task management – user's Blog!

November 13, 2017

6 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Delegating Work at the Office

A project management tool, such as Insightly, can certainly make the delegating work at the office process much easier. Of course, that statement depends on your team’s approach to using the software. No matter how amazing a tool might be, “garbage in” almost always results in “garbage out.”

With this in mind, it’s usually a good idea to define in-house best practices for delegation. After all, the last thing you want to do is create more confusion than clarity.

In this post, I’ll share six questions to ask before making your next delegation.

1. Is This a Project or Task?

The words “task” and “project” are used quite loosely in today’s business environment. In fact, some might say that they could be used interchangeably. In my experience, however, they are actually two separate things. A task is usually a smaller unit of work and may be performed with minimal instruction or oversight. A project, by contrast, typically involves many different moving parts, team members, and considerations. To successfully complete a project, a team may need to batch together several related tasks.

If you’re an Insightly user, you’ve probably already noticed that the software aligns very closely with the definitions that I’ve just outlined. Although both records share some common features (such as the ability to add collaborators and notes / comments), there are distinctive differences.

To illustrate the differences between tasks and projects, let’s discuss a simple example.

Let’s say that your company is preparing to launch a new website. Some business owners’ first impulse might be to simply assign a task to their IT manager, not knowing what is actually involved with a website re-launch (not you of course!). However, in most cases, a website is going to require cross-collaboration from many different stakeholders. Such stakeholders might include marketing, IT, sales, product, and senior management.

An Insightly project is the perfect solution for this type of work. The team leader can quickly create the project record, upload linked documents or files, add collaborators, and assemble a detailed game plan.

Once the project has been initiated, your project coordinator will then need to rely on his or her team to get things done. For a website re-launch, such things might include:

Collecting input from key stakeholders
Selecting a new web template
Setting up a development server / site
Creating website copy
Editing the content
Designing banner graphics
Implementing tracking code
Testing the development site
Taking the new site live
Inspecting the launched site for any issues
Monitoring web traffic

Each of these could be easily packaged up into an assignable task. To create tasks in Insightly, your project manager would simply open the project, click on “actions” dropdown menu, and assign accordingly.

Once the tasks are assigned, your entire organization gains instant visibility into who should be doing what.

One final note about tasks: a task does not necessarily have to be linked to a project. In fact, many (if not most) of the tasks you assign will have no linkage to another record. Use unlinked tasks to delegate small chunks of value to your team. Examples might include: ordering office supplies, building reports, filing government paperwork, updating payment details, sending invoices, or anything else that is relatively straightforward.

2. Does This Task Repeat or Not?

Since much of your delegation will depend on the creation of one-off tasks, let’s spend some time thinking about specific task-related situations.

A popular place to start involves the frequency of the work being done. Your team is far too busy to waste time creating the same tasks over and over again. Why not set certain tasks to repeat on predefined schedules?

I’ve written at length on this topic in prior posts, so I won’t spend too much time explaining how to configure recurring tasks. I will, however, at least challenge you to evaluate which things happen regularly in your business. Make a list and start building recurrence patterns in Insightly. In doing so, you’ll find more time to dedicate to high value, high impact activities – and, less time spent recreating the wheel.

To get your creative juices flowing, consider the following ongoing responsibilities that are common to many businesses:

Making quarterly tax payments
Filing business entity reports
Paying and collecting sales tax
Publishing blog content
Preparing agendas for standing meetings
Preparing your monthly newsletter
Posting your social media plans
Looking at monthly web traffic reports
Submitting expense reports by month’s end
Completing employee performance reviews

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I hope it at least helps you identify a few candidates for recurring Insightly tasks. It’s time you stopped wasting so much time on administrative work!

3. Who Should Be Held Accountable?

Assigning a task (or even a project, for that matter) does little good unless someone is accountable for delivering results. And, just because you create an assignment, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your team knows what to do next. You need to put some teeth into your delegation workflow.

Therefore, when assigning work, it is important to specify an assignee. For Insightly tasks, there are two basic options.

Assigning to an individual: This is probably the most common situation, and it’s basically what I’ve been referring to up until this point. You need to have a task done, so you pick a specific person to do the work. In Insightly, just search for the user’s name, pick it from the dropdown, and move on.

