How Wrike Helps Backcountry Connect People to Their Passions
We stepped outside with Ivan Ward, Producer & Media Manager, and Georgia Steenberge, Design Director, at Backcountry to see how they were able to overcome the obstacles and continue to connect people with their passions.
Wrike Customer Q&A: Advice Interactive Group
We spoke with Advice Interactive Group about their experience using Wrike. This Inc. 500 digital marketing technology company shared how they came across Wrike and how the tool has helped them meet their goals. They specialize in local SEO, website design and development, content development, paid media and advertising, and social media. They can do everything from building and launching custom websites to writing blog content, and they've helped over 1 million companies nationwide improve their online visibility. Their company is composed of 50 employees and multiple teams of contractors, all using Wrike! 1. Tell us about your team and the role it plays in your company. Every department in our company uses Wrike, and each department head uses its organizational structure a little differently. We have folders set up for each client and then folders set up per project under those folders. That's where we keep all the day-to-day tasks, and we can quickly and easily attribute different work to different projects, set timelines, set recurring tasks, etc. 2. What were the goals (or problems you faced) that led you to Wrike? We had problems with scaling projects, time management, task management, and team/contractor communication and collaboration. We tried Basecamp, Trello, Google Drive, and Dropbox. Wrike combines the best of all those software solutions and puts it all on one place. 3. How has Wrike helped your team reach its goals? We have a lot of moving parts and a lot of different teams working on projects. Wrike has been the best solution for us to easily manage project timelines, monitor task completion, and effectively communicate with different members of our team. 4. What improvements have you seen since implementing Wrike? We've been able to scale projects very quickly and easily. I could launch 300+ projects a day by taking advantage of Wrike's ability to create task dependencies and duplicate tasks and subtasks. It's easy to manage both internal and external teams for task completion. The Wrike interface is user friendly and it's simple to create different dashboards to monitor team members' work. I have over 40 teams I can oversee with ease. How are you using Wrike to power your productivity? Share your story in the comments.
Appulate Uses Wrike To Get Full Insight Into Business
Appulate is the leading national provider of innovative insurance technologies. They were looking for a project management solution that would enable them to track all the tasks, including marketing, sales, change requests and bugs in one single place. Read the full story “Full insight into business boosts productivity and triples the number of customers."
How Wrike + Salesforce Helps Departments Work Together: Q&A With Axiometrics
Ever wonder how different departments within a company can work together smoothly, like a well-oiled machine? A management tool like Wrike can team up with a customer-focused platform like Salesforce to help departments work better together. This coupling means every detail about projects is stored in one easy-to-access place, avoiding confusion. It helps teams plan their work efficiently, ensuring everyone knows what they're doing and when. Most importantly, it improves how the company serves its customers and smoothes out team collaboration, strengthening working relationships. Axiometrics is the leader in apartment and student housing market research, providing market intelligence and trends analysis to developers, investors, owners, managers, and others. Founded in 1995, the company has experienced explosive growth in revenue, job creation, and innovation over the past five years. We spoke to the Analytics team about how they use Wrike to align teams that use Salesforce to manage accounts. See how they are able to archive all their data in one place and prevent requests from falling through the cracks: 1. Tell us about your team. The Axiometrics Analytics team is comprised of seven real estate economists and analysts, who crunch apartment and student housing market data, economic indicators, and demographics to uncover trends in the marketplace and forecast future trends. Analytics works closely with Axiometrics’ Sales and Account Management teams to provide custom analysis and studies for clients, and with the Marketing team to produce blogs, newsletters, and videos, including our weekly bylined blog on Forbes. 2. What were the goals that led you to connect Wrike with Salesforce? Sales and Account Management used Salesforce for project management, while Analytics and Marketing used another project management solution that did not integrate well with Salesforce. Therefore, we had no efficient, digital way to track the status of requests. We wanted to find a web-based tool that would integrate with Salesforce so all parties involved could view the status and progress on Sales and Account Management-related projects, such as Feasibility Studies, quarterly company-specific trends analysis, and simple client requests for data drill-down. We also wanted to find a solution that would allow for messaging within the software, for more efficient tracking of what has been requested and any questions/answers concerning a particular project. 