per week. With Wrike, now all requests get automatically logged into the system as tasks. Moreover, they also get automatically sorted into folders by their type. And this was really easy to do: Whenever Geo Spa customers want to report a bug or ask for a new feature, they fill out the form online, and this data is automatically sent to [email protected]. All you need for that is just to ask your webmaster to add this address into the website source code. If he or she also adds a folder name with a double-colon in the beginning of the e-mail subject line, different requests will get logged into different folders. The system instantly creates a new backlogged or 1-day task (according to the settings in your account admin’s profile). Of course, you can find all of the request details in the task description! Add your web form e-mail address as a secondary e-mail of any user in your account to make him or her the task author, or simply create a new user with this e-mail. According to Geo Spa’s team, it’s handy to keep all requests as backlogged tasks in Wrike, as this way nothing gets lost. The team checks the Activity Stream for updates about new tasks every day and assigns them to colleagues. Then they can easily prioritize them with the drag-and-drop function and plan them, depending on their current workload. As you see, such workflow helps Geo Spa to not miss a single customer’s request. At the same time, it saves the team’s time on manually registering requests, and instead they can start processing them right away. Thanks to such a fast response to clients’ needs, their websites always meet expectations. As a result, more and more people in Italy have started using their service! This approach works great for any type of website request, be it job applications, customers’ contact info or shipping addresses. Do you also have web forms on your site? Let us know what you use them for and if you have tried to integrate them into our project management tool. “Wrike has made our team more organized and productive. Your dashboard helps us to organize and personalize our work at its best, while e-mail integration helps to manage maintenance requests. Collaboration has become much easier!” Massimo Cassandro, Riccardo Cattaneo and Daniele Conti, Geo spa Web Services team
How Hootsuite Powers Their Productivity With Wrike
We're excited to announce our latest Customer Success Story with our friendly owls over at Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a leading social media and brand management solution with more than 10 million users around the world. We visited their HQ in Vancouver, Canada to ask their Marketing Operations team how they use Wrike. Before Wrike, Hootsuite's marketing ops team was overwhelmed by endless tasks with no way to organize or prioritize them. After implementing Wrike, the team saw immense improvement in the handling of tasks, as well as improved visibility into quarterly productivity levels. Check out the short interview video below to hear why they love using Wrike. Read the Hootsuite Case Study To read more about how Hootsuite uses Wrike to power their productivity, check out the Hootsuite customer success story. The full case study covers: What problems drove them to search for a collaboration tool How they initially implemented Wrike across their team Their favorite Wrike features and how they use them Do you have a favorite Wrike feature that helps power your productivity? Let us know in the comments!
Customer’s Tip of the Day: How to Make the Management of Your Freelance Staff More Efficient
Working with freelancers may seem challenging from time to time, as keeping them synced with your team isn’t always an easy thing to do. Since freelancers have a floating schedule, often work remotely and deal with separate tasks, rather than the whole project, they can easily fall out of the loop. However, one of our customers efficiently manages the work of 8 freelancers at the same time. Interested to know how? Take a sneak peek with us into their way of successfully organizing the team work. Customer’s background FreestyleXtreme is a Bristol-based web shop that specializes in accessories, apparel and sports equipment for almost all forms of extreme sports. Recently, the team has been focused on getting into new territories and, therefore, had to work with a number of freelance translators to localize their website in different European languages. Customer’s tip: “Wages are the biggest expense in our company, so it’s critical for us to find the most optimal way to manage the team’s workload, especially when it comes to the part-time workers,” shares Ben Robert Richardson, the founder of FreestyleXtreme. He understands that if there are too many tasks assigned to freelancers, they may run out of time and miss critical deadlines. At the same time, if freelancers don’t get enough of work, the company’s efficiency will suffer. To take most of their time, FreestyleXtreme’s team has come up with several guidelines that make it easier to synchronize their workload. Here’s what helps them make freelancers the same part of the team as full-time workers. Dedicate a fair amount of time to the onboarding process According to FreestyleXtreme team, the best way to familiarize people with a new system is to let them take their time with it. On the first workday, the team lets the new person spend the time he or she needs to get familiar with the new tool. The team members explain the benefits of Wrike and the way it works. Then the newcomers usually get some time to figure out how the system works on their own. Share your company’s vision with freelancers Another important part of the onboarding process is to make part-time translators enthusiastic about what they do. Team members explain to the freelance