5 WAYS to TRANSFORM PROJECT COLLABORATION in MARKETING Real-World Projectplace Use Cases

5 WAYS TO TRANSFORM PROJECT COLLABORATION IN MARKETING Real-World Projectplace Use Cases

Accidental Project Manager | 1 PLAN, COLLABORATE, AND DELIVER EFFICIENTLY

As time-to-market becomes the benchmark for companies everywhere, the need to deliver customer value rapidly has never been more important. To meet this imperative, marketing teams need tighter collaboration and greater efficiency – all Bring teams together to get work done while working against the challenges of global teams and shorter with Projectplace deadlines.

It’s critical for marketers to plan and execute work with a bevy of stakeholders – from sales to senior leadership – if they  Easy to use want to deliver successfully. Enter Planview Projectplace™, the collaborative work management solution that brings teams  Great for virtual and distributed teams together to manage projects, improve their efficiency, and get work done.  Cloud-based for anywhere access

This eBook features Projectplace use cases told by marketers  Provides effective collaboration and organization who use the solution every day. Read how they are easily planning team projects, scheduling tasks, collaborating on  Manage all work and gain status reporting documents, and tracking their group’s progress using integrated Kanban boards, Gantt charts, and communication tools.  Achieve visibility for teams and stakeholders

Featured Use Cases:

1. Streamlining Content Development

2. Managing Project and Task Intake

3. Enabling Project Management and Collaboration

4. Advancing Campaign Planning and Delivery

5. Improving Cross-Functional Communication

5 Ways to Transform Project Collaboration in Marketing | 2 Streamlining the End-to-End Content Management Process By: Sarah, Director, Content Marketing

CREATIVITY IS KEY

We’ve all heard that one before, particularly those of us in marketing. For us marketers, developing content can be an arduous process when it involves numerous people, often spread out across different departments. Without a proper collaboration tool, marketing project management can quickly become overwhelming.

As the leader of the content marketing teams, I understand this challenge all too well. Seeing a content idea from conception to publication requires the work of writers, subject matter experts, reviewers, a primary proofreader, and also SEO experts, graphic designers, and developers, depending on the type and length of the content. Overseeing this process means managing all of these people, ensuring each person completes his or her part by a set deadline, and remaining flexible if adjustments must be made.

Relying on email and spreadsheets in the past made it challenging for our teams to keep track of numerous content pieces in the works. Once an idea was submitted to a writer, we were left in the dark as to their progress and had to set reminders to follow up when deadlines were approaching. We had to be hyper organized, and it created a lot of additional busy work. This all changed with Projectplace. To explain the benefits, I’ll walk you through the creation process (we leverage the Kanban boards in Projectplace to establish this workflow).

Content Marketing | 5 Ways to Transform Project Collaboration in Marketing | 3 PROJECTPLACE BENEFITS CONTENT MANAGEMENT EACH STEP OF THE WAY

1. Idea generation – With Kanban boards, it’s 3. Editing and review process – Instead of simple for anyone to create a new card under “new continuously sending drafts to reviewers via email, content request,” then assign it to whomever has documents can be uploaded to their specific cards the bandwidth to write it. We can filter the board by and edited all in one place. No more losing track of assignee, enabling us to view everyone’s workload, and the most-recent draft. This has been an amazing time delegate accordingly. saver! With the use of Projectplace, each aspect of blog management is streamlined and made more 2. Writing – Once a card is assigned to a writer or 4. Meeting deadlines – Each card can have a specific efficient. The cards and Kanban board eliminate the subject matter expert, it is moved to “in progress,” deadline, and we can easily view any that may be need for email and spreadsheets entirely, and trust and all communication regarding the content is kept lagging or adjust due dates. me, they are not missed. within the card. This way, all relevant information is kept together, rather than spread out in various emails 5. Publishing – The final draft with all edits is easily and spreadsheets. available when a new piece of content is ready to be published. The card can then be archived, to keep track of past communications regarding the content.

It’s amazing how much easier marketing project management has become, particularly when establishing content development processes and workflow.

Content Marketing | 5 Ways to Transform Project Collaboration in Marketing | 4 Managing Project and Task Intake to Excel with Agile Digital Marketing By: Michael, Director, Digital Marketing

Digital marketing project management can be challenging because we constantly have an ongoing, lengthy to-do list.

We add to the list within our own department, but we also receive website update requests from other departments. Our to-do list grows daily and is difficult to manage, with priorities constantly shifting and schedules having to be rearranged.

In the past, we lacked visibility. There wasn’t a single point person who received and organized requests; the expectation was that anything sent to the department would get done immediately, which resulted in chaos. Before getting organized with Projectplace, we used tools that were a lot more complex and not intuitive. It was easy to make mistakes, and it was difficult to track multiple users collaborating on a project.