3. How has Wrike + Salesforce helped your team reach its goals? Now, all requests are in one place for easier reference. Since Sales and Account Management can see Wrike updates in Salesforce, Analytics is able to plan its schedule better, and communication is more efficient. Sales is able to create tasks, which are immediately visible to Analytics, and Analytics is able to assign and schedule the tasks so that deadlines are met. And though it is not a part of the Salesforce integration, Wrike has been vital in reaching a goal set by our Marketing Content Manager to streamline the production schedule of our newsletters. 4. What improvements have you seen since implementing Wrike + Salesforce? There is much better follow-through on all projects. There is less frustration, in that everything is on the calendar. There were times in the past when an email or in-person request fell through the cracks because people didn’t put it on their to-do lists; that doesn’t happen anymore. The Wrike-Salesforce integration has also helped the Sales and Account Management teams with the client renewal process and with customer service. The representatives are able to update clients on the status of their requests within a couple of clicks and assure them that their needs will be filled in a timely and efficient manner. That enhances client satisfaction. 5. How has Wrike + Salesforce affected how you work with other teams/departments? The integration has made Analytics’ collaborations with Sales and Account Management seamless and smooth. Instead of relying on emails or instant messages that could get lost in the shuffle, or brief in-person visits in which information could get misunderstood, everything is in one place, improving team collaboration with Wrike and Salesforce. This has allowed us to better assist these other departments and made the working relationship even better than it was before. Wrike's app integrations enhance productivity and collaboration Wrike offers a multitude of app integrations that enhance productivity, streamline workflows, and foster collaboration among teams. These integrations allow users to connect Wrike with their favorite tools, creating a seamless and efficient work environment. Communication integrations Wrike integrates with popular communication tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Gmail. These integrations allow users to transform conversations into actionable tasks directly within their communication platform. For example, with the Slack integration, you can create, assign, and complete tasks in Wrike without leaving your Slack workspace. This ensures that important tasks don't get lost in the shuffle of everyday communication. File management integrations Wrike seamlessly integrates with file management systems like Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and Box. These integrations make it easy to attach files to tasks, share documents with team members, and keep all project-related files organized and accessible. With these integrations, users can collaborate on documents in real-time, ensuring everyone is working from the most current version. CRM and sales integrations For sales and customer relationship management, Wrike offers integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Marketo. These integrations allow teams to sync their sales and project management data, ensuring everyone has the most up-to-date information. With the Salesforce integration, for instance, teams can track project progress alongside sales data, aligning efforts and improving efficiency. Development and IT integrations Wrike also integrates with development tools like Jira, GitHub, and Bitbucket. These integrations help development teams synchronize their coding tasks with the larger project plan. For example, the Jira integration allows teams to link their Jira issues to Wrike tasks, ensuring that both technical and non-technical team members stay on the same page. Time tracking and finance integrations For time tracking and financial management, Wrike integrates with tools like Toggl, Harvest, and QuickBooks. These integrations help teams track time spent on tasks, manage budgets, and invoice clients efficiently.Wrike's app integrations create a more connected, collaborative, and efficient workspace. By integrating with a wide range of tools, Wrike ensures that teams can customize their work environment to fit their unique needs and workflows. How do you use Wrike’s app integrations to align your teams? Share your strategies in the comments. Join teams like Axiometrics and align your teams using Wrike and Salesforce today.
Redfoo's 5 Wrike Tips for Business Success
Meet Redfoo: former member of LMFAO who has since become an independent recording artist and CEO of LaFreak clothing line and Party Rock Records. As a busy musician, he found it difficult to communicate with his team while traveling around the world, and his team had just as much trouble knowing exactly who was responsible for specific tasks. But since implementing Wrike, Redfoo has seen a total transformation in the way his team works. They're more productive, communicate better, and (most importantly) they have more time to have fun. Here are five of Redfoo's secrets for Wrike success: Tip #1 - Use Wrike during team meetings Redfoo keeps his team organized by having everyone open their Wrike accounts during meetings. Each task and every idea goes straight into Wrike as they move through agenda items, so it's clear who's responsible and what the next steps are. Some ideas: Brainstorm with your team in Wrike Add and assign tasks in Wrike while discussing upcoming events, projects, etc. Share links and upload the latest document versions so everyone has access to what they need Discuss overdue items with the team to uncover roadblocks and improve processes Tip #2 - Create Wrike tasks via email Wrike's email integration makes it easy to create and edit tasks on the go. Redfoo uses this tool extensively to turn emails into action items and assign them directly to his team