Written by Seb Dean (Managing Director, Imaginaire Digital).
I am the managing director of Imaginaire Digital, a full service agency in Nottingham that does web design and digital advertising. There are many ongoing projects and many moving parts. Solutions We Used in the Past
We tried Trello, but it was not something we liked. We used it for personal notes, but not for work. Then we switched to JIRA and Basecamp. We still relied on email threads which caused a lot of problems. We had 30 comments in an email thread so finding the right information would take us 5 mins instead of 5 minutes. We used to spend a lot of time writing reports manually, which was still sloppy. Basecamp made us more efficient, but we had to worry about what our clients thought about Basecamp. Would they be impressed? Would they find it difficult? We concluded that Basecamp would be too expensive for our clients. We are a premium agency and Basecamp did not look professional enough for clients. JIRA was much more complicated. ActiveCollab was the perfect solution for us. Tweet this Why ActiveCollab was the Right Choice
ActiveCollab was something I came across on a blog. I loved the features it offered. Even though we had used Basecamp for over a year, it never felt like we were a good match. After using ActiveCollab for a month we knew it was the right tool for us. ActiveCollab had all the features that we needed, including time tracking and invoicing. I was worried about how quickly my team would adjust to it when I first introduced it to them. As a business owner, I don’t have the time or patience to teach each member how to add tasks. ActiveCollab was a great choice for our clients as well. The team was able to switch to ActiveCollab quickly and stopped using email within a matter of days. It was professional looking and easy to use. Instead of sending emails back-and-forth a thousand times, our clients could add tasks to the system. We could immediately start working once they had added a task. ActiveCollab’s workflow is extremely intuitive. We have many clients who rely on reports so they are well-informed. ActiveCollab allows us to send them the link so that they can review what we’re doing and raise any concerns. How ActiveCollab Improved Our Work
Time tracking is my favorite feature. We invoice based on how much time we work. It’s great that everyone in our team can track their time so our accountant can quickly create an invoice based upon billable hours. ActiveCollab also ensures we don’t miss any critical feedback. Customers are more likely to share the most valuable information if we talk to each other because it is more open-ended. It is important that I do not forget the information. ActiveCollab allows me to add tasks during client meetings. I listen to the client, create a task and assign it to someone. Then work can begin immediately. I know I didn’t miss anything and the client can see the entire project and approve it. ActiveCollab greatly improved our team communication and client collaboration. It also significantly increased our productivity. Tweet this