Recently, Tom Bellen, a product manager at Aysling, conducted an online webinar on how to manage projects using MagHub. He covered a range of topics, including project templates, using the project management system for internal and external projects, and using it for customer onboarding as well.

Almost 80 percent of high-performing projects use project management software. And almost two-thirds of project managers say they would use such software if they had more support from their organizations.

Here are some of the key points from Tom’s presentation:

MagHub’s Project Management Module

It allows you to view all of your projects. We’re also adding a new widget for project tasks soon which will be kind of an agenda list of the tasks that you want to work on, Bellen said. So if you are a salesperson, you do have this type of functionality. A person can see your projects, open milestones and tasks. This is something that can be accessed easily from the dashboard as well.

Project Templates

MagHub has found that a lot of customers like to do projects by creating different kinds of project templates and using these for such things as creating media kits or updating their website or newsletters. So one helpful thing that you can do within our system, if you do need to update something like a media kit or website, or running an event, is to set up a template with the different items that you need to do with different milestones and sets of tasks and how long it should take.  You don’t have to constantly recreate the same project over and over again and add the same tasks.

Internal Projects

If you want to do some internal design work, the project management module is a good option. You can select from a template for a media design kit, rate card update, website newsletter, or other projects you have to do internally that you want to keep track of.

You can add due dates, put in descriptions and users or predefined user groups. We at MagHub use this extensively in our day-to-day workflow.

Another thing we use the project management platform for is all the time and work that we put into running our business.

We at MagHub enter our time for everything we do, so we can track the hours and costs for support, for design, or anything else we happen to be working on. We know who is available and who is not, and what our internal projects are costing us.

External Projects

If you are using our project management platform for customers, you can track the hours for billing purposes.  You can edit the particular project and assign users, as well as assigning vendors to work on it, who might be freelancers. Then you can tie the project to different purchase orders and set a start date.

 You can take advantage of a variety of fields, including associating the customer and the contact, so the customer can interact with you on a particular project.

The great thing about associating a project with the customer is that the customer can see information about the project. So you can have tasks set up to give them a report if they check in on how things are going, so they can interact with you directly through the project. They could also open or contribute to a project discussion if they have a question about something. This can be sent directly to you and will be tracked in the project.

Associating the customer with the project gives them that interactive experience.

Or you can create a project to keep the lines of communication open, and use the platform to send customers different files and information outside of all the other things that might be in the client center, such as artwork or orders.

You can also create a project and tie it to an order. It can automatically generate a list of milestones for the people working on the project. When the project is created from the order, all of the items in the order that need to be delivered, whether it be a newsletter or digital media, will appear. You can also share information, see how much you need to bill, and have the ability to track the profitability of a project.

Onboarding

We at MagHub also take advantage of the project management platform to onboard all of our customers. Every one of our customers gets onboarded when an order comes in. We create a project for them for onboarding purposes. We will create the project from the order and then we’ll put in notes, and then this information goes from the sales team to the delivery team so they understand the objectives of the onboarding. Then we can create different milestones for this data, tasks and other items, which also helps if there are questions or issues that need to be communicated between the teams. It also helps to keep our staff on track. We track the hours that we put toward the project. Everything is there. We know we’re delivering what we’re supposed to be delivering. We can see what the budget is versus what our total cost is.

We are happy to show you how MagHub works. Contact us to learn more or to set up a real-time demonstration.