EssenceDesign, a Swiss agency founded in Lausanne in 1996, employs twenty people; brand designers, graphic designers, copywriters, consultants and managers, its clients are both Swiss and international. Dominique tells us that EssenceDesign "has all the expertise necessary to help clients strengthen their brands." The agency helps clients formulate strategies by positioning and optimization of architecture. It creates or reinforces brand identities through names, logos, colors, world image and primary contact points such as print, packaging, exhibitions and even museology. Although all the traditional electronic media are used; websites, mailings, social networks, etc. they also develop their own brand-specific applications.
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| Faced with the constant growth in Web Development and the planning issues that arose, the Department was looking for a solution that could not only organize and manage projects internally and with its customers but also meet the customers' criteria for the exchange of information and still would allow the employees to plan their work. The solution needed to allow the agency to achieve the following main objectives: - share information - simplify planning - save time - implement analyses - reduce the time spent on managing projects within each department A member of their team discovered Planzone while researching on the Internet and gave the information to Dominique who, after a cursory review was quickly convinced that Planzone offered the solution they were looking for. The ability of the Gantt Chart to give an immediate multi-project overview of project's progress and availability of resources was, in his eyes, the deciding factor At present, the agency has 25 active projects and the management of the many, associated resources is a complicated operation. Some of the other Planzone features that convinced Dominique are: |
- its low cost - the speed of implementation - ease of use - the trial period Each customer becomes a project in Planzone, for example, the creation of a website for a client is a Planzone project. If the agency has several activities for the same client, the following organization ensues: the creation of a global project with activity # 1 the creation of the website, including all the corresponding tasks and activity # 2 the creation of a web application for the same customer.Working in this manner allowed the agency to have a global vision of projects for each client and quickly made Dominique and his team more efficient in their planning, mainly owing to the schedule of resources and tasks that is automatically created. Within the Web Development team of 10 employees two user profiles are earmarked for using the Planzone features. Dominique, as Project Manager, primarily uses tasks and scheduling. He creates the project's activities, the tasks related to them and assigns the resources to each task. His employees are organized according to their schedules, tasks and hours. The 10 team members regularly create new discussion threads where new ideas are launched. The diverse comments compiled often give rise to future internal projects. |
“ Planzone quickly allowed us to optimize work schedules for the users, thanks to the
scheduling of resources and the automatic creation of tasks ”
| Dominique particularly appreciates the overviews that Planzone offers. They enable him to have a global vision of all projects and at the same time, details of the progress of each project that is active in the agency. He can manage the work of 10 people and work on 8-10 projects simultaneously. The statistics obtained allow him to better define the resources and skills needed for future projects. By analyzing the data and drawing on past projects, Dominique can generate models or projections that could apply to future projects. When he sets up a new project and allocates activities or tasks, he knows in advance the most suitable resources to be used. | Thus scheduling for a new project becomes much easier. To set up a project for one of his clients, he is able to define, for example, that for the new project of creating a web application, he will need the resource of web design which will be 35% of the project. In contrast, the creation of a website will use 50% of the web design resource. The benefits of implementing Planzone for everyday use in the agency are significant. For Dominique, a typical day working with Planzone is: - consultation and control of existing tasks - the creation of new tasks - the display of schedules, per user, for daily management |