One of the best things about working here at CommonPlaces is our team’s dedication to improvement. It’s so refreshing to work with a team that is passionate about the success of the company! We work in an industry that is constantly evolving. It is essential for us to constantly evaluate the solutions that we use to ensure that we are able to meet our clients’ needs while maintaining clear communication, efficiency, and organization.
Over the past year it became apparent that our project management software Active Collab was no longer living up to our needs. Not to say that Active Collab is not good solution; it really just came down to us needing something that was more robust in terms of resource allocation and financial reporting.
In the end, we decided that Mavenlink was the best solution to meet the needs of CommonPlaces and our clients. Below you will see a few of the top considerations for us while choosing project management software.
Resource Allocation
Resource allocation is critical in our line of business and it was a major component missing from Active Collab. It is the norm for us to have multiple projects at varying phases of completion and up to 10 team members working on various tasks. As you can imagine, it can become very hard to keep track of workloads and schedule new tasks appropriately. Mavenlink has been a game changer for us in terms of resource allocation! With the click of a button we can now view every team member and get a detailed view of their workload.
Financial Reporting
While Active Collab was not void of financial reporting, we needed a solution that was more robust. Once again, Mavenlink did not disappoint. From financials to projects to people, there’s a report for that! As the Business Manager, I really appreciate the ability to create custom reports. Every client is unique in their needs. Mavenlink helps me satisfy clients’ needs as well as our own internal needs.
User Interface and Ease of Use
We really love Mavenlink’s visually pleasing interface and the ability to custom brand it. We liked that the company utilized features similar to some of the popular social network sites. This helps to give it a familiar feel to new users. We also like that it does a good job being intuitive to users’ needs. This makes it pretty easy for new users to navigate without much instruction. Although we did put some how to videos together for our clients to ensure that everyone is comfortable using it.
Client Collaboration
Our clients’ perception is our reality. It is essential that our clients be able to collaborate with us on their project every step of the way. We were very surprised at the number of solutions that did not allow this. Mavenlink really goes above and beyond in this department. Clients can even use their free profile to create and manage their own personal projects outside of their CommonPlaces project.
Commitment to Improvements
No one solution is going to land a check mark for every requirement on your list. The one thing that really put Mavenlink ahead of the other solutions we considered was the company’s commitment to improving their product. Along this journey we heard over and over, if you notice that there is something that we can improve upon, please take a moment to email us with your suggestions. In the 3 months that we have had Mavenlink, we’ve already been notified of 2 great improvements!
We are very excited to be able to start inviting our clients into Mavenlink to collaborate with us on their projects. We hope that they enjoy using it as much as we do!