Assigning to a team: Insightly also allows you to assign work to a particular team. This can be done one of two ways:

Assigning the same task to each team member – Use this when each team member must complete the same task. For example, you might want each team member to do a final click-through of the development site (before going live).
Assigning one task to the entire team – Use this when it’s OK for any one person from the team to do the work and mark it completed on behalf of the entire group. For example, if you have three web developers working on a project, you might ask for someone to set up the development site (whoever can do it first). This approach, although probably less common, offers additional flexibility – especially for your team projects.

When it comes to projects, you can select a team member to serve as the primary point person (aka “user responsible” in Insightly). In most cases, you should probably pick the person who will be supervising the entire project, delegating related tasks, and coordinating the various other aspects.

4. Is This Project Going to Follow a Predictable Pattern?

No two projects are exactly the same.

However, some projects follow a similar pattern of events. Taking a page out of the sales pipeline playbook, Insightly also allows you to define project pipelines. This feature can be especially useful for companies providing products or services with very tight quality control procedures.

Here is a perfect example: Since I love baseball so much (and, since it’s October!), let’s imagine that your company manufactures baseball bats. Most of your orders come from two key distributors. When a distributor places an order, you have 30 days to source the materials, schedule production, make the bats, package and palletize the units, and deliver to their dock. There are many contingencies that go along with each step and, in the past, you’ve had difficulty with certain departments (which will remain nameless) doing their jobs. To improve your company’s workflow, you decide to set up a pipeline specifically for fulfilling distributor orders.

Once built in Insightly, you can reuse the pipeline for subsequent orders. No more scrambling at the last minute to fulfill an order. Your project pipeline keeps everybody on track, every single time.

Better yet, you’re able to achieve the much-needed visibility that you so desperately crave.

5. Could We Automate the Delegation Within Our Project Pipelines?

For the sake of discussion, let’s keep with the baseball bat example. After you run a few orders through your pipeline, you begin to realize that specific tasks happen during certain phases of production – regardless of order volume. For instance, during the sourcing stage your team must always do the following:

Select the correct vendor
Prepare the purchase order
Route the PO for internal approval
Submit a deposit
Track inbound freight
Pay the balance to the vendor

As we saw in the recurring task section, it’s inefficient for your team to waste time with manual task entry. Unfortunately, these are not technically “recurring tasks,” as they only happen when you have a project going.

Here’s some good news: As an Insightly user, you can harness the power of activity sets to reduce unnecessary administrative work. Simply configure your activity set for the correct pipeline phase, create your task templates, save your settings, and you’re done.

Now, each time a project advances into the sourcing pipeline phase, all tasks will automatically be created on your behalf. You can even auto-assign them to specific users in advance (or do so manually when the project changes phases).

6. How Will We Create Scalable Visibility?

As your team buys into your delegation methodology, you’ll likely witness an explosion of productivity – particularly in the volume of created and completed tasks and projects. This is, of course, great news, but it can also be overwhelming.

Luckily, your Insightly account makes it easy to track and report on your team’s productivity. Jump over to your reports and play around with the various task and project reporting options. Keep in mind that your reports will start out at a relatively high level, but you can always filter and drill down into the exact data points that you need.

Need to find out how many tasks an individual team member has completed? Want to see who is doing the most amount of work?

Insightly lets you build interactive charts and graphs with your data, making it easier to know who is performing – and, who could stand to pick up the slack.

Think Before You Delegate

As you can see, taking a structured approach to delegation can mitigate confusion and improve the productivity of your entire staff. It can also help you achieve even greater ROI from your Insightly subscription.

So, before doing any further delegation, assign yourself a task to think through these six questions. It might just be the most impactful task you ever create!

Matt Keener is a marketing consultant and President of Keener Marketing Solutions, LLC. Matt specializes in content marketing and strategic planning, having helped numerous Saas (software as a service) companies and other small businesses worldwide. Read more of Matt’s work, get his book, or connect on LinkedIn.

June 6, 2017

Time Management Secrets for Marketing Consultants

Time management secrets are essential for marketing consulting success.

