There was once a time when marketing was mostly about handing out flyers and placing radio adverts. Marketing has come a long way since then, and even digital marketing has been subject to evolution. Innovative marketing concepts like data-driven and personalized marketing are but few of the digital marketing trends explored by businesses and marketing agencies recently.
With larger players now in the market, contemporary digital marketing trends are more in line with interactive marketing and AI. Consequently, now more than ever, digital solution providers are required to constantly scale their infrastructure to keep their customers competitive and deliver their marketing objectives.
An ultramodern project management system is one such production infrastructure that is required to run a successful digital solutions company in 2020. And an accomplished Digital Solutions Company has just discovered OneDesk’s project management system is just what it needs.
Role Management, Project Planning, and Task Delegation with OneDesk’s Project Management tools
Rewarded for its excellence in the marketing industry, our new client is responsible for overseeing digital marketing operations for a multitude of clients. Considering that cyclical processes such as publishing digital marketing materials repeatedly are just a typical work week in most digital agencies, the company has been through its fair share of unproductive operational redundancy.
The company’s new effort to build data-intensive account management only made it more obvious that the company requires a better and more robust project management system to ensure a centralized location with all downstream services. This will allow the internal team to manage projects and reference critical project information conveniently.
OneDesk platform was built to operating as a standalone system while it is logically a seamless fusion of Project Management and Helpdesk systems which can be used independently.
OneDesk main project app is the core of its project management feature, and it houses an assortment of project management tools. Its project panel is a 3-pane view, highlighting the tools, hierarchy of projects, and a dockable task panel. The project hierarchy enlists all ongoing projects for each customer in a portfolio, and tasks for the respective client are organized within the projects in a customizable folder structure. While working on projects, users can create tasks and assign them to existing user(s) or team. These tasks support multithreaded conversations, allowing the assigned users to converse privately with other assignees or publicly with the client involved. As a versatile platform, OneDesk also allows users to create these tickets from existing support tickets for convenience.
The progress of tasks on OneDesk can be monitored at a glance using lifecycle statuses. This makes it possible for non-contributing followers of the project such as the admin, to stay updated about task statuses without shuffling through technical details.
The task panel is useful in configuring OneDesk tasks. It also houses several task-related tools including time tracking tools, agile points, and a messaging system specific to each task.
OneDesk supports different user levels and roles including project manager, project lead, standard member, and restricted member. Each of the roles have specific user privileges, and company has control over what privilege is assigned to which role.
Beyond just tasks, OneDesk also allows creation of other items such as feedback, support tickets and more. Users can even customize those items using custom fields feature.
Time Tracking with OneDesk Timesheets and Agile Points
Time tracking is a critical attribute of project management systems. It aids the project managers’ work by improving the precision of project schedules and eliminating ambiguities in the billing process.
OneDesk has an inbuilt time-tracking system embedded in the task panel. This makes it easy for users to log time elapsed on tasks assigned to them. Time logging can be automated on OneDesk by starting the timer tool which logs the time difference between when the timer was started and stopped.
The timer can also be paused if the user decides to take a break from the task. Hours worked are also logged manually by entering the hours logged – manually, or by importing stylesheets in MMP, MPT, and CSV formats.
By implementing OneDesk’s agile point feature, users can now keep track of commitments and impending deadlines.
Automating Repetitive Operations with Workflow Automation
Cyclical and repetitive operations are costly in a production environment. It only amounts to mismanagement of production resources. In the case of our new client, repetition consumes valuable time and resources which employees could otherwise spend on productive activities. Thus, OneDesk developed a workflow automation system capable of executing repetitive actions on behalf of the employees.
OneDesk workflow automation is capable of carrying out a vast range of operations including sending emails using and predefined customizable, auto-responding to messages, updating lifecycle status of tasks, auto-assigning tasks to predefined users, rendering tickets from emails, and more. Users can even create custom automation by creating a chain of trigger and action set that anticipates certain events and acts accordingly.
Resources and Dependency Management Using OneDesk Views
In a media solutions retail company where employees are required to toil with several thousands of tasks and micro-projects, it is essential to have access to resource management features that can provide analytic views and insightful reports. OneDesk has designed a handful of unique views to address these needs. With OneDesk views, users can visualize ongoing activities regarding all items and users which helps in prioritizing correctly and in making smarter decisions.
OneDesk views such as the Gantt charts view are particularly useful for efficient project planning, workload, and performance management. Other views include tree view, flat view, calendar view, status board, and dashboard. Each of these views will render a unique and workable visual representation of ongoing activities, all within the user-friendly drag and drop user interfaces.
Easy administration is a strong point in the OneDesk view system. The views are completely customizable. They feature robust filter capabilities, and users can save their custom views as templates for later – or even share them with other users who are also on the same OneDesk plan.
The combination of these views, reporting templates, and a robust filter system brings about analytics for effective reporting. Users can generate reports on items including tickets and tasks using existing reporting templates or by creating theirs. This is especially useful in managing data-intensive operations such as our client’s new account management systems.
Reports are either created manually or automatically – using OneDesk’s workflow automation system. Supported reporting formats are PDF and CSV formats, and they can be mailed to designated email addresses.
OneDesk’s Native Mobile App
Employees and teams are often on the move. The same can be said about project managers who have errands to run and meetings to attend. Therefore, the best project management software should not be confined to work desks.
With the OneDesk mobile app, all users can stay in the loop wherever they are. The mobile app is fully synchronized with the main project web app, assuming virtually all the features of the main web app. Users can comfortably create tickets on the mobile app, manage assigned tasks, create timesheets, and keep track of deadlines to name a few.
OneDesk app is available on the major mobile platforms including Android and iOS. Users can download the mobile app on their respective app stores.
Extending System Functionalities with Third-Party Integrations
Client specifications and operational requirements are constantly changing. OneDesk is a highly optimized system that does not reinvent the wheel. Instead, the system provides a third-party integrations option. Allowing the client to augment system functionalities when necessary.
OneDesk makes a concerted effort to simplify third-party integrations. Our technical team has developed, tested, and published hundreds of turn-key integrations for most mainstream enterprise software and payware. This was achieved through Zapier – A specialized third-party integrations platform.
OneDesk integrations also consider bespoke and in-house systems. The system can be integrated with bespoke software platforms by creating custom Zapps – Zapier Integrations. Both OneDesk’s technical team and Zapier’s teams have provided tons of comprehensive and helpful information on the subject. This can be accessed on the platform’s API documentation pages.
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