Having tried a number of different project management applications including Zoho and Basecamp, Colorado based graphic design firm Phases had been consistently disappointed with the lack of features and collaboration tools on offer. Dealing with small businesses, Phases were looking for an application that was easy to use allowing clients to take as much ownership of the projects as the company itself. In house web designer with Phases, Kandra Churchwell says they found exactly what they were looking for in Teamwork PM and since implementing it in the day to day running of the business, they have never looked back:
Here's how we use TeamworkPM to help our projects go smoothly.
· Adding a project is totally simple, and the customizable welcome email allows us to introduce our clients to the system in a very friendly and specific way, which is important to clients who don't have a lot of time, or the inclination, to learn a new software tool.
· We use TeamworkPM from the very beginning of each new project, communicating internally about the prospecting and proposal process using tasks, the message center and the file uploading tools.
· The privacy settings are great. We often go through several rounds of internal revisions on graphics files and word processing documents before we're ready to show them to the client. The privacy tools allow us to chat and share all of this stuff inside a "cone of silence," so we can discuss the project openly without fear of releasing anything before it's ready, or of our clients being inadvertently offended by our sometimes frank discussions.
· The file-uploading tool is excellent. All the information you might need about a given file is available at a glance, and the version tracking is so simple, even our least tech savvy clients can easily tell what version of the file they're looking at, when it was uploaded, what category it's in, and who's been working on it. The new Dropbox integration has made file sharing even easier than it was before.
· Did we already mention how great the Dropbox integration is? Several of our staff, team members, and clients were already using Dropbox for backup and cloud storage, so adding this feature was a no-brainer and has already simplified our process.
· The time tracking feature helps us stay on top of the budget, even down to the task level, which keeps the stress level low for us and for our clients.
For Phases, ease of use and smooth communication between both company and clients made TeamworkPM stand out from other project management applications available:“A powerful aspect of Teamwork is that it keeps all project communication, files, task lists, meetings, everything in one place where everyone working on the project can access it from their desktops or mobile devices. With team members working remotely, clients spread out over the country, and hundreds of files and messages that need to be tracked, stored and managed in a user friendly way, this is an invaluable benefit.”As well as offering a wide range of features, the one aspect of Teamwork that stood out for Phases as a company was the speed at which the customer service department dealt with any issues:
“Teamwork PM has some of the best and most responsive customer service in the business in our opinion. We’ve requested features on more than one occasion that would make our workflow or communication processes more efficient and easier. Not only did we receive a quick response- in some cases the features we were interested in showed up in the production software just a few days later- now thats service!”, she added.