members. Some ideas: See your Wrike @mention notifications in your inbox Reply to comments directly from emails Capture and categorize important emails by adding them to the proper folder in Wrike Tip #3 - Keep an ideas folder As an artist, Redfoo is constantly coming up with ideas for songs, events, and fashion designs. Wrike provides a secure, central location where he can archive every idea even before he decides what he wants to do with it. He knows exactly where to find his ideas and can rest easy knowing that nothing is lost or forgotten. Some ideas: Keep an "Ideas" folder to archive your thoughts Within the folder, create subfolders for better organization Add any attachments or links associated with the idea so everything stays together Tip #4 - Use the mobile app to track tasks on the go Wrike's mobile apps for iOS and Android let Redfoo stay in contact with his team even when he's halfway across the world. He can check project statuses, see the latest updates in his Activity Stream, and discuss progress or leave feedback for his team, minimizing project delays. Some ideas: Respond to comments and view the Activity Stream directly from the mobile app Use your mobile device's camera to attach photos to Wrike tasks Record voice notes on your mobile device and upload them into Wrike Tip #5 - Keep all project-related items in one location Redfoo's goal is to keep all work and ideas in Wrike. "If it's not in Wrike, it doesn't exist!" he says. Keeping everything in one place removes the stress of scouring countless emails and spreadsheets just to find a particular document, comment, or idea. Having all his project data consolidated also makes it easier to look back and see which processes worked and how to streamline. Some ideas: "Wrike it down!" Instead of capturing an idea on a post-it or in an email, just put it in Wrike Duplicate folders and tasks or mark them recurrent to create project templates Evaluate your process by reviewing completed projects and recording lessons learned Watch the video interview with Redfoo, where he tells you how he uses Wrike to get work done: How do you keep your team organized? What are your tips for keeping your team organized? Tell us in the comments! Read next: Wrike it Down with Redfoo: How to Manage Projects Like a Rockstar! Redfoo's Success Story 12 Ways to Use Wrike You've Never Considered Image Credit: Top photo by Tom Treanor
How Two Customers Cultivate Cross-Departmental Collaboration
You want to develop a more collaborative atmosphere in your organization, get the smart, highly capable people you've hired to interact with one another, despite being on different teams. But how do you motivate your people to peer over their silos and interact with others, despite personality clashes, conflicting priorities, and miscommunication? We look at two Wrike customers who, when faced with the challenge of cultivating cross-departmental collaboration, absolutely crushed it.
Wrike It Down with Redfoo: How to Manage Projects Like a Rockstar!
The Wrike team is excited to announce a new case study with one of our most enthusiastic customers yet: Redfoo! You might recognize him from this season's Dancing with the Stars or from his LMFAO single "Party Rock Anthem," which hit #1 on charts worldwide and is currently ranked as Billboard's 5th most successful song of all time. In addition to showing off his moves on Dancing with the Stars, Redfoo is the CEO of LaFreak Clothing and Party Rock Records (check out his newest single, "Juicy Wiggle"). He's a modern day Renaissance man! Why Does Redfoo Use Wrike? Managing so many different companies means tracking a lot of tasks and projects at once. Between planning events, overseeing clothing designs, and managing video shoots, Redfoo is crunched for time. His team needed a place to keep everything organized and available, and with Redfoo on the road much of the time, he needed a solution that would make it easy to manage his businesses on the go. Read the Redfoo Case Study To learn more about how Redfoo manages his businesses via Wrike, go check out his Wrike customer story. It includes a video of our one-on-one interview with him where you'll discover: How Redfoo gets things done while keeping work fun His favorite ways to manage his multiple businesses with Wrike How he captures ideas and collaborates with his team while on the road New Wrike Themes Inspired by Redfoo and his colorful personality, we're bringing two fun new themes to the Wrike workspace. Get the party started with one of these fun themes: Legendary Leopard or Retro Safari. Go to Wrike Labs to install them now! Come Back for More! In a few days, we'll release a special blog post with more secret tips and tricks Redfoo and his team use to get things done. Come back to the blog to learn how to manage your creative teams like a global rockstar. If you want to check out how your team can have fun with Wrike first-hand, start a free trial today. Read Next: — Redfoo's Success Story — Redfoo's 5 Wrike Tips for Business Success Image credit: Photo taken by Tom Treanor.
Let's Party! Personalize Your Business Playground with Wrike's New Party Themes
We're excited to announce the release of our new design feature: party themes! Inspired by our recent interview with avid Wriker and rockstar Redfoo (read Redfoo's Wrike story here), these complimentary themes will transform your background into a vibrant new workspace and hopefully serve as a reminder to get work done while keeping it fun! These optional new themes are available in Wrike Labs, where you'll be able to choose between Legendary Leopard and Retro Safari. Just visit the Wrike Labs and select one of the new themes to transform your workspace today! Check out the full Redfoo interview for tips on using Wrike to have fun and get more done.
