Mavenlink Contributing Guests

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

A: Justin Knechtel - The Small Potatoes is a Seattle based non-profit design collaborative. We provide website design and hosting services to the small business and non-profit community in the Northwest. We're made up of established freelancers and use all of our proceeds to provide the tools, education, and resources needed to help high school students interested in digital media explore their love of design and to help them pursue a degree and career within the digital arts.

Q: Sean - Can you explain why you needed a Project Management solution when you found Mavenlink?

A: Justin - As the saying goes, “time is money” and we were in need of a product to help us better collaborate with our clients, subcontractors, and freelancers. Our goal was simple: Increase Efficiency.

We tried several other Project Management products, but for one reason or another, they hurt more than they helped. Some Project Management products we tried flooded Small Potatoes with useless features that just made the product more complex than it needed to be. This of course led to situations where it cost us time to train clients and subcontractors instead of saving time. Clients and subcontractors kept sending emails outside of the workspaces, nullifying our goal of managing these projects in one virtual location.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, some tools stopped short of building out a complete platform, offering a couple of valuable features, but not enough breadth to impact efficiency. We ended up with double logins, double entries and double effort, exactly the things we were trying to eliminate.

Also, as a Google Apps users, we wanted something that integrated well with Google Apps. For every Small Potatoes client, we recommend and offer to set up and manage a Google Apps account for them. We don’t charge or make money on this, instead benefiting from Google providing excellent tools that truly help small businesses (our clients) work more efficiently and reduce costs, which ultimately reduces the level of customer support we need to provide. Also, if our clients are using the same tools we are then we can be more proactive with suggestions, updates and problem fixes. All of this allows us to continually be in front of our clients and establishes us as the experts.

We wanted to ensure that we could leverage our own Contacts, Docs and Calenders, and that they would remain in sync and updated as we worked with our clients and freelancers.

Q: Sean - How has your experience been so far with Mavenlink?

A: Justin - With so many folks on our team, we needed a solid Google Docs integration and simple posting capabilities for all types of attachments, which Mavenlink has provided. In your product, we found the great client management “wrapper” we were looking for to put around all of the Google Apps we currently use. In addition, we needed a solution that our users could quickly adopt with confidence knowing that all of their sensitive data and conversations would be secure.

We really like the ease in which we can jump in and began getting work done in the system, and loves that we no longer have to spend time training clients or freelancers on how to use our project management solution. And for those clients that just can’t let go of email, we are glad that Mavenlink’s email integration allows them to participate actively in projects without ever having to let go of their Blackberry or smartphone. Instead of training others, we are now freeing up time to spend on our many other priorities, such as keeping clients happy and business development. We can conduct business better.

Another key capability for us was the ability to manage permissions and controls within the platform. As the team lead, we want access controls to keep everything centralized, but also subject to the appropriate views and access permissions, which keeps everybody happy and more productive. Now that everyone is safely working together within one system, we can easily track time, expenses and create online invoices using your intuitive finance center. By bringing all of these capabilities under one login, we have removed the “double login, double entry, double effort” effect.

Q: Sean - Can you give us specific results from using Mavenlink?

A: Justin - Our efficiency has increased tremendously. At a minimum, we figure that Mavenlink has freed up 20-25% of time per week. We did not expect this much benefit coming in, and are still amazed at the efficiency gains. To put it simply, “Our business collaboration capabilities flow so much smoother across all of the project we manage”.

###

At a Glance

What Small Potatoes wanted to do:

• Increase efficiency around project collaboration, time & expense tracking, invoicing and payment processes
• Find a secure, easy to use environment to work with clients and freelancers online
• Integrate online workplace with Google Apps

What they did:

• Used Mavenlink’s online workplace to manage a team of over 40 freelancers and 50+ active projects
• Create secure project workspaces for his clients and freelancers to interact, track time, track expenses, invoice and finalize payments online

What they achieved:

• 20-25% time savings each week
• Delivered over 98% of his projects on time and on budget
• Happy clients and freelancers