Ireland Website Design is, as the name suggests, an Irish website design company that also specialises in online and digital marketing and branding for businesses, both at home and abroad. With a team comprising of many team members with their own specialities and skill sets, they began to use Teamwork Projects to streamline and optimize their internal processes and external output. Nick Butler, CEO of the company, tells us in his words what Teamwork.com achieves for Ireland Website Design. You can download (PDF) our case study on How Ireland Website Design Uses Teamwork Projects for Web Design and Digital Marketing. 

As our company entered a growth phase, I was conscious that I wanted a platform that would ensure that all of our new and existing projects and tasks could be viewed together as a team so that we could all see what was being worked on at any given time. It was also important that this platform had collaborative options (both between the team and with company clients); as we like to provide a clarity to our clients as to what part of their project is being worked on should they wish to know at any time.

I tasked my project manager Stephen with researching a few options that would meet the above criteria. I also asked him if he could find anything that at the same time could solve some common pains as seen in the website design industry that we were not exempt from. Such pains would include assigning tasks to team members for accountability, ensuring that no elements of projects were missed/forgotten about and, if needed, a collaborative platform to facilitate out of office or remote working.

After testing and learning the Teamwork.com suite for about two to three days, Stephen came back to me and was a pro. He showed me what it was capable of doing for us and how it could help and so I was instantly on board.

After a quick learning curve, the entire team was versed in using Teamwork Projects. Any new team members that join the company are also trained in on Teamwork Projects as it has become the standard project management software that we all use. What initially began as a quest to utilize project management software quickly began to reap many other benefits for the company.

How Teamwork Projects has helped us at a glance:

  • Freed up valuable time for the CEO

  • Solved the pains of a website design company

  • Created more working transparency

  • Increased the quality of work and processes

  • Itemised and systemised workflows

As the CEO of Ireland Website Design, I have a constant responsibility on my shoulders to generate revenue for the company so that the team can be paid for their hard work and that the hard work can help the company to expand. By using Teamwork Projects, I can see at a glance what each individual team member is working on at any given time. In tandem with this, I can also view any comments or notes between the team and respective clients. In essence I do not have to check in with each team member and with each project respectively for status updates; Teamwork Projects presents all of this to me. With this, valuable time was freed up for me to utilize. By outsourcing the micromanaging element to the Teamwork.com software, I was able to spend more time generating and nurturing leads, tweaking and perfecting our sales and marketing funnel, traveling to meet industry peers and potential clients and more. Regardless of where I was, or what I was doing, having Teamwork Projects on my laptop or mobile device in its app form meant that I was never really away from being on the pulse of the action of the goings on at Ireland Website Design.

As mentioned previously, some of the common pains that we encountered included assigning tasks to team members for accountability, ensuring that no elements of projects were missed/forgotten about and if needed and also, as touched on above, the ability to stay updated with work and projects when out of the office or working remotely. In terms of the assignment of tasks to team members, this is easily done with Teamwork Projects. A notification email can be sent to the corresponding team member when a task is assigned to them, so there is a tangible ‘paper trail’ showing who is responsible for what and when it was assigned to them. These aforementioned tasks can also be customized.

Some tasks can be as big as an entire project – itemized with step-by-step stages, due dates and detailed descriptions; whereas others can be much smaller and singular one-off tasks such as “backup website belonging to client X.” This itemization means that it is very hard for a task or activity (regardless of size) to slip through the net.

With each task assigned, it has to be marked as completed when done, and because of this anything that is outstanding is instantly visible as it remains in the incomplete status. Another pain that Teamwork Projects was able to successfully ease was the use of time logs per project and per task. If a client was to query how long was spent on their website build or logo design etc., we can show them the time and dates that this was actioned on and also as to how long it took to complete. This is because, while working on a task, team members can set a timer on Teamwork and stop it once the task is complete. This saves a time and date stamp recording the activity to show to the client.

At this stage you can get a good grasp as to how Teamwork Projects provides a great sense of transparency for both internal team members and external clients of the business. While in theory the idea of recording times and dates and assigning tasks may seem like a rigid and strict system, with Teamwork Projects it feels very natural and easy to do. After the quick learning curve, using these features becomes second nature.

All the while, even after a full project is completed, the activity logs and notes recorded throughout the duration of the project are stored. This means that the information is available should a particular note or phase of the project need to be revised at any time. This pertains to a transparent system in that you can view and access any project specific information whenever you need to do so.

By having everything laid out in one place also, the project manager can plan what resources will be needed going forward and with the company being more familiar with what projects are coming down the line, we can decide if we might need more staff to meet the impending workload.

Since adopting the use of Teamwork Projects, myself and the project manager Stephen have been glad to notice an increase in the quality of work at Ireland Website Design. This is not to say that before using Teamwork the work was bad or even subpar, but more so highlights that the consistency and tried and tested processes implemented with Teamwork ensure this high level of quality.

Teamwork Projects offers a safety net in that staff can monitor their procedures and checklists to ensure that every ‘box’ is ticked. There is now a scalable and repeatable process in use to deter error and retain consistency. We have found it much easier to hold team meetings as everybody is versed in and included on what is happening with the company, what stages projects are at and what the relevant steps are to have a productive working day.

As a matter of fact, the whiteboards in our offices are purely for decoration now – they are rarely used during meetings at all!

As you will have picked up on from reading this, one of the major advantages of Teamwork Projects is how a business can create itemized and systemized workflows. This has led to a noticeable increase in time management and professional work quality. As a run-off from this, we have also noticed an increase in the amount of referrals to Ireland Website Design. To me, this demonstrates that by having a tangible system for project completion and task management in place that this is being noticed by our clients in terms of work quality, which means that they can confidently refer us on to others seeking services that we offer. Teamwork.com provides a suite of options which we have not availed fully of yet – these are called Teamwork Desk and Teamwork Chat and are options which we cannot wait to explore and hopefully implement. Better put a note into Teamwork Projects so that they get actioned.

Teamwork Projects has seen a massive beneficial impact here at Ireland Website Design. I simply cannot envision returning to a time without it for the very real fear of losing the professional traction and growth that we have made. It is an essential tool for any modern business looking for a simple and effective task and project management platform that will not let them down.