Mavenlink Contributing Guests

”Mavenlink is a total time and money saver.” - Marcella Palmer, CEO of M.INK Productions, LLC

Q: Sean Crafts (Mavenlink Co-Founder) - Can you tell us a little about your business?

A: Marcella Palmer - M.INK Productions, LLC is a content creation organization. We conceptualize, write and produce video content for the Internet and Television. M.INK helps its clients create and integrate video into their strategic plans.

We originate Internet programming that supports their brand, educates and engages current customers, attracts new ones, and/or increases revenue. In addition, we help companies present and communicate their message to sponsors, investors and employees through the use of video.

Our production services provide customers with quality video and voiceovers -- a solid message shot in HD -- for in-house purposes (such as training, orientation, etc.), webmercials, social media, blogs, vlogs, websites, news/v-letters, commercials, PSAs, b-roll, conferences and more.

Q: Sean - How did you find Mavenlink?

A: Marcella - Through the Google Apps Marketplace.

Shea Maultsby - Yeah, we were searching for an affordable, easy-to-use project management tool and came across Mavenlink.

Q: Sean - How has Mavenlink helped your business?

A: Marcella - For us, Mavenlink is a total time and money saver through optimized organization. As we grow at M.INK, drawing in new clients, taking on larger projects, hiring on more help to get the job done in our accustomed high quality manner, it is so important to keep everyone organized.

It is easy to spend a fair amount of time searching for and resending missed emails to project team members. A needless, redundant task immediately ended by using Mavenlink to keep everyone on track within the same online project workspace.

Shea - Mavenlink has helped us to get organized, easily communicate with team members, manage multiple projects. It has definitely helped us save time, which ultimately equals saving money. It helps to keep all of the team members on track and enables us to collaborate without sending as many emails.

Q: Sean - What do your clients, consultants, and fellow co-workers say about Mavenlink?

A: Marcella - Our employees and contractors like the streamlined workflow, clear communication, one stop shop for all project management information, status and updates. We all like the idea of tools that help us track time and expenses, billing and budgeting, but we're still pretty new to and working on getting into the groove of using these valuable features.

Shea - We are currently using Mavenlink with our employees and contractors. So far, we are all finding Mavenlink to be extremely helpful, but have yet to use when collaborating with our clients.

Q: Sean - Please explain the Results of using Mavenlink and Google Apps.

A: Marcella - Sharing Google Docs in Mavenlink is a huge time saver. We not only have our production scripts and notes at our fingertips right in the project, but we have a useful record of everybody's minute-by-minute input. We also like the messaging feature. You don't have to be logged into your Mavenlink project to receive important emails. We can access Mavenlink right from our Google Apps account. We also use Google Voice, Chat and Calendar.

Shea - We use Google Business Apps for email and calendar and can easily access Mavenlink from Google Apps. One disappointment is that we have not been able to get the Task Manager in Google Calendar to update properly when checking on the "Sync Project Tracker with Google Tasks" link in Mavenlink. [Sean: We are looking into the Google Tasks issue, as this should not be a problem.]

Q: Sean - Anything else you want to tell us or features you’d like to see?

A: Marcella - We're pleased with the ease of use, flexibility and cost effectiveness of Mavenlink.

1) We’d like to see, and I know you've heard this a trillion times, a mobile app that we all can use no matter what your platform: iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Droid, etc. We're all ""on the go"" and are constantly communicating through our phones and iPads and whatnot. I tried using Mavenlink through traditional methods, but it’s not really the same experience.

2) A scheduler with an audible and/or text alarm/notification would be nice.

3) A Mavenlink project time tracker would also be a fine addition with an offline app you can use through your Mac Dashboard, then send the time data right to a particular project in Mavenlink.

Shea - To echo Marcella, so far we really like Mavenlink, but would love to see it as a mobile app for devices like Blackberry and Android.

M.Ink Productions, LLC can be found on Facebook and Twitter, or contact M.INK Productions directly.