Wrike's API Helps a Marketing Team Create Custom Reports Automatically
Northcutt’s team of inbound marketing experts takes care of several simultaneous projects for each of its multiple clients. No wonder they need to collect and analyze large amounts of data on a daily basis. But fortunately, Wrike's API made marketing efficiency much easier for them! Before adopting Wrike, Northcutt used Base?amp without much success. According to Corey Northcutt, the team’s project manager, it seemed to slow the team down even more, instead of making it easier to work on several ongoing projects at the same time. What the team was looking for was an easy way to track the status of each campaign and to report on the progress to the clients easily. Now, with Wrike’s help, they have a complete overview of tasks in the pipeline for each client. But the main key to success turned out to be Wrike’s API, which saved them more than five hours of work per week on creating reports. Since the team needed to get detailed information on the progress in each area of work, Wrike’s API helped them to retrieve this data from each folder automatically. Here are more details of how they achieved such great results. Pulling custom data with Wrike’s API. First, Corey Northcutt created folders to indicate each area of inbound marketing: Building external links, creating social media content, website optimization, etc. The integration they built with Wrike’s API automatically pulls the data from each folder into the special Google Drive spreadsheets. By looking at the spreadsheets, the project manager instantly sees the number of tasks assigned to each team member in each area of work, as well as the percentage of completed goals and the number of days left until the end of the current project. There are separate tables for active, backlogged, completed and deferred tasks. Whenever the task is updated in Wrike, the new data automatically gets updated in the corresponding table cell. Since the updates are collected in real time, team members are always sure that the table data is up-to-date. This way, Northcutt's team creates detailed and accurate monthly reports for clients much faster than ever. Additionally, Corey Northcutt set up custom widgets with tasks of each stage on his dashboard. As a result, with every login, Corey Northcutt instantly sees all current marketing initiatives at each stage and the people who are responsible for them. If some of the assignments become overdue, they are highlighted in red at the top of the list, so it's easy to quickly track them and adjust the deadlines appropriately. What about your team? Have you considered using Wrike’s API to integrate it with your favorite tools and optimize your work? Then let us know in comments! “Wrike succeeded at simplifying some of our really complex problems. It allowed me to manage tasks via simple task lists and a Gantt chart while letting all the complex organization happen in our reports. We also now use the Wrike API to help generate our monthly digest summaries for reporting, which is a better alternative than paying for a solution that wasted someone's time by forcing them to manually re-compile data by hand each month.” —Corey Northcutt, CEO at Northcutt
Wrike and Crescent Sock Company
Learn how Wrike helped Crescent Sock Company double their efficiency by replacing as many as five other apps that they previously used for project management. Customer Crescent Sock Company is the oldest operating hosiery mill in the United States with over a century of expertise in knitting socks. It’s a family-owned business, and some of its employees are following in the footsteps of their parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. Today, the company produces socks under its own FITSTM brand which is designed to be the world’s best-fitting sock, using materials, processes, and quality controls that far exceed industry standards. Vendor Wrike is a full-featured app for work management and project collaboration which features an interface that is extremely intuitive and fast. Thousands of teams choose Wrike for its seamless integration with Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar, as well as its real-time updates and interactive Gantt charts. With Wrike, you can keep all data organized in one place and selectively share it with co-workers, contractors and partners. Challenge Prior to discovering Wrike, Crescent faced a situation that is all too familiar with many small and midsize companies. Their project management “system” consisted of disconnected spreadsheets, countless paper notes, impromptu meetings and several clusters of employees working as patchwork groups to solve problems. The team spread news and updates via e-mail or word of mouth, shared documentation via DropBox or OneNote, and occasionally communicated through Google Chat or conference calls. This method of organizing projects and work often resulted in confusion, so the team desperately needed a tool that could help them collaborate more efficiently while being easy-to-use for all team members. “We considered other project management tools, but the learning curve and complex functionality of those programs turned out to be rather frustrating!” complains George Ervin, Business & Tech Consultant at Crescent. Solution “Wrike was clearly a simple, yet welcomed, answer to our broken attempt at project collaboration,” says Ervin. By adopting Wrike, the team now has an efficient project management system that helps them synchronize all of the team’s efforts so that they achieve their project goals. The team previously had to switch between numerous tabs and windows to find the required files and tasks; now they just open Wrike to find all the tasks, documents, discussions, and schedules in one place. The team does still continue working with some of their other favorite tools, as Wrike is integrated with Gmail and Google Docs. Apart from the obvious convenience and significant time savings, being integrated with Gmail and Google Docs has practically eliminated the previous hassle of e-mailing dozens of attachments to other team members just to stay updated on document changes. Now they just attach the Google Doc to the task, and Wrike automatically creates sharing rights for everyone who follows that task, allowing the whole team to stay on the same page. All of the task updates and file changes instantly appear in Wrike’s real-time newsfeed, so everyone on the team can contribute to task discussions and make their opinion count. “We’ve had many opportunities to collectively create project plans in a few short hours with Wrike when it previously took several e-mails and days waiting for responses to accomplish similar tasks,” says Ervin. Along with real-time updates, Wrike provides the team with an excellent means to respond and update project tasks from their favorite gadgets, making remote collaboration even more efficient. “A few of our employees utilize smart phones, and the added convenience of simply answering an e-mail to apprise other team members of new developments is priceless,” says Ervin. Results Being a pioneer in adopting Wrike, Ervin is definitely the best person to tell you about the results his team has achieved, so let’s see what he says about his experience with Wrike: “We’ve halved our time spent on project administration. We now conduct work in one (cool!) application as opposed to previously switching between 5 different programs to accomplish the same result.” And what is the main time-saving effect of adopting Wrike, according to Ervin? “Overall time savings connected with getting rid of multiple e-mail attachments is considered the biggest productivity improvement for our group. Thanks to Wrike and Google Docs, we’ve seen a 60% reduction in e-mail traffic involving attachments! Even beyond the numbers, it allowed us to change the way we collaborate and create a solid project management system almost effortlessly,” concludes Ervin. Download pdf
Customer's Adoption Tip: Customize Your Own Wrike Manual
When adopting a new tool like Wrike, it helps to create a digestible document that can help your team understand the process and the benefits of using the tool. This is exactly what Lightspeed POS did. Find out how their customized "manual" helped.