Right-brained or left-brained? Creative or analytical? Strategic or tactical?

Marketing consultants have a fine line to walk between ideation and execution. On one hand, we must continuously develop innovative ideas that keep clients ahead of competitors. On the other hand, we also must be highly efficient in the implementation of campaigns and programs.

Luckily, technology is here to help.

1. Strategically Examine Your Work

Before spending too much time on the technology aspect of this article, let’s first step back and examine the bigger picture. If you’ve been in business for very long, you probably have a good feel for your business model. But, have you ever paused to specifically consider the commonality of your client engagements?

To do this, pull out a whiteboard or notebook and list your most important clients near the top. Below each client’s name, answer these questions:

What is the nature of my relationship? (hourly, fixed retainer, per deliverable, etc.)
What services do I provide within the framework of this relationship?
How much do I usually bill for each service?
Do any of these services follow similar production cycles, regardless of the client? (i.e. pitching, drafting, writing, editing, etc.)
Which steps in the production cycles are known to cause bottlenecks?
What do I (or others on my team) regularly forget to do?

What’s the point of doing this exercise? In the context of this discussion, you’ll be setting the groundwork for designing more effective workflows in your project management system. From a broader perspective, you may also identify new upselling opportunities. What works for one client typically works for several!

2. Divide Your Work into Two Camps

I’ve often heard experts compare marketing to an engine. Before you start your vehicle’s engine, you must first put in the right type of fuel. As your car takes you where you need to go, the fuel tank begins to run low. Unless you want to be stranded somewhere, you must continuously refill the tank before reaching empty. And, it’s always wise to have a qualified mechanic to run diagnostics and recommend ongoing preventative maintenance.

Like your car’s engine, your client’s marketing engine depends on you to fuel it. Quality content, wise SEO decisions, clean and mobile-friendly web design, and effective branding are just a few of the important ongoing responsibilities. Much like the mechanic, you also keep a close eye on performance by reviewing web traffic reports, lead data, email analytics, acquisition costs. You use this information to recommend exciting new initiatives, aimed at optimizing performance.

Although there are many moving parts, most tasks usually fall into one of two categories:

Repeating
One-off

Before going any further, make a list of your tasks that repeat. As you look at the many services you provide, it may be surprising to see how many occur on a recurring basis. Unless you’re already using project management software, simply remembering to do these tasks on time can be a chore. Looking at my own to-do list, I must admit there are many recurring responsibilities, such as:

Monthly

Prepare newsletters
Develop content plans
Review and interpret website traffic reports
Send invoices

Weekly

Review and approve social media plans
Publish blog articles
Prepare for 1×1 meetings
Check weekly SEO analysis reports

Daily

Provide feedback to web developers
Provide feedback to graphic team

Identifying your repeating tasks is relatively straightforward. But, what about things that are less predictable? For example, if you’re a digital marketer, you’ve probably helped a client promote a whitepaper or two. At first glance, this seems like a one-time engagement. In reality, although the specific whitepaper is new, the process typically follows a similar pattern. Spend time listing out the steps you typically follow to help bring a downloadable asset to fruition. Your list might include:

Gather content
Edit copy
Ask for client input on draft
Design the layout
Create landing page & thank-you page
Build email nurture sequence
Enable CRM integration for web leads
Seek client’s final approval
Set up goal tracking in analytics package

Go through this process for any other work that requires a specific production workflow but does not necessarily occur within a predictable time frame. Examples might include:

Launch a new website
Promote a webinar
Design a brochure
Write a guest blog post
Produce a training video
Deploy a new CRM system
Implement a marketing automation package

3. Create Standardization with Technology

Now that you’ve documented how your time is spent, the fun can really begin.

A system like Insightly can help create work standardization while simultaneously reducing your propensity toward forgetfulness. To illustrate, let’s see how client invoicing can be streamlined with Insightly.

Most of your clients prefer to be billed monthly. However, you have a few on bi-weekly billing. With everything else on your plate, keeping these dates organized is more challenging than it seems. Forgetting to invoice a client is not only bad for your cash flow, but it also sends the wrong message about your project management skills. If you can’t even send an invoice on time, how can you be trusted with other more important matters?

