The Way I Manage My Projects with brightpod
There is no average day here at Vector - We’re always shifting gears, which is what makes it such a great place to work. We work with a variety of clients across different industries, and we’re fortunate to have several clients in the same verticals, which lets us see trends really easily. We might be working on a Top 100 Internet Retailer one minute, and then a local law firm the next. It keeps life interesting and keeps us on our toes!
I start the day in Analytics, just to give a quick glance over our clients metrics to see if anything crazy has happened. Then I move into Brightpod and see what my team has on deck for the day ahead, and to see where my input is needed to keep things moving along. My day is typically spent on the phone with clients reviewing performance data and talking about new strategies to excel. I usually run from call to call or meeting to meeting, which makes the day go by very quickly. I’ll always end the day by having a glance at the industry news, and then making my to-do list and focus list in Brightpod.
1. Trying
to keep everything that’s task oriented for a project or client in
Brightpod, so that we don’t have to scramble to find things in
random emails.
2. Limiting
email time to once an hour, rather than checking everything in
real-time - This helps me get in the zone and focus on what I am
doing so that I can actually get things done!
3. Blocking
off time in my calendar for “task time”. If there are open spots
in my calendar, a meeting or call will get scheduled. By blocking
off some of my free time to actually get my tasks done, things
actually move forward!
We manage all of our digital marketing projects in Brightpod… This include SEO, PPC, Analytics, and Conversion Rate Optimization engagements, both on an initial and ongoing basis. We set up each client in a separate pod, and use Brightpod templates to build out our initial projects. We currently have 7 team members in the system, and are exploring adding in our web design and web development projects into the system as well!
Prior to using Brightpod, we didn’t really have an organized system. We were constructing our project plans and to-dos in a mix of excel spreadsheets, Basecamp posts, and Google Docs, which made it extremely hard to keep track of things and to get a holistic view at a glance of what needs to get done. We found that we were losing literally hours every week just because we didn’t have one unified system - Now that we use Brightpod, we’ve gotten that time back and can actually apply it to clients to get them better results.
All the time! Clients are always asking us for either an old report, or a copy document from a few months back. With Brightpod, we’re able to find these things in seconds rather than minutes or even hours. It’s truly become our project management hub.
Surprisingly, there wasn’t really a learning curve at all, because the software is so simple to use. Because of this, our team embraced it, which is highly unusual for the implementation of new project management software. It took us maybe a week or two of heavy use to figure out the way we wanted to use the tool, but because the UI is intuitive, I didn’t have any issues at all getting our team excited to use it!
My favorite feature, by far, is the Insights report, which lets me, as a manager, get an instant view on if we’re meeting deadlines, what tasks are taking too long, and where we have or need bandwidth. I also really rely on the “Focus” tab so that I can see how we’re making progress on the most important tasks for each project.
It would be like we’re back in the stone ages!
Brightpod is a great product that easily adapts to its users needs, which is rare in the project management space. Keep iterating and adding features, but don’t make it overly complex - The simplicity behind the product is what gets buy-in from the people who use it!
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