SayitRight Marketing Solutions Use Wrike To Manage Busy Marketing Office
Do you manage various projects for numerous clients? Do your projects imply a lot of time communicating with clients? Are you tired of e-mail mess in your inbox? SayitRight Marketing Solutions solved those problems with the help of Wrike. “No matter how many projects are active or on hold at the moment, Wrike lets me keep my fingers on the pulse of the business and see where we stand. Since the progress and requirements are tracked, there is no ground for miscommunication. Kudos, Wrike!” says Joseph Andrade, the owner of SayitRight. Read the full story “Seamless collaboration saves time and enhances working process.”
Educational Projects in Wrike: The Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education’s Experience
Numerous governmental organizations efficiently manage their projects in Wrike, and newcomers often ask us about the best practices of doing this. That’s why today we want to share with you the experience of the analysis and design department of the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education – NCEI – Application GD. The team looks for the best software solutions for department tasks and projects in a ministry that has more than 5 million students and around 500,000 employees, including teachers. After they tried more than 20 different project management solutions, Wrike finally has enabled them to easily organize their collaboration within several departments, get more visibility into the work progress, and, finally, get everything done in time. Want to learn how? Numerous governmental organizations efficiently manage their projects in Wrike, and newcomers often ask us about the best practices of doing this. That’s why today we want to share with you the experience of the analysis and design department of the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education – NCEI – Application GD. The team looks for the best software solutions for department tasks and projects in a ministry that has more than 5 million students and around 500,000 employees, including teachers. After they tried more than 20 different project management solutions, Wrike finally has enabled them to easily organize their collaboration within several departments, get more visibility into the work progress, and, finally, get everything done in time. Want to learn how? Selective data access at the department and project levels Such a large organization, like the ministry of education, requires different confidentiality levels for different departments and employees. This was easily achieved with the help of Wrike's selective sharing. In their Wrike workspace, the team organizes data and tasks by department and section. For example, they have an Analysis and Design folder for the corresponding department, with Analysis and Design subfolders for the two sections. For each project the team is currently working on, they create a subfolder in the section’s subfolder. Different users have different access to the information stored in the folders. The head of the department has access to all the tasks in the main folder (Analysis and Design), while the heads of the sections and project managers see the tasks in their subfolders only. Tagging tasks for better context & faster access Some tasks require special attention from the employees, and Zaki Ali Bayashoot, the analysis and design department director, puts them into different categories, such as “Exceptional Tasks,” “Management Tasks,” “TFU” (tasks to follow up on later), etc. Thanks to having the ability to put one task into several folders at once in Wrike, navigating and checking any group of tasks that are important for the team members is a matter of one click! At any time, team members simply click on the particular folder to see how many active tasks are on the list and look through the recent updates in the folder’s Activity Stream. Accountability for the top management A detailed folders structure and Wrike’s advanced filters make it easy for the ministry to create monthly reports for the top management. “I usually filter completed tasks by department, section or particular employees, using different timeframes to measure the team’s efficiency. I’ve also created widgets on my dashboard for the overdue tasks in particularly important projects that help me keep things under control,” Zaki Ali Bayashoot says. The task list can be quickly narrowed down by a particular project, completion date, task author or other criteria. This way, Wrike’s flexible folder structure, selective sharing, advanced filters and other project management features make the work of such a large organization easier and better coordinated! ”Our productivity has significantly increased since we’ve started using Wrike, and now I don’t have to worry about tracking and managing tasks. We would like to thank the Wrike Team for their excellent work that makes our management life easier,” concludes Zaki Ali Bayashoot, analysis and design department director.
