As Project Manager for Do It Tennis’s new Content Development Team, I needed a streamlined task management solution that would help more than hinder. As a small eCommerce company in the sports industry, we have a constant stream of work with a rapid turnaround that must meet the high standards needed to succeed in this highly competitive niche industry. Efficient and effective communication around tasks is essential.
The importance of management tools
I have been in the digital marketing industry since 2010, and I’ve seen the evolution of task management tools from BaseCamp to Wrike to TeamWork and everything in between. I can’t say enough about the importance of a task management tool that doesn’t take longer to learn than it does to train new employees to do the job they were hired to do.
After reviewing several options and having sat through more than a few failed projects due to a poorly managed PM tool, I knew my team had to have something streamlined yet full of features and intuitive navigation. I hire content creators, not programmers, and most of them have never used a project management tool before.
I chose ActiveCollab after working with the talented team of professionals at w3Care and appreciated how easy it was to navigate from task to task, quickly catching up on daily progress and all related communications. This PM tool has all the standard features of other more ‘robust’ (read ‘over-complicated’) tools but is presented in a simple and intuitive manner that is neither overworked nor overlayered. I just can’t say enough about how simple ActiveCollab is for first-time and easily-lost users, not to mention already-spread-too-thin project managers.
Good customer service is also a feature
However, the best part about ActiveCollab, which I had the recent pleasure of discovering, is the Support Team. A recent update removed a feature I found myself heavily dependent on. I reached out to the Support Team through the Chat feature and received an immediate response. Even though the agent was helpful and provided a reasonable explanation, I can’t say that I was happy when I learned that there was no intention of restoring that feature. Each day, I found my productivity lessening and was starting to lose heart that there was a project management tool committed to user experience over robust (read ‘over ambitious’) features. I dreaded the idea that I would have to move my team and lengthy task list to a new PM. Rather than committing to the switch, I found myself in daily communication with the Support Team, checking in on the status of my help ticket and my request to restore the feature.
Each and every team member that had the misfortune of chatting with me was friendly and helpful, even after I knew I crossed the threshold from persistent to runner-up-for-most-annoying help ticket at the annual Xmas party.
After speaking to what felt like every company member at all levels, the ActiveCollab team stepped outside their routine scheduled updates to restore the feature I had been missing.
ActiveCollab is my favorite tool
My efficiency has been restored, and ActiveCollab remains my favorite PM tool. I even just discovered new features today that I had been previously unaware of. This is a perfect example of the idea that Simple-to-Use is not synonymous with Simple.
Thank you, ActiveCollab! I look forward to a long and efficient relationship with your talented and customer-oriented team.