translators that they are now the company’s voice in the new countries and that their work is valuable for the company. As a result, motivated workers take more responsibility for their assignments. Let the freelancers know about your goals in advance Scrum methodology helps a lot in planning for the FreestyleXtreme’s team. They run regular monthly meetings and set major deadlines several weeks in advance. This ensures that part-timers will have enough time to complete important tasks marked on their work schedule. Then each week, the head of each department checks up on the progress to make sure there are no stumbling blocks on the way. Assign a team member to be a point of contact for your part-timers There is one full-time member on FreestyleXtreme’s team who manages the workload of the freelance workers and acts as the central point of contact for the project updates. This helps to avoid conflicts and make sure important details don’t slip away. Have regular progress check-ups All freelancers in FreestyleXtreme have a five-minute morning meeting with the supervisor to go through their tasks for the day on Wrike. Manager looks through the project’s progress, clarifies the details, and adjusts Wrike schedules accordingly. Since freelancers normally work just 2 or 3 days per week, such approach makes sure everyone’s on the same page, even when part-time workers are out of the office. Selective sharing helps vary the level of involvement The easiest way to manage freelancers’ work is to put all tasks assigned to them in a separate folder in Wrike. With the selective sharing, you easily choose how much of the project data you want your freelancers to see. You can share only related tasks with each person, and at the same time, monitor the progress of all freelancers in the folder’s Activity Stream. If you feel like you want to involve part-time workers more in the project, you also can share other particular tasks or subfolders with any of them. For instance, you might share a subfolder with the project schedule. Keep everything logged in Last but not the least comes a simple rule of FreestyleXtreme’s team - no matter how small the task is, it should be always logged into Wrike project management tool! This way, nothing gets lost, even if it was backlogged months ago. To learn more about FreestyleXtreme team’s workflow and managing the extreme sports equipment business, watch our podcast with Ben Robert Richardson! Do you also apply any of these principles in your team’s work? Or do you organize your work with freelancers differently? “Wrike has enabled us to effectively manage our team’s time and be more productive! All tasks are now transparent, so at any time I can see the progress along with any problems, and also learn how different members of our staff are handling their workload. We have now developed an ethos that, no matter how small a task is, it is put into Wrike, so nothing is overlooked or forgotten!” Ben Robert Richardson, founder of FreestyleXtreme
Infographic: Here’s Why Wrike was so Highly Rated at this Quarter’s G2 Awards
It’s not every day that we receive an award, but to receive a number of accolades from G2 is a real honor for all of us at Wrike. For G2’s Q3 awards, Wrike won 63 badges across 15 categories and was named as “Highly Rated” in 12 areas, including project management software, workflow management software, marketing resource management software, and many more. Which G2 awards did Wrike win this quarter? Here’s a list of badges Wrike was awarded by G2 this quarter: Easiest To Do Business With — Enterprise Project Collaboration and Enterprise Task Management Best Usability — Enterprise Project Collaboration Best Relationship —Enterprise Project Collaboration Leader — Time Tracking, Bug Tracking, Product Management, Project Management Leader (Mid-Market) — Marketing Resource Management, Work Management, Project Management, Task Management, Project Collaboration, Marketing Calendar, Product Management and Time Tracking Leader — Marketing Resource Management, Online Proofing, Workflow Management, Project Collaboration, Work Management, Time Tracking, Marketing Calendar, Task Management, Project Management, Bug Tracking, Product Management, and CRM Leader (Enterprise) — Task Management, Project Collaboration, Project Management, Bug Tracking, and Time Tracking Easiest Admin (Mid-Market) — Work Management Leader (Small-Business) — Workflow Management, Work Management, Product Management, Project Collaboration, Bug Tracking, Project Management, and Time Tracking Best Meets Requirements (Mid-Market) — Marketing Resource Management, Task Management, Work Management, Online Proofing, Project Collaboration, Workflow Management, Product Management, Bug Tracking, Project Management, Time Tracking, and CRM Highest User Adoption (Enterprise) — Task Management and Project Collaboration Highest User Adoption (Mid-Market) — Project Collaboration High Performer (Mid-Market) — CRM Users Love Us You can read all about the badges and categories where Wrike scored big in our dedicated blog post, but we wanted to break down what makes Wrike so popular and efficient for our users. At Wrike, our mission is to help you and your organization do the best work of your lives — no matter your industry, project, or location. The fact that our G2 award nods span multiple categories is a big deal to us — it means that customers from all industries are using Wrike to their advantage, and loving the results. So, what is it about Wrike that makes it such a dynamic solution for teams around the world? We’ve gathered some vital stats about how Wrike helps its users, from decreasing email times to increasing communication, and saving costs and hours in projects across the board. Interested? Take a look at our infographic to discover more.
