COMPANY BACKGROUND:
This Kentucky-based IT service provider has grown into a large international company over the years. They handle everything from rollouts, deployments, and transitions across both North America and Europe. Deployment projects can sometimes involve hundreds or even thousands of installs at any given time, making project management a key part of their operations.
The Problem:
Their current online project database is already too outdated to keep up with their continued growth. It hasn’t received an official update for almost a decade. Worse still, the tool is set to go completely offline before the year ends.
They now have barely half a year to find a suitable replacement that can handle their project management office’s needs. These range from progress and performance tracking to cloud storage. Not only that, they also need a system that can prove useful to their other departments.
The WORK[etc] Solution:
REPORT GENERATION
The company’s current setup when it comes to progress tracking involves manual progress reports and meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. The problem here is that the number of meetings you have is often inversely proportional to how efficient and productive your company is.
WORK[etc]’s report generation and progress tracking functionalities make it key to faster and simpler reporting. Its project dashboard offers numerous real time views that let users manage and keep an eye on the company’s projects.
Here’s a quick look at just some of the things that WORK[etc] can do on the tracking and reporting side of the equation:
- Sort projects according to priority.
- Filter projects based on each item or sub-task’s current progress.
- View users and contacts associated with any given project or sub-task
- View a listing of expenses and timesheets associated with projects.
- View projects from a budget perspective showing time and materials actuals versus predictive across one or more projects.
- View timesheets according to project, activity, employee, or client.
All of these items can be turned into bookmarked links for quick viewing. This way, a project director or company executive who wants to check up on a specific project won’t have to set up a meeting with the project manager for a progress report.
PERFORMANCE TRACKING
As the company often works with contractors, they’ve found that it’s important to rate and track which ones can get the job done and which ones are more problematic. Although it’s not a built-in feature, this can still be easily managed thanks to WORK[etc]’s custom fields and tagging system.
For every contractor or even client in your contacts list, you can add a custom field that includes a job performance rating and even the sites that they’ve worked on. With a little elbow grease, you can also do the same using custom tags. The latter is especially helpful when looking for highly rated contractors in a specific area.
Tracking employee performance is even easier, especially when it comes to the sales team. WORK[etc] lets you view work created between specific date ranges, lead activity, and sales performance per employee, among other performance reports.
It also integrates well with the finance department. It can show a listing of all expenses in the system, all invoices, cash inflow, profit & loss, all revenues, and revenues sorted according to customer and month. The CRM system itself can also be used by the support team to receive, answer, and track support cases.
COMPARTMENTALIZATION AND PERMISSIONS
The company considers compartmentalization a key aspect in their day-to-day operations. They want their associates and project members to focus on the tasks assigned to them without being distracted by other ongoing projects.
In WORK[etc], this can be done by setting permissions. You can set things up so that both User A and User B can view and create entries and updates in Project A, but each can only modify entries that they created themselves.
Since the company has locations in both North America and Europe, it’s also important to be able to segregate contacts from one country to another. This can be done by creating a permissions template for each job role in your company and then assigning employees to each role. That employee will automatically inherit the permissions of the role. You can set up separate templates for employees in Canada, for example, and another for those in the UK.
These permissions can be leveraged to let each user see their own tasks in their personal task lists and be able to drill down into them without having to wade through the entire project task list. They’re not just limited to projects, either. You can also set them for pretty much anything within the system. Everybody can also view their tasks through the WORK[etc] web app — directors, associates, project managers, and even contractors and technicians that have login permissions.
CLOUD STORAGE AND APP INTEGRATION
When you’re dealing with hundreds of installs, carrying around optical media or even portable flash drives isn’t exactly optimal. Cloud storage is often a more efficient solution, which is why it’s the IT company’s preferred deployment method.
WORK[etc] comes its own cloud storage solution, allowing users to upload up to 50GB worth of files. You can then access any and all of the files and attachments that you upload through the Documents tab found on the ever-present WORK[etc] menu bar.
For more scalable cloud storage solutions, WORK[etc] inherently supports Google Drive and Box.com. This gives you access to any of the files you keep on these online storage providers without having to leave the WORK[etc] environment.
WORK[etc] also features integration with a host of other popular apps including the following:
- G Suite (Mail, Docs, Contacts, etc.)
- Evernote
- QuickBooks
- Xero
Results
By leveraging WORK[etc]’s powerful project management tools, report generation capabilities, app integration features, and sheer customizability, this company can quickly get their project management system up to speed. Better still, WORK[etc] goes well beyond what the average CRM can do, making it useful not just to the company’s project management department but to other relevant areas in their day-to-day operations as well.
Data entry requires a bit of elbow grease and commitment, but in return they can cut down on the number of progress update meetings, keep track of the information that they need to know, and be able to access project-relevant files and details even when out in the field.
SUMMARY
Requirements:
To find a project management solution that supports information compartmentalization, report generation, and project status tracking along with scalable storage and features that may help other departments within the company.
Solution:
Use WORK[etc]’s built-in report generation, permissions settings, custom fields, and robust project management tools to keep employee focus and keep track of the status of all company projects. The system’s own cloud storage solution can be bolstered by Google Drive and Box.com integration. CRM and performance tracking features will prove helpful to sales, support, and finance department.
Results:
More work done with less need for meetings. Company productivity and efficiency are increased.
What this means for your IT services company
Its sheer customizability and scope are just two of the things that help separate WORK[etc] from the average CRM system. It can be adapted to your specific needs — be it tracking the progress of hundreds or even thousands of install projects, helping your sales team create and track leads, both, and even more. Find out for yourself why WORK[etc] is not just any CRM by signing up for our free 14-day demo.
