Case studies – Project Management

Case studies – Project Management

Project Management Case Study: Task manager and client onboarding

Context

I have been working as the marketing director for a while with several teams across the globe, so I needed to find a way to manage all tasks in a holistic platform with a visually appealing component.

Company: Founders Healthcare Marketing
Location: Austin, TX
About the brand:
It’s a marketing agency specialized in helping dentists and physicians get more leads by using Facebook Ads, LinkedIn (sales navigator), and B2B visits.

My process and experience

Initial Research ==> Implementation ==> Team’s feedback ==> Optimizations

🔶Initial Research

We have already looked into platforms like Asana, Monday, Trello or Basecamp. Even tho they might seems like a good option at first, they eventually get too overwhelming, there’s lack of personalization, the team wasn’t using it, etc.

The Challenge

We needed something that was easy to set up, with a small learning curve, appealing to the eye, strong capabilities, lots of customization settings and view, easy to find filters. And overall, something the team would be happy using on a daily basis.

My Findings

Airtable. I was skeptical at first, but once you start playing and experimenting with it, it becomes everything we need. But to be clear, it might not work for bigger teams when you need to know productivity levels, constant reminders and fancy dashboards.

The features that resonated with me the most were:

• There’s a database view that just works like an Excel sheet where you can do calculations, but also customized to your team’s colors and feels without too much overcomplication.
• The filter option is very powerful and easy to apply.
• You can group tasks based on a specific column such as category, responsible, priority, etc.
• You can see the icon of the team member once you asign them to a task. They will get an email notification for each.

🔶 Implementation

Airtable works by creating boards, the boards are part of different teams, you can create several tables inside a board. The organization looked something like:

• Clients [Team]
  • Dentist X [Board]
    • Social media planning [Table]
    • Facebook ads
  • Dentist Y
    • LinkedIn
  • Dentist Z

• Admin
  • Client onboarding

• HR
  • New team member onboarding
  • Payroll
  • Task manager
• Marketing Team (MT)
  • Task manager
  • Services onboarding
    • Facebook Ads
    • LinkedIn
    • Videography
    • Sales

Here are some boards:

🔶 Team’s feedback

When presented to the team they really liked how versatile it was, the color options, how easy to use it was and the fact that they weren’t bombarded by notifications all day long.

The trial period was one week with just 3 main boards. We measured the success by assigning several tasks and check the completion levels and engagement with the team since they need to constantly write their input on assigned tasks or questions.

They managers also manifested they would like to create some boards on their own as well, because they know th most which style works best and what exact information is necessary for each team or service they manage. So we gave creative freedom.

🔶 Optimizations

During the first month, we implemented several changes until some boards became templates, the order of tasks was more organized, the categories were better grouped, repetitive columns were hidden, the color palette was consistent, and the filters were already set up. The best part is that it can be continuously optimized without disrupting the overall order or strategy.