Customers Tip of the Day: How to Give a High-Level Project Overview to Customers and Upper Management
In one of our previous posts, our customer Terramera shared its practical advice on how to achieve an accurate detailed planning. In some situations, having fewer tasks on the timeline can be a more effective way to keep clients and the board up-to-date with the project planning. Sounds intriguing? Take a look at how the Swift Performance Equipment team approaches planning!In one of our previous posts, our customer Terramera shared its practical advice on how to achieve an accurate detailed planning. In some situations, having fewer tasks on the timeline can be a more effective way to keep clients and the board up-to-date with the project planning. Sounds intriguing? Take a look at how the Swift Performance Equipment team approaches planning! Customer’s background Swift Performance Equipment is a world-class producer of athletic performance measuring products. Every day, they help thousands of people to achieve greater sports results. Their small team actively collaborates with clients to make sure the product functionality and project timing corresponds to their clients’ needs. Team members need instant access to the detailed project schedule, while customers want to grasp only the major deadlines without going deep into details. Mark Fisher, the owner of Swift Performance Equipment, has found an elegant solution that fits everyone. Swift Performance Equipment’s Tip: Keep the Schedule Overview Clear Mark Fisher suggests creating two different project views for people with different levels of involvement. For customers, he creates a special folder (called, for instance, “Overview”), shares it with them and puts only major tasks there. This way, even the complicated project schedule remains clear and fits in one screen. Also, customers instantly see all important milestones without getting lost in hundreds of smaller tasks: If the client wants to get a detailed look at a particular part of the project, he or she simply needs to open the task description and see what is currently going on with it. This approach comes in really handy when you need to keep your superior up-to-date without overloading him or her with extensive details. Work on the detailed schedule with your team in the same workspace Of course, the team still needs to create tasks for all actionable items to make sure nothing gets lost. Mark Fisher suggests creating a detailed schedule in other subfolders that are shared with the team only. Are some milestones relevant to both your team and your clients? In Wrike, you don’t need to duplicate these tasks to keep everyone up-to-date. Simply include the tasks in all project subfolders simultaneously. And as you know, all the changes that your team makes in one folder will be automatically reflected in all others. This way, you can easily collaborate with your team and clients in one workspace, ensuring that everyone has a project planning view that’s suitable for their needs. “Our team has tried a lot of project management solutions, but most of them did not allow us to add external people to projects without adding extra costs. Wrike fits our small business the best, as its pricing plan provides us with just enough users to cover those who need full access, and also an infinite number of collaborators. This facilitates our relationships with clients absolutely for free!” Mark Fisher, owner of Swift Performance Equipment
VOCO Creative is Overcoming Challenges of Organizing a 100% Virtual Office
What are the advantages of a 100% virtual office? First, it’s inexpensive. You don’t have to pay for rent. Second, it gives people from different locations an opportunity to work together easily. Third, you can access your business data 24/7 from any computer. Read the story about VOCO Creative’s virtual office, find out their remote work guidelines, and learn how they keep everything efficient.