Automate your client invoicing by setting up repeating tasks in your project management system. For clients on a monthly schedule, you might just set up a single recurring task (to avoid unnecessary task clutter). In Insightly, that might look something like this:

Now, let’s take care of your handful of customers who prefer bi-weekly billing. Set the task to first occur on the next due date and select a repeat schedule of “every two weeks.”

Once set up, each completed task will automatically trigger Insightly to create the next instance on your behalf. Remembering to invoice clients on time just got a lot easier.

By automating your repeating tasks, you’re likely to find new time in your schedule. Reinvest some of this time into building more scalable operations for your business. If you’re using Insightly, you might pre-populate an activity set for each important process.

Recalling the whitepaper example from above, we discussed how the production of such an asset follows a specific, predictable process (gather content, edit copy, design the layout, etc.). Regardless of the whitepaper’s theme, these steps must be followed each and every time. It therefore makes sense to create an activity set to serve as a template for your milestones or project pipelines.

Once created, the activity set can be applied to all future whitepapers that your team produces. Instead of wasting time to figure out what happens next, all of your steps are clearly laid out with a single click.

4. Commit to a Disciplined Work Life

As a marketer, you’re an expert at juggling a lot of things at once. Client meetings, phone calls, emails, and webinars are just a few of the many priorities in your busy workday.

Without a disciplined approach, it can be easy to get very overwhelmed. After all, your clients count on your expertise to grow their businesses. To provide prudent and timely advice, marketers must possess expert-level prioritization skills.

How can you achieve this for your consulting business? Digitizing your to-do list (as outlined in the three previous steps) is a great place to start. Unlike handwritten notes or even a spreadsheet, a project management system helps you to visualize your daily workload. By assigning due dates for yourself, your tasks can be automatically sorted by due date or priority. Log in, get your plan, and stay focused on what’s most important.

It’s important to note that any to-do list (be it digital or paper-based) is only as good as what you make of it. Failure to check it regularly will cause you to only feel further behind.

To avoid this situation, set a goal of checking your to-do list at least daily (preferably in the morning). Identify that which must be done today; anything else can happen as a second priority (or be pushed back to a later date). As you complete tasks, be sure to mark them as “done” in your project management software. This step is particularly important for repeating tasks, as to ensure future tasks get created by the system.

5. Delegate First (When Possible)

An idle task represents a missed opportunity – particularly if it involves work that requires group collaboration. When facing a list of a dozen or more tasks, give preference to those that can be delegated.

For example, let’s say your task list is packed full of (among other things) client infographic ideas. Although you’re not the person who will design the graphics, each concept does require your attention. Before the designer can do his job, you must first scope out the idea, provide detailed instructions, and explain your overall vision. Making this type of delegation doesn’t require a significant investment of your time. But, with everything else on your schedule, it’s natural to push it off for later. Unfortunately, in doing so, your graphic designer will be twiddling his thumbs instead of adding value.

With a rock-solid project management system, you can expedite your delegation process, thereby increasing the likelihood you’ll actually do it. With Insightly, delegating is as easy as updating the assigned user, adding your comments, and saving the record. You can also indicate progress completion, priority, and/or status.

Of course, on unusually hectic days, it may not be possible to find time to delegate. Time management can be well intentioned but not always feasible. That’s OK. Just to be sure to set aside delegation time on your “normal” days (if there ever is such a thing) and always look for things that can be delegated downward. In doing so, you’ll keep others busy, improve your team’s output, and make your workload seem much more attainable.

6. Create Accountability

Even the best of plans are worthless without proper accountability.

As the days and weeks go by, you may be tempted to fall into your old routines. Don’t let this happen to you! Instead, seek technology that can serve as your accountability partner.

For example, Insightly can actually remind you when important tasks are almost due. By enabling task reminders, you can make sure that nothing slips through the cracks. For visibility into tasks assigned to other users, consider building a task report that tracks overdue tasks by owner. Advanced users can even opt to automatically receive emailed reports. Customize the delivery frequency to fit your business model and availability.