Best Practices for Seamless Wrike Adoption from Full-Service Ad Agency
Scott Struber, the VP/Operations of Yamanair Creative, a full-service ad agency, deployed Wrike to his team in March 2012. Scott now runs easily 80% of the business in Wrike, effortlessly collaborating with a team of 20+ spread across the country. In my conversation with Scott, I asked "If your friend in another company or department was implementing Wrike, what advice would you give her to get up and running quickly?" His response was both insightful and helpful for any new or existing business using Wrike. Understand your Business Goals First, make sure you understand what you're trying to accomplish and how Wrike helps achieve that goal. Then, become as well educated about Wrike as possible. Stay aware of what your people need to know and need to do in Wrike. The users need to understand how this will work within the organization and at their team level. Finally, lead by example. You got to use it yourself if you expect others to use it. Be an ambassador for Wrike. Position for Productivity Positioning Wrike appropriately is very important. Don’t say, “Here’s something you need to learn.” Instead, roll Wrike out and share, “We found something that’s going to boost our productivity and allow you to move through the day with less stress, and go home without worrying about what you may have missed." Wrike is a tool we use to help make our jobs easier. Put another way, we let the software do the heavy-lifting when it comes to remembering. Be Firm on Team Adoption When implementing Wrike, it’s important to be firm about team adoption. As I shared with my team, “If it’s not in Wrike, it didn’t happen.” Not using Wrike was not an option. Simultaneously, encourage and help your people to get past the learning curve and they’ll be happier and more compliant. Empower your Users Make sure the users know where to get answers. Wrike offers great support through a variety of channels. Inform and empower your users to be self-sufficient or you’ll end up answering all of their questions. Ask for Feedback Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. Work to figure out how well Wrike is working overall and how it’s working for individual people. Don’t assume the way you set it up is awesome and perfect and the one and only way to do it. Be open and flexible to changing the process. We have revised the work flow many times over, always for the better, and often using suggestions from team members.
Andatech’s Tips: How to Develop a Habit of Logging and Updating Tasks on Time
If you have just started using Wrike, at first some employees may forget to log and update their tasks in the system. Don’t worry, Andatech’s best practices will help you deal with this problem quickly!If you have just started using Wrike, at first some employees may forget to log and update their tasks in the system. Don’t worry, Andatech’s best practices will help you deal with this problem quickly! Andatech is one of our customers, and it wholesales a vast variety of innovative electronic products for home in Australia. There are several teams within the company that are working on completely different projects, and the same employees take part in several projects at once. Prior to Wrike, the general manager spent several hours every week on collecting updates across different projects and putting them together into a general overview. Now, every team member keeps their tasks up-to-date in the system, so it’s a matter of a click or two to see how things are going. This approach is beneficial for both managers and the team, as everyone is on the same page and is moving faster. We've asked Andatech's team to share how they managed to make logging tasks into Wrike a habit so quickly! Leverage e-mail integration Andatech managers wanted an easy way to track all work that has been done, especially by remote team members. So the first thing Andatech did was to create a simple rule: Any task that takes more than half an hour should be logged into Wrike. Making this happen was easy. A lot of the team’s communication takes place via e-mail, so logging new tasks from e-mails into Wrike is literally a matter of a click, thanks to Wrike’s Gmail gadget. “Most project management tools are hard to adopt right away because people think that it’s actually more work for them. But with Wrike, the biggest thing for our staff was understanding that it’s not just a separate platform. It naturally supplements other habitual tools, such as e-mail, easily converting e-mails into tasks,” says Sunil Joseph, the head of digital strategy at Andatech. If your team is used to communicating issues via e-mail, make sure everyone on your team knows the fastest way for them to turn e-mails into Wrike tasks. This means the add-ins for Outlook and Apple Mail users, the gadget for Gmail users and simply forwarding an e-mail to [email protected] for anyone else. Update tasks in Wrike after everyday standup meetings When tasks are logged into the system, at first people may still forget to update them. So Andatech managers decided to update tasks right after the everyday standup meetings. They created a folder called “Morning standup,” where the project manager puts tasks that need to be done today and prioritizes them after each meeting. After the meeting, team members also check that all updates they have reported during the meeting have been logged into the system. If they have previously forgotten to log something, it's high time to put it into Wrike, making sure the project picture is complete. This approach makes it easier to collaborate with remote team members, as the manager can quickly show them today’s agenda and the team’s priorities. The manager also sees the overall