Wrike Helps Austrian National Tourist Office Become More Productive
We are extremely happy to share a presentation featuring Wrike project management software, made by one of our loyal customers, Manuel Grudl. Manuel works as project manager and Internet strategist at the Austrian National Tourist Office. In his presentation, he talks about the challenges in project management that he and his colleagues face every day and how these challenges can be overcome by applying the right technology to the processes. We were very pleased and honored to find out that, after evaluating so many project management software tools, the Austrian Natioual Tourist Office chose Wrike as the best one! In the slide deck, Manuel points out that Wrike’s Intelligent E-mail EngineTM, Dynamic TimelineTM, Flexible StructuresTM and Activity Stream are the key to successful project management in his organization. Have a look at this interesting and useful presentation, and get insight into how project secretaries turn into project leaders with Wrike’s help. If you want to view the presentation in German, please see Manuel's original slide deck.
Wrike Turns a Marketing Firm into a Project Management Rock Star
Today, for numerous companies, distributed teams have become a way of hiring the best people, regardless of their location. However, geographically distributed teams face additional challenges when establishing effective collaboration and overcoming some of the frictions of time and geography. Read the whole story of how 3rd Wave Research turned into project management rock stars with Wrike.
Tips from 123 EDI on Improving Customer Satisfaction with Wrike's Help
How can you achieve customer service so fine that clients actually comment on it and spread the word about your company? Learn from the benchmark experiences of other companies, and benefit from the latest technologies to facilitate your work. , a leading provider of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), has been offering a variety of robust, cost-effective EDI solutions since 1991. Projects of 123 EDI are typically complex and require coordination between sales, accounting and programming departments to ensure the company meets and even exceeds customers' expectations. According to Bernie Murciano, President at 123 EDI, the following principles, supported by Wrike's features, help to achieve top-notch customer service: Attention to detail Being thorough in performing clients' requests, minding the details, no matter how small they are, is crucial on the road to customer satisfaction. But can you take the load of remembering too many things off your brain and still deliver everything and more to your clients? Yes, you can! Wrike stores all the short-term and long-term commitments of 123 EDI, providing "a view of the big picture without losing sight of the many details" says Bernie. Thus, 123 EDI stays ahead of the game and ensures that even minor customer needs are not overlooked. "Positive customer feedback doubled in a couple of months after we adopted Wrike," shares Bernie. Seamless collaboration To achieve excellent customer service, a unified effort of all the organizational departments is required. 123 EDI chose Wrike project management software for teamwork with its enhanced collaboration features: real-time discussions, handy ways to follow tasks, and a cross-project newsfeed to track progress with ease. What makes Wrike especially convenient for collaboration is easy data-sharing on project progress with everyone involved. If you wish to connect remote teams, external partners and clients to the project, you can easily do so – the number of external viewers is unlimited. Bernie confirms: "Wrike's user-friendly web application keeps everyone on the same page." Commitment to timelines When you deliver a project on time, customers appreciate it and come back for more. With Wrike's automatic reminders about tasks and updates, you never miss a deadline. Scheduling tasks is simple and can be done from list, table and timeline views in real time. Bernie Murciano values this ability "to more effectively prioritize tasks by revising due dates." Thus, 123 EDI quickly reacts to the ever-changing business conditions, so that no customer is disappointed by a missed deadline.
From Toyota, to AirBus, to Wrike: The Lean Journey of Errette Dunn (Podcast)
"I wouldn't say I'm achieving amazing things. I would say our customers are achieving amazing things with a little help from us." — Errette Dunn Our very own Implementation and Project Management Coach, Errette Dunn, was featured on the PM for the Masses podcast hosted by PM Influencer, Cesar Abeid. In this episode, Errette discusses his work — how he started out as an engineer at Toyota and transitioned to Airbus just as they transformed to using Lean Management methods. He also talks about his coaching at Wrike and how different customer personas can influence what solution is best for them. In this Podcast, you'll learn about: Lean Project Management and how Toyota piloted a method called Lean Manufacturing that would eventually transform the automotive industry Airbus's transition to Lean and how it influenced change management and culture The similarities and differences between Agile and Lean Project Management "Accidental Project Managers" and the pains driving them to adopt new tools How Wrike molds their product based on what problems their customers are trying to solve Listen to the full podcast episode here: From Toyota, to AirBus, to Wrike: The Lean Journey of Errette Dunn Want to learn more about how Wrike can help your team? Take a tour of the product or start your free trial today!