Now, we use Projectplace daily. Mainly, we use the Plan feature for each sprint. We plan out different subtasks beneath each larger task, so we have something to tie the cards to. Before each sprint starts, the digital marketing managers and I will go through the request board for our department and see what projects we can include in the next sprint. We also look at requests received from other departments and try to fit those in when we can.

Digital Marketing | 5 Ways to Transform Project Collaboration in Marketing | 5 Projectplace keeps us organized and on schedule. The main tip that helped me in getting started In My Overview, each of us can see real-time status was to make an outline and use the Plan or updates without having to go to each board. We can Roadmaps feature to plan your project. Then you see everything coming up and past due at a high can have a productive kickoff meeting to ensure level. We frequently use the @reference feature to your team is on the same page. After that, it alert staff to updates and information as well as ask should be (relatively) smooth sailing! questions. This cuts out hundreds of emails and lets us communicate more efficiently with each other.

I especially love the Dependencies feature. It’s often the case that the progress of one card will depend on completion of another, and Dependencies makes it simple to keep track of each individual card and how it’s moving along its timeline.

Projectplace keeps us organized and on schedule.

Digital Marketing | 5 Ways to Transform Project Collaboration in Marketing | 6 Enabling Project Management and Collaboration in Product Marketing By: Cassidy, Product Marketing Manager

Our goal in product marketing is to empower our internal teams with knowledge they need about our organization’s solutions and products.

This includes helping them understand the market, competition, and external forces that affect the way we conduct business.

When you think of sales and project management software commonly used in an organization, you have your usual suspects: a CRM system, email, spreadsheets, and maybe document storage owned by a single person or gatekeeper. We had that same challenge in our sales enablement process: using a variety of tools that were fragmented and disparate. As a result, we had no clue if our team members were accessing and using the right resources to get their jobs done. In product marketing, we have to be organized, and Projectplace has helped us qualify our sales team with materials and market research to give them an edge over the competition.

Projectplace’s Documents feature is our go-to place to organize and keep our internal collateral. Even though my title is “solutions marketing specialist,” I act as our department’s project manager – I often coordinate content updates for sales and marketing materials. I’ll collaborate with a team of subject matter experts using my favorite feature – documents with version management.

Product Marketing | 5 Ways to Transform Project Collaboration in Marketing | 7 Before, it was difficult to keep track of who had the latest edits on documents that Another favorite Projectplace feature of mine is the ability to work on tasks, see we were working on. I’d send a version out for review, it would go back and forth in a project status, and collaborate on multiple devices. Our field team can be on the long trail of emails, and sometimes those edits would get lost and forgotten among road visiting customers, and if they need a particular file, they can quickly pull it up the shuffle. Now I can request a subject matter expert to review and edit a draft, I’ll and reference it on the fly within the Projectplace mobile app. The app interface is set a deadline, and Projectplace puts it through a process flow, notifying the editor so user-friendly, too. Imagine the impact that makes! to get it done. I don’t have to hover over anyone that I’ve assigned tasks to – all edit requests are done in one place, finalized, and ready to share. All is good with the At the end of the day, I really enjoy seeing it all come together when the field world of collaboration! team posts in Projectplace’s Conversations about their wins in real-time, and we can celebrate together as a global company. Team members no longer use outdated materials that they saved on their desktop – they now have access to the most up-to-date documents. They can see exactly the last time a file was updated. I @reference team members to let them know when it’s ready (secretly, I can track to see who’s using it)!

At the end of the day, I really enjoy seeing it all come together when the field team posts in Projectplace’s Conversations about their wins in real-time, and we can celebrate together as a global company.

Product Marketing | 5 Ways to Transform Project Collaboration in Marketing | 8 Advancing Campaign Planning and Delivery in Demand Generation By: Kyle, Senior Demand Generation Manager

As a demand-generation The programs I manage through email campaigns and successful, and it can be difficult to keep everything social media create touch points with our customers. organized and on track. Demand generation also faces marketer, it is my job to get Project management in demand generation marketing the problem of effectively planning campaigns. A customers excited about has many challenges, including organizing and campaign often requires multiple activities and tactics, planning. If your job includes long- and short-term each requiring numerous steps to be created. To be our company’s products and projects, from the simple to the complex, you can optimally effective, these demand gen activities need services. probably relate. to be spaced out over time. Running more than one campaign at once further complicates this, which is On any given day, I have multiple projects going on why planning is such a challenge. that each require individual attention to detail to be

Demand Generation | 5 Ways to Transform Project Collaboration in Marketing | 9 I use Projectplace to support demand generation activities to keep things organized.

Organization in Demand Generation: To combat organizational challenges, I’ve created a calendar in the Kanban section, with each card representing an email, webinar, demo, etc., and they are color coded accordingly. Each card allows me to create a checklist within the card to ensure that all steps get completed. Being able to see everything I’m working on ensures that I don’t miss any tasks and stay on track to complete my deadlines.