From a bigger picture perspective, it’s also wise to incorporate a retrospective process into your project management workflow. Not every project goes as planned, which means there are probably valuable lessons to learn.

As you peruse your list of completed projects (and/or associated tasks), consider these questions.

Did we finish behind, ahead of, or on schedule?
What caused the deviation from our original plan?
Were there certain tasks that held up the process?
Are certain team members consistently clogging things up?
Could some tasks be merged into fewer items, thereby creating less clutter?
Was the client satisfied with the outcome?
How much downtime was attributed to delegation delays?
At the end of the day, was this project profitable for our business?

Of course, an in-depth retrospective doesn’t make sense for every work product. Depending on your business model, it may be best to spot-check at random. Or, it may make more sense to review closed projects over a certain budget or hour amount. Either way, define a process for your business and stick to it. Use this information to further optimize future work and technology decisions.

Better Time Management = Happier Customers

Clients don’t pay you just for the sake of paying you. Rather, the goal for any consultant is to deliver more value than what the client pays. Making the most of every minute, hour, and day with better time management will ensure clients always see you as a net positive asset.

Thankfully, technology continues to provide innovative solutions to even the most difficult productivity challenges. Make time to regularly identify your bottlenecks, map more efficient workflows, and deploy software features that can bring your vision to life.

September 19, 2016

Insightly Grows With You: Creative Services Industry

Creatives, like writers, graphic artists, and videographers, have to juggle a lot of details, especially if you are an independent contractor. Insightly’s CRM can make your life much easier.

We know what it’s like. When you first start, you have just a few clients and projects are easy to track. You create the thing, and you get paid for the thing. Simple. Then your business starts to grow. You make a name for yourself and recommendations start coming in.

Suddenly, you have half a dozen customers and each wants several pieces of content. Your business is growing, and before long, you’re in danger of losing control. Some customers pay your invoices right away, others pay weekly, twice a month, once a month, net 30, or even longer. Now you’re dealing with deadlines, invoicing, new business negotiations, edits…this is not what you signed up for.

Contact Management

Over time, your contacts grow. You have a client list, of course, but you also have other creatives you trade work with or hire. Writers need graphics, videographers need scripts, graphic artists need text for infographics. We all cooperate with others to some extent.

Networking is another critical component to your business strategy. To help gain attention to your work, you may want to build a network of influencers. When your work is published, an engaged network will help you promote it.

Integrate and Organize

Let’s be honest. Most creatives are anything but organized. While there are exceptions, for the most part, we are messy, chaotic, and distracted. That can make the administration part of business difficult. Who wants to chase payments when we can be creating art?

Insightly integrations are the answer. Having all your information and projects for each client in one place allows you to stay on top of all those details and still get your work done.

For example, you can:

Connect your accounting program to track invoices, payments, and tax obligations. Insightly integrates with QuickBooks and Xero.
Connect with your calendar to ensure you don’t miss client meetings.
Store your files in the cloud with Box, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive.
Automate your proposals.
Call or text via Google Hangouts from your customer record – so everything you need to know is in front of you.

Task Management

Managing projects is easy with Insightly’s task management features. Set milestones, deadlines, and schedule follow-ups to keep you on track.

As you grow, you’ll likely have to hire help. Task management and Insightly integrations will help you manage virtual assistants, ghostwriters, editors, and other creatives you need to finish your projects. Your dashboard will allow you to see everything you need to know about your projects.

You’ll also be able to track metrics. How long does it take to finish certain types of projects? Which customers give you trouble and waste your time? When an old contact gets back in touch, you can check your history together and decide whether to work with them again. Your data will tell you where to concentrate your efforts to make the most money in the least amount of time. And which projects suck up tons of time without paying very well.

Growing With Your Business

You may eventually outgrow a free account. Your ambition may be to manage a team of creatives, or even coach others on how to build their careers. You may land a giant contract with a major brand. Or you may branch out to related work, like writing a novel or becoming a speechwriter. Insightly scales up as you need it. No matter how big you grow, we’ll be there to provide the organization and support you need.

Want to know how CRM helps creative industry professionals grow their businesses? Download our free eBook! From Chaos to Control: How Insightly Helps Advertising and Media Companies Succeed. We used a third party survey service (TechValidate) to interview over 300 creative professionals to reveal how CRM specifically helps creative pros. Download the eBook now!