Customer's Tip of the Day: Think Globally, Plan for Tomorrow
Planning accurately, estimating task duration and keeping it close to reality – these aren’t easy things to do. And now imagine this is happening in a start-up where you do things that you have never done before (or even no one in the world has)! Today, Chris Rider, project manager at the fast-moving chemistry startup Terramera, shares how his team has enhanced its planning with the help of Wrike’s interactive timeline.Planning accurately, estimating task duration and keeping it close to reality – these aren’t easy things to do. And now imagine this is happening in a start-up where you do things that you have never done before (or even no one in the world has)! Today, Chris Rider, project manager at the fast-moving chemistry startup Terramera, shares how his team has enhanced its project planning with the help of Wrike’s interactive timeline. Customer’s background Terramera is a start-up committed to preserving Earth for the future generations. They develop safe, highly effective alternatives to traditional chemical pesticides, targeting the world’s most troublesome pests. Their product is absolutely harmless for the environment and humans. And we want to thank these guys for making Earth a better place for all of us! Terramera’s tip Chris Rider suggests not going into very detailed planning in advance. If you can’t precisely estimate the task duration, especially when it’s a brand new activity for the team, you may end up with delays and overlaps. Instead, he suggests splitting the project into stages, defining the goals for each of them and then setting due dates for the main tasks and milestones only. According to Terramera’s experience, this is a great starting point, and you can adjust the schedule when necessary. To make sure the major deadlines are intact, regardless of adjustments, you can create date constraints between project stages. This works great when you’re waiting for a client’s feedback. You can’t plan in advance if he or she suggests a couple of minor corrections, or even a radical makeover. In this case, a date constraint between the milestone and the dependent task on the timeline makes sure there’s enough time to deal with the situation. Even if your client gives you a dozen more ideas to improve the product, you’ll still have time to implement them. “As we start working on some stage of a project, we get a clearer picture of what needs to be done,” Chris says, “Then we keep making our schedule more detailed and accurate. This way, the deadlines become more realistic, since they are based on the actual circumstances and not on the outdated suggestions.” The team regularly creates smaller tasks and moves the existing ones on the timeline if they take more or less time than expected. Then Terramera’s team runs periodic meetings to discuss the schedule changes and keep everyone in the loop. The team also can easily track them, as well as monitor new tasks in the Activity Stream. Those of you who work in IT may notice that this workflow is similar to agile development methods. In this management concept, before developing the product, the team also splits the workload into iterations and then plans each iteration more thoroughly. Wrike’s flexibility works great for agile methods. Unlike the spreadsheets that Terramera previously used, project planning on the timeline provides all team members with an instant access to the up-to-date project picture. The system also sends them instant notifications if the tasks are rescheduled. With realistic deadlines, the team has become more organized and gets things done in time. According to Chris, such an approach makes his team more flexible and efficient in achieving their pre-set goals. If you want to learn more about Terramera’s story of overcoming start-up challenges in project management, watch our videocast with Chris Rider: “Before Wrike, we were often finding ourselves doing unexpected work at the last minute. Using Wrike, we have greatly improved our planning, which means that when the time comes for work to be due, the team has already done most of the work. This means we can now work much more proactively and effectively.” Chris Rider, project manager at Terramera
Wrike Helps Intuit Users Easily Manage Projects and Collaborate Online
From now on, millions of Intuit’s small business customers will be able to manage projects and collaborate online with Wrike’s help. Wrike is one of the few applications on the App Center that lets its users benefit from a powerful mix of project management, productivity, collaboration and time-tracking features. Anyone who has an Intuit account will be able to use Wrike to share files, build project schedules and visualize tasks on a Gantt chart, create and update tasks from emails, track time spent on tasks, manage 10+ projects in one place, and much more.