Planning in Demand Generation: I use Projectplace daily when I’m planning email sends. The calendar view I’ve created helps me plan resends and create consistency in emails, without overwhelming my audience. I can also assign a card to someone, which makes delegating tasks and assigning accountability clear. Once a task is completed, I’m notified, which streamlines the review process.

I encourage anyone in demand gen who’s How Projectplace compares: Compared to previous software I have used, Projectplace combines its looking to be more organized and effective functionality into one. Rather than using multiple disparate tools for planning and task organization, at planning to try Projectplace. I now only use Projectplace. It makes it easier to keep track of everything when it’s all in one place. I also enjoy the flexibility of Projectplace, as I can get creative and customize my board to work best for my needs. I encourage anyone in demand gen who’s looking to be more organized and effective at planning to try Projectplace.

Demand Generation | 5 Ways to Transform Project Collaboration in Marketing | 10 Improving Cross-Functional Communication By: Laura, VP, Marketing

Often, when cross-functional communication suffers, project deadlines are missed.

So, you can imagine the challenges are compounded when those people you need to communicate with are also geographically dispersed. Projectplace improves communication by breaking down these silos.

Before Projectplace, our marketing department used email and scheduled a lot of face-to-face meetings to collaborate and share information with extended team members. Once a meeting was over, we had to manage all the files and details from our laptops and via email. If we needed to collaborate on a content or creative piece, we sent it via email, then had to track who had the last edited version or had to consolidate changes into a fresh document. Collaboration was slow, as some people responded via email, while others didn’t. We couldn’t easily know who still needed to provide feedback. We knew there had to be a better way.

We now have a Projectplace workspace dedicated to fostering communications with solutions marketing and our extended marketing team members in Europe. Together we plan, collaborate, and execute Together we plan, collaborate, and execute on different on different demand generation activities marketing activities including content development, including content development, events, events, webcasts, and more, so we are all in sync with webcasts, and more, so we are all in sync what we intend to deliver. The global demand gen with what we intend to deliver. team, for example, can then leverage efforts done at headquarters and localize activities and campaigns to create demand globally. One thing I love about Projectplace is its versatility. If I have a special project, I can create a dedicated workspace for the initiative and invite others to participate and collaborate.

Marketing Leadership | 5 Ways to Transform Project Collaboration in Marketing | 11 Projectplace allows us to communicate upcoming documents to the documents tab so that 1) there question for the owner, the ability to ask questions and new marketing activities to the global field, is a source file, and 2) it improves the document on a given card is amazing. The owner receives a inside sales teams, and solutions marketing. management experience. We can then link the notification and can communicate quickly to stay on Social features allow everyone to see, “like,” and ask document to a card directly from the documents track. I find people are very responsive to comments questions on announcements related to the campaigns section, so if any changes are made, there is only one and feedback in Projectplace. And if other people we are running in one place – no more digging version. need to be brought into the conversation, there is through emails. Our communications are front and a history – so you don’t need to have a meeting to center on the conversations tab. For me, two features help improve cross-functional explain the matter. Having a communication chain communication the most. First: Breaking out tasks captured in the card speeds up progress and Document management is also easy in Projectplace. into cards on the Kanban board. I love seeing what saves everyone’s time. As part of our campaign communication, we use the needs to get done in cards and who is assigned to document management feature to alert the subject them. This helps everyone in the workspace see who matter experts when it is time to collaborate on a owns what – and it creates accountability. Second: document. As a best practice, we upload shared If you see a roadblock with a card or simply have a

Projectplace allows us to communicate upcoming and new marketing activities to the global field, inside sales teams, and solutions marketing.

Marketing Leadership | 5 Ways to Transform Project Collaboration in Marketing | 12 CONCLUSION

The use cases presented in this eBook are just some of the ways your organization Beyond marketing, Projectplace’s wide range of capabilities provide a seamless can use Projectplace for marketing teams and their ecosystem of inter-dependent solution for anyone in your organization – as well as external team members – to stakeholders. While the applications are endless, there are several common leverage regardless of responsibility, title, department or location. Teams in every denominators across these marketers. They are no longer burdened and held back industry and function across the globe are using Projectplace – from small work by email, disparate tools, and spreadsheets. Because Projectplace is extremely user- groups to large enterprises. Projectplace is ideal for multidisciplinary, virtual teams friendly and intuitive, everyone got up to speed on the solution quickly. They now who must collaborate on everything from regulatory compliance to creating today’s lead with confidence and deliver strong results for both internal stakeholders and complex, digital products and services. customers through advanced visibility, communication, and collaboration. Experience Projectplace for yourself and your team by signing up for a free trial today.