How does using LiquidPlanner help increase our customers’ level of productivity?

Well, we’re going to let them tell you in their own words! Here, three LP customers—Knowmad, Complete Spectrum and Beneport—share detailed highlights about how using our online project management software has improved the way they plan projects, manage resources, and increased their team’s productivity.

Customer #1: Knowmad

Diona Kidd is one of the founders of Knowmad inbound marketing agency. Since 2011 Diona and her team have been able to streamline their processes and more accurately manage their resources by using LiquidPlanner’s collaboration, time tracking and analytics features.

Here’s what Diona has to say about how using LP has benefited their business.

More effective resource management—like a crystal ball:

“Now that everyone on our team tracks their time in LiquidPlanner, it’s easy for me or one of our campaign managers to quickly analyze the workload, re-assign tasks if necessary, or bring on extra resources if there are competing priorities. LiquidPlanner is like having our own project management crystal ball, helping us to more accurately predict internal capacity and meet client expectations.”

Improved productivity and intelligence using ranged estimations:

“We have close to three years’ worth of time estimates captured in LiquidPlanner so there is quite a bit of intelligence to be gleaned by analyzing how people estimate their time.

If someone on the team is consistently missing their estimates, it might indicate an opportunity to provide additional training. It has also been invaluable in helping us build proposals for similar project types since we can look back at the record to see how long a comparable project actually took us. This saves us from re- estimating the scope of a new project and ensures that we maintain our margins.”

10 hours a month saved through collaboration and transparency:

“Because everyone on the team uses LiquidPlanner as their project control console, we’ve eliminated the dreaded monthly ‘traffic meeting’, saving our team at least 10 hours a month. But perhaps more importantly, this additional layer of transparency has improved the situational awareness of our team in general.” For more details, read the full case study.

Customer #2: Complete Spectrum

“I’ve always been a champion of improving productivity and identifying opportunities to do things smarter and faster,” said Michelle Cookson, Project Leader for Complete Spectrum, a marketing services agency. Complete Spectrum has been steadily growing in the past several years, and Michelle recognized that in order for the firm to efficiently scale they would need to invest in better operational processes in order to reap benefits down the road.

Here’s what Michelle has to say about LP’s benefits:

Removed chaos, solidified business:

“LiquidPlanner has removed so much chaos from our working lives. It’s really become core to what we do—it’s solidified our business so we have confidence that we can scale it sanely and intelligently.”

Quicker insight into resources:

“Every resource has weekly billable goals so it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to make them use one system for managing time and another for managing their project work since the two are so integrated. By consolidating everything project-related into a single workspace, we can gain valuable insights into how people are spending their time while allowing billable resources to focus on client work.”

Effective workflows for everyday tasks:

“Over the course of seven years, we’ve developed quite a bit of intellectual property around our internal processes so it’s enormously helpful to be able to codify those processes into workflows using the Checklists feature in LiquidPlanner.” For more details, read the full case study.

Customer #3: Beneport

Bill Lewis is the Vice President of IT at Beneport, the leading national benefits education, communication and enrollment firm. When he led Beneport’s technology redesign, he searched for an easy-to-use online project management solution that team members could update and use themselves, without the need for a dedicated project manager on the IT team. That product turned out to be LiquidPlanner.

Here’s what Bill says about LiquidPlanner’s business benefits:

Increased productivity:

“Without a doubt, LiquidPlanner has dramatically increased productivity at our company. The deluge of email has stopped, team members can make workspace changes themselves, and our meetings are now more focused on making real business decisions.
With LiquidPlanner, every single action item and nuance of the projects was captured in the workspace, so nothing fell between the cracks. No surprise, quality went up as a result.”

Streamlined processes:

“The application was so intuitive, all our front line employees felt confident they could manage the software themselves. I know from experience that dedicated project management IT professionals are not only expensive in terms of overhead, but they also add another layer of complexity between the project team and the software.”

Freedom from spreadsheets:

“With Excel, only about 20% of the work was represented because the spreadsheet doesn’t inherently go down to the task level. With LiquidPlanner, every single action item and nuance of the projects was captured in the workspace, so nothing fell between the cracks. No surprise, quality went up as a result.”

Managing more clients and thriving:

“LiquidPlanner will allow us to grow the staff—and the associated project capacity—without losing control.”

What LP feature has improved your teams’ productivity? Tell us in Comments.