Arizona’s Only Working Olive Farm Successfully Grows with Wrike
Every month, dozens of retail, marketing and IT companies choose Wrike to achieve their goals faster. We’re also excited to see more traditional industries discovering the power of online project management. Today, we’d like to introduce a particularly interesting customer of Wrike – Arizona’s only working olive mill and farm, Queen Creek Olive Mill.Every month, dozens of retail, marketing and IT companies choose Wrike to achieve their goals faster. We’re also excited to see more traditional industries discovering the power of online project management. Today, we’d like to introduce a particularly interesting customer of Wrike – Arizona’s only working olive mill and farm, Queen Creek Olive Mill. Sustainable Farming as a Source of Growth Agri-tourism, which the farm also offers to its visitors, is very much in tune with these ideas. People are looking for environmental-friendly ways to enjoy themselves, and such a call boosts the farm’s growth. “For me, it’s some kind of a back-to-basics movement. Here, we propose a real experience of growing olives and pressing the oil, and at the same time entertain people with organic food sampling, different events, weekends with live music, etc. Sustainability, entertainment and development of the local community are the key parts of our success,” Brendan Heath, the director of marketing at the Mill, says. How Queen Creek Olive Mill keeps all activities in tune with the help of Wrike Recently, Queen Creek Olive Mill has experienced explosive growth, and their most challenging problem was making it organic and keeping everyone on the same page. They run several diverse activities, such as oil production, a shop, a restaurant and guided tours that sometimes overlap. That’s why it was hard to make sure that important things don’t get lost with the expansion, and at the same time make sure that people won’t be drowning in the information that isn’t related to their work. “I believe that efficient communication is a key to a successful venture, and Wrike ensures the dataflow always remains transparent, regardless of how fast we grow,” Brendan says. “With Wrike project management software, dataflow becomes really smooth. We have separate folders for each of our activities, such as the shop or the restaurant, where we keep all tasks related to their part of the work, and at the same time I can give people selective access to particular tasks from folders that aren’t shared with them,” Brendan explains. For instance, the head of the kitchen stays in the loop for all tasks that are important for the food supplies, no matter what folder they belong to. At the same time, he doesn’t need to know about the plans of opening another location, so this folder just isn’t shared with him. “With Wrike, people always stay up-to-date, focused on the most important data. As a result, Wrike has virtually eliminated our need for hour-long weekly meetings,” Brandon summarizes. Wrike also helps Queen Creek Olive Mill’s team to constantly polish its workflow and become more efficient. “As we grow, there are a lot of things we do for the first time, and sometimes we make mistakes. Since all interactions are logged into the task’s Activity Stream in Wrike, it’s easy to identify what didn’t work well and make sure it won’t reoccur. On the other hand, things that worked out well become procedures, and we can quickly brief the newcomers by simply sharing the relevant task with them,” Brendan says. We hope the Queen Creek Olive Mill will keep prospering and promoting eco values. By the way, if you are in search of a great place to spend time in Arizona, don’t forget to drop by! Watch our video interview with Brendan, and learn more about the effective ways of keeping the team in the loop. “There is no other product out there that has the ease and functionality that Wrike does. To say we are satisfied with Wrike is an understatement.” Brendan Heath, Director of Marketing of Queen Creek Olive Mill
Customer's Best Practice: Consider Task Duration As the No. 1 Factor in Planning
24 hours a day is always not enough to do everything you want and spend the time with the ones you love. Today, Susan Serra, who runs a family design business, shares a great tip on efficient time planning, so that not even 5 minutes will be wasted! Customer’s background Susan Serra runs three brands and a blog at the same time, full of charming decoration ideas, dedicated to kitchen design and Scandinavian accessories for the home. This is a family business that she runs with her daughter. Susan Serra’s best practice Work and family responsibilities are always tricky to combine, but Susan uses a great approach to enhance her and her daughter’s productivity. Whenever Susan logs a new task in Wrike project management software, she instantly tags it with the approximate duration. This greatly helps to efficiently organize the time and make most of each minute throughout the day. This approach is especially helpful when you have to juggle multiple activities during the day. This is exactly the case of Susan’s daughter, who has recently given birth to a son and is struggling to nurse the baby and keep working at the same time. For instance, whenever she has a short break between baby feeding and an important call, she opens the “15 minute” folder and picks one of the tasks she can accomplish right away. When you know exactly how long each task takes, it’s also easier to plan your work day each morning. For instance, when there are several large tasks due tomorrow, Susan starts with them to make sure she has enough time to finish them, before switching to smaller ones. This practice ensures that you have time to concentrate on one task without distractions and thus makes you much more productive. Do you want to learn more about the challenges of running a family business? Watch our podcast with Susan Serra: More great tips from our customers coming soon! "With four brands to manage, endless details and always being short on time, I need speed, ease, precision and flexibility in my chosen system. I definitely have that with Wrike.” Susan Serra, President at Susan Serra Associates, Inc.