team’s progress in one place and can quickly measure the progress for any given period with the help of Wrike’s advanced filters. Suggest that employees create personal folders for the most important tasks Quick access to all current tasks is vital to set the priorities correctly and get things done in time. That's why every Andatech employee has a special widget on the Wrike dashboard with all tasks assigned to them (by default, you only have tasks assigned to you for this week). The widget automatically shows the up-to-date list of tasks with every login. If you want to create such a widget for yourself, all you need to do is go to “My folders,” click on the Descendants button, filter tasks assigned to you and click on the “Create a widget” button. This is a good exercise for all team members! :) The widget automatically shows the up-to-date list of tasks with every login. Sometimes there are too many tasks assigned to one person, so it's hard to quickly grasp the ones to focus on. Andatech's employees have come up with a solution! Some of them created the personal “Most important” folder (not shared with anyone else) and put the most important tasks from different projects there. This is easy to do, thanks to the ability to put one task in several folders in Wrike. Within personal folders, people can drag tasks up and down the list to prioritize, and then complete items on the priority list from top to bottom. Following these three easy principles, Andatech’s team adopted Wrike quickly and smoothly! In turn, Wrike helped them greatly with tracking work progress, prioritizing things and figuring out what needs to be done and when. Learn more about how the Andatech's team successfully uses Wrike for their workflow in our podcast with Sunil Joseph. What are your team’s best practices in making task-tracking a habit? Do you have any particular rules in using Wrike and tracking the progress? With Wrike, it gets easier to share and collaborate on any kind of data. We’re sure that the relevant people will see what needs to be seen, and things will get done in time.” — Sunil Joseph, the head of digital strategy at Andatech.
Wrike For Creatives: How a Music Producer Gets Things Done
We talk a lot on the Wrike blog about businesses needing tools to get their act together. But it's not just construction companies, software development teams, and marketing agencies that have to organize their work to be efficient. There is also a large community of creatives using online project management software to coordinate their projects. Check this out: We didn't have to look far to find examples. One of our customers, entrepreneur and celebrity Redfoo, uses Wrike to run both his clothing line and his record label. And he says: “I couldn’t imagine running a business without Wrike.” I couldn’t imagine running a business without Wrike. —Redfoo, CEO of Party Rock Records and LaFreak Clothing Label Then we have our very own Charles L. Coleman II, Enterprise Sales Executive, who helps bring Wrike to larger organizations by day. By night, he runs The ABiatorz Music Group (AMG), a boutique music production company that creates and releases music for placement with artists, record labels, and advertising opportunities. AMG utilized Wrike in its collaboration with two-time Grammy-award-winning producer Focus and Creative Consultant Amilcar "PRO" Welton of CREATE.Digital Music, which is reflected in the video above. Take a look at another video by The ABiatorz Music Group. It was a placement with the Golden State Warriors during their 2015 NBA Championship run, and it involved Coleman collaborating with Hip-Hop artist, Rich Cole and Amilcar "PRO" Welton once again. The song and video for "Dub Nation (Locked n' Loaded)" was used promotionally across all of the Warriors online platforms. With a demanding day job, a thriving music business, and a growing family, Coleman's time is extremely precious. But he makes it work — and his secret to making the most of his limited time is Wrike. "Time is everything," says Coleman. "You don't have a lot of time as a father, a worker, a musician. So I use Wrike to help me plan out my time efficiently. I use it to manage my family vacations, my sales work at Wrike, and as a tool to make my music business more effective. Anything that needs to be executed, I do it in Wrike." Wrike as a Planning & Collaboration Tool for Recording One way Coleman uses Wrike for creative work is for planning out studio time. When you're paying by the hour to use a recording studio, you want every minute to count. "I use Wrike to plan out all my studio time so that it's most efficient," says Coleman. "I think about the entire recording session before I go in, lay it out in Wrike, then execute when I'm there." [inlinetweet prefix="" tweeter="" suffix="Read more @Wrike:"]"I use Wrike to plan out all my studio time so that it's most efficient."