How Teamwork became the all-in-one solution for Scopic

Scopic is one of the largest virtual software companies in the world, with almost 250 remote team members spread across 30 different countries. Their specialty is customized IT solutions for web, mobile, and desktop for a wide range of industries including finance, fitness, health care, manufacturing, and more.

After wrestling with four different project management tools to help manage over 150 projects and almost 250 distributed team members, Scopic chose Teamwork as their all-in-one solution. In this case study, we spoke to Tim Burr, founder and president of Scopic, to find out how Teamwork has simplified the company’s project management process.

Disparate tools, diverging workflows

Keeping projects on track before Teamwork was a complicated, time-consuming job for the Scopic team. The company had outgrown all available project management solutions, with different teams relying on four separate tools to manage different aspects of their jobs such as communication, scheduling tasks, project tracking and logging time.

Scopic’s chosen tool for managing client communication was causing major issues because it lacked advanced messaging features. The team were spending valuable time trying to shield clients from documents and discussions that didn’t involve them.

Without privacy settings and granular control over message recipients, team members frequently had to create mirror projects or initiate discussions via email in order to keep certain information from being shared with everyone. This created some very awkward situations.

In addition to this, since their previous tool didn’t have a tagging feature to filter and group items, sorting through disorganized threads of conversations was another headache. With discussions open over multiple projects, locating specific information was a daunting task.

Another challenge for the Scopic team was producing accurate, comprehensive reports for project managers. With so many active projects, tracking and evaluating progress was extremely difficult, requiring a patchwork of methods to collect and share the data.

“First, we used email to keep track of and store every project managers’ daily and weekly reports. Then, we created over 20 projects for each project manager who was typically overseeing between 4 and 6 projects. The process was convoluted and extremely time consuming, with significant back and forth communication.“

One platform for everything

When Scopic decided they needed a better solution for their project management needs, one employee was tasked with the job of finding a program that could do it all. It took her more than 40 hours to complete the research, and her conclusion pointed to Teamwork  as the best choice.

One year later, the team has dropped all other project management tools and relies entirely on Teamwork. Now, team members and clients communicate exclusively within Teamwork. Privacy and permission features provide more granular levels of control over message and file sharing, which means information is only shared with team members or clients who need it.

“When using messages, we can see entire conversations laid out in front of us, allowing us to tag individuals to call their attention. If our team was still using email, there would be miscommunication and endless searching through threads.“

Scheduling tasks and creating reports now takes only a few clicks instead of hours of manually entering information, cross-referencing it with other databases and then searching for all essential information needed to produce useful reports for managers.

Better processes, happier clients

The response from every team and each project manager at Scopic has been overwhelmingly positive. Since switching to Teamwork, Scopic is seeing improvements in meeting deadlines, locating important information and keeping projects within budget.

“We have seen projects move more swiftly and our clients now take a more active part in the project life cycle. As a result of our more efficient processes, we’re taking on more projects, which has allowed us grow our business — and our profits.”

Teamwork is also increasing client satisfaction by making it easier for each client to check-in on project progress, give feedback and communicate with their project manager in a central place.