$250K to $1.2M in 18 Months: Hubstaff's 2-Step Process for Hyper-Growth
What makes companies successful? There are a myriad of factors for fast and sustainable business development, including building a powerful brand, forging strong partnerships, and having a flexible management system in place. But having a single, clear business goal is arguably one of the most important elements for success. A focused goal makes your team more purposeful in how they spend their time, and thus more productive—which paves the way for rapid company growth that's actually sustainable. As a 100% self-funded and fully remote team, we at Hubstaff have been using a simple, two-step process that has helped us grow and scale our business sustainably. And we're happier and more productive than ever: our marketing strategy examples helped us go from $250K to $1.2M in revenue in just 18 months. Here's how we did it: Step 1: Identify a single business goal As our co-founder Dave Nevogt says, a huge part of the battle of running a successful business is focusing your energy and resources on the right things. That’s why every year we set a very specific business goal and only take on projects that directly further this goal. Last year, our goal was to reach $70k in Monthly Recurring Revenue. To achieve this, we used the Theory of Constraints to break down our yearly business goal into quarterly goals. Then we broke quarterly goals down into weekly tasks: On our marketing team, for example, ROI on each task is measured by tracking time spent. Although a productivity tracking tool isn’t absolutely necessary, it does help make you (painfully) aware of how much time you’re wasting, which enhances productivity. Wrike's time tracking integration with Hubstaff helps us plan and prioritize upcoming work, as well as track time and productivity levels on each Wrike task without switching between tools. Step 2: Use time data to pinpoint tasks that drive ROI today Time data is one of your most important business metrics. Use it to assess ROI, know what’s working and what’s not, and determine the best use of your team's time. Plus, you can more effectively plan and scale your team based on actual business needs. For example, if your development team is spending more time on customer support than on dev work, it’s time to hire more support team members. Your team’s time data can give you these kinds of valuable insights. At Hubstaff, we track time on all our tasks across all departments, from marketing and customer support to development. At the end of each week, month or quarter, we can see exactly how much time was spent on a particular task—and how much revenue it generated. Here is the formula our marketing team uses to measure ROI for each task: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) = (# of hours spent on that task) x (your hourly wage + other expenses, like software tools)/(# of paying customers acquired from the task) Let’s say, from the above snapshot, I spent 5 hours updating our FAQ, used a $25 tool, and my hourly wage is $35. Using our analytics, I discovered we added 10 paying customers from that task. Here is what the CAC will look like: CAC = ((5 hrs X $35) + $25)/10= $20 per customer After calculating that number (CAC), we ask ourselves one question: is Average Lifetime Value (ALV) > 3 x Customer Acquisition Cost? If the answer is no, is there any way to make this strategy more efficient and cost-effective? If yes, try to refine it and measure ROI again. If the answer is yes, that’s a task with proven ROI. Once you’ve calculated the ROI of particular tasks, it’s time to use the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. The basic idea is that 80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your marketing tasks. You just need to identify that 20% and bet heavily on them. It’s also crucial to keep in mind that just because something drives revenue today, doesn't mean it will six months down the line. The rule of thumb is that if you see any tasks with proven high ROI, you should double down on them today. Added benefits of the two-step process This two-step process has clear benefits beyond the numbers. Before we applied it, we were slightly disorganized, using multiple strategies to drive growth and betting that at least one would do the job. Now our team’s mindset has transformed. We constantly come back to the bigger picture and question not only whether a task is worth our time and money, but whether it will help us achieve our goal in the quickest and most efficient way possible. Author Bio: Madhav Bhandari is a marketing manager at Hubstaff. He helps acquire customers with high ROI marketing experiments, action focused analytics, and product iterations. You can follow him on Twitter at @themadbhandari