[/inlinetweet] —Charles L. Coleman II, Music Producer This means using Wrike tasks as checklists for every song. He inputs to-do items for specific musical parts, or attaches ideas (i.e. other songs) as pegs for how the final track should sound. This also means Coleman creates tasks for session musicians who will be playing on the track. Bringing them in as collaborators within Wrike allows him to share working versions of the music with them as well as get their feedback without having to email music files back and forth. Wrike as a Music Catalog Tool Another way Coleman uses Wrike is as a music cataloging tool or "library", that helps him document and quickly find all the music he's created and released, as well as what stage each is in. "In my Wrike instance, I have custom fields for every track I make," says Coleman. "This way I can document collaborators (any additional musicians who played on a track), samples I may have used, placement (whether the track has been placed and where), target artist (e.g. "Beyonce" or "Drake"), instruments played (if any live instruments were used). "This also allows me to easily pull reports on what music I have available for placement and quickly find songs via the information in my custom fields. It becomes easier to submit tracks to ASCAP or to get copyrights on the music when you have all your paperwork readily available. "I can also judge efficiency. I can quickly answer questions such as: How many songs did I create last year? How many did I place? Do I need to be creating more? Did we spend too much on musicians last year?" I can quickly answer questions such as... Did we spend too much on musicians last year? —Charles L. Coleman II, Music Producer From Paper Notebooks to Online Project Management Software "Before using Wrike to manage my business, to be honest, I used a production notebook," Coleman shares. "I used to take notes using pen and paper. In fact, I have about four or five old notebooks at home. And it was a PAIN to find things in them. Or even to prepare the paperwork you need to submit music for placement." Now, there's no looking back for Coleman and The ABiatorz Music Group. "These days, my wife and I are able to manage the music production business easily using Wrike. Because of Wrike's tool, I was able to move my music production forward and get more placements. I also was able to move my job forward and get promoted, and even used Wrike to manage work and close out end-of-year business while traveling during the holidays with my family. "Wrike is both a business and personal tool. It allows me to keep things in their respective buckets, and yet have only to deal with one portal for all that work. It has helped me make improvements in my workflow that save me my most precious resource: time." [inlinetweet prefix="Read:" tweeter="" suffix=""]"@Wrike has helped me make improvements in my workflow that save me my most precious resource: time."[/inlinetweet] —Charles L.Coleman II, Music Producer Find Out How Wrike Can Help Your With Your Creative Work Try a free demo of Wrike and see how you can use #WrikeForCreatives.
Personality in a Cup: How Philz Coffee Scales Quality Through Consistency
We sat down with the Director of Coffee and Sustainability at Philz to discuss how Philz has scaled a business nationwide while preserving that shop-around-the-corner brand their consumers know and love.
Google for Work Q&A: FootSteps Marketing
FootSteps Marketing — a digital marketing agency that specializes in providing websites and services to retailers in the hardware, outdoor, or archery industries — took time to share their experience using the integrations between Wrike and Google for Work. Their main focus as a company is partnering with larger organizations to provide affordable marketing solutions for their members and retailers, so they need the right tools in place to help their team work efficiently. This how Google for Work and Wrike have helped them reach success: 1. Tell us about your team and the role it plays in your company. Our initial need for Wrike stemmed from our Marketing Services (MS) department. They work as an external digital marketing agency for many retailers. Currently, we have 5 people on the production team for the MS department. Day-to-day, this team creates email marketing campaigns, social media posts and campaigns, and website landing pages. They also update websites on behalf of our clients. There is a high level of interaction that has to take place between them, as well as a high volume of tasks that need to be filtered through the team. 2. What were the goals that led you to connect Wrike and Google for Work? We work with many retailers in hardware, the outdoor industry, etc., and much of the content we use is repeated in our campaigns. Since not all of our clients participate in the same promotions at the same time, we needed a system that would allow us to keep track of a large volume of similar tasks. Due to the crossover, we needed the ability to segment our tasks by activity, and mass-edit tasks (such as rescheduling, etc.). All of our marketing requests are sent to us via email, so the Wrike Gmail gadget was a critical feature for us to efficiently get these requests into a tasking system. 3. How have Wrike and Google for Work helped your team reach its goals? Since implementing Wrike + Google Apps, we've become much more efficient in our workflows. The ability to create tasks directly from email is the biggest time-saver. To make work easier to track, we have now created a digital marketing plan template for our clients to make selections. Their selections are sent to us in a spreadsheet, which we then directly import into Wrike, rather than manually logging every marketing plan (as we did before). Our web development team is also able to use Wrike to keep track of our web development whiteboard, completely eliminating our prior system of passing around a document. This helps with efficiency, as everything for our teams can be kept in one place. 4. What improvements have you seen since implementing Wrike + Google for Work? Our overall collaboration, organization, and management of tasks has improved drastically. Wrike and Google Apps have helped each department gain transparency into other departments, alleviating the need for more emails or lengthy discussions. Share your story in the comments. How are you using Wrike + Google for Work to gain transparency into your projects? If you're a lover of Wrike + Google for Work, join our Wrike Google Apps Partner Program. You can learn everything you need to know about the program here.