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a huge variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

July 16, 2016

Are You Managing Your Sales Team Efficiently?

Whether you’re in sales, marketing, or administration, when arrive at work in the morning chances are you’ve got a long list of “to do’s” for the day. Unfortunately that list sometimes resides solely inside your mind, leaving other people in the dark when it comes to accessing important information. In fact, 44% of sales executives think their organization is ineffective at managing the sales pipeline, yet companies with effective pipeline management grow 15% faster (Vantage Point Performance).

Lead by example with specifics

Manually assigning leads is a tedious administrative process which takes time away from other more important tasks which will actually grow a business. And, manual processes are always subject to errors. So, manually assigned leads will likely be mis-assigned, not assigned at all, or assigned when the lead has already gone cold.

With Insightly you can build out and maximize an efficient workflow by creating lead-flow processes that are both logical and repeatable. If your sales team is generating solid leads, for example, you can use Insightly to help qualify their potential. Likewise, if you’re collecting prospect information through a web form, you can flow that information right into Insightly using the Leads tab.

We’ve recently added a new feature to lead management with the release of Lead assignment rules. Lead assignment rules automate the process of assigning leads as they are added to Insightly. If you’re a sales manager, this makes it faster and easier to distribute leads evenly or according to specific criteria, including:

Geographic area, by selecting fields like Postal Code, State/Province, or City.
Number of employees, by selecting the Employee Count field.
Your own custom fields that you’ve set up in Insightly.
Round robin, by selecting a team or multiple individuals to receive leads on a rotating basis.

By automating the lead assignment process, your sales reps stay informed in real time which helps them to more accurately schedule their daily sales activities.

To create a more comprehensive picture, Insightly Lead Forms are now also supported by custom fields. Custom fields give you the flexibility to create fields for non-standard information such as billing ID numbers, birth dates, contract renewal dates, project types, and referral information.

Meet in the middle

When used correctly, one of the many benefits of a CRM solution like Insightly is that it takes the burden off of your brain by minding the details for you. You have to meet in the middle, however, by taking the time to input information consistently. If you remain consistent, at the end of a busy day, you can stop worrying about the “herding cats” aspect of managing your team’s activities, knowing that you’ve got the end-to-end support you need to take a hot lead and turn it into a sale.

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a huge variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

March 2, 2016

3 Project Management Mistakes to Avoid

Project management can be considered almost an art. From start to finish, multiple moving parts and people involved can make it difficult to keep on track. Most projects go bad because there is a breakdown in communication between team members or there’s a lack of planning on the part of the project manager. So how can you make sure your projects are completed without a hitch? We’ve come up with the top three project management mistakes and our advice on how to avoid them.

Mistake No 1: Putting the wrong manager in charge.

One project manager isn’t going to be the right manager for every project. Project managers are often chosen based on their availability for the project — not necessarily their skill set. Putting the wrong manager on a project can mean failure even before it gets off the ground.

The solution: Instead of taking the easy way out, really look at the available project managers and chose the one that has the skills to get the project done right.

Mistake No. 2: Lacking communication.

Communication can be one of the most important factors in successfully managing and executing a project. Often times, when there isn’t enough talking happening, misunderstandings arise. As a result, deadlines are missed, time is misused, projects fall apart and dollars are wasted.

The solution: Project managers should have a set date and time for the team to meet each week. During these meetings, everyone should come prepared to give a detailed update as to where things stand from the week prior and their plans for the week ahead. Doing so will keep everyone on the same page and aware of others’ priorities.

Mistake No. 3: Micromanaging.

Don’t babysit your employees. No one likes to have a manager at their desk every moment of the day asking for updates.

The solution: Rather than constantly checking up on your team, use software that can allow employees to proactively provide updates and remind them of tasks and deadlines. This will allow you to take a more hands off approach to project management while still ensuring that things will stay on track or alert you when deadlines are missed.

Mistakes are inevitable, but by being aware of the most common ones and putting processes in place to avoid them, you can make sure your project runs smoothly and on time.