How Pravda Media Group increased team productivity by over 40% with Teamwork

Pravda Media Group is a B2B digital marketing agency that combines digital strategy, analytics, content, and cutting-edge technology to help their clients’ businesses grow rapidly in today’s market. Located in Tel Aviv, Israel, Pravda Media Group serves clients across the world who want to grow their business without getting overwhelmed by the technical aspects of marketing.

Kfir Pravda, CEO at Pravda Media Group, spoke with us about choosing Teamwork after graduating from the Basecamp platform. Since using Teamwork, Kfir’s team have seen a 40% increase in productivity and a new improved ability to create a more adaptable working week to facilitate customized workflows.

Outgrowing basic tools

Like most companies, Kfir started Pravda Media Group with simple, familiar tools — all communication happened through email, which required zero training, but grew very time intensive as their client list expanded. Tracking requests and files through a maze of messages became a daily frustration, and it was impossible to create a clear, readily accessible catalogue of changes and communication on each project.

Kfir wanted a better option for the management side of the business, too. Even with regular meetings for status and progress updates, he didn’t have an effective way to set priorities or assess which project or client needed immediate attention. Locating or sharing information quickly was also problematic.

The team turned to Basecamp initially to give them some control over their task management and planning needs, but they soon hit limitations with that software. “We worked with that platform for a couple of years, but we quickly realized that there were a lot of features missing. Without those features, we were losing accuracy for our project timelines and team productivity,” said Kfir.

Superior transparency and insights

After comparing several other platforms, Kfir and his team decided on Teamwork as the most intuitive and flexible tool. The transition happened almost instantly using Teamwork’s specialized import tools. “In about seven minutes and a few clicks, we were up and running — it was awesome!” Kfir said.

During the first few months with Teamwork, the Pravda Media Group team were drawn to the tools they had been missing in Basecamp: Gantt charts for precise planning, project templates and bulk edits. Notebooks stored important discussions and meeting notes, so if there were any questions, it was easy to get instant answers. “We were so happy to have a platform that was responsive to the way we work,” said Kfir. “Adjusting timelines or locating information was suddenly so fast.”

The activity log in the dashboard not only keeps everyone on track with updates and priorities, it has become everyone’s go-to location for getting individual and whole-team data. “I call it the heartbeat of the business because I’m actually able to see everything that is happening,” said Kfir.

Kfir uses the dashboard to review progress for each individual and for the entire company. During weekly meetings, he checks in with each team member’s progress and where they might be getting overloaded. On the project level, he uses specific filters to analyze project health, including milestones, resource allocation, potential bottlenecks, budget projections — the whole package.

“My role as a manager is to empower my team members to do their best work. Now I’m able to do what I call ‘proactive mentoring.’ Because I have transparency with tasks and progress, I’m able to jump in and give them guidance on everything from client interactions to troubleshooting.”

Extraordinary flexibility and efficiency

Removing barriers has also allowed the Pravda Media Group to transform their workweek and achieve new levels of efficiency they hadn’t anticipated. Kfir estimates that productivity has increased 40% or more since adopting Teamwork — an unthinkable achievement only a few years ago.

Kfir quickly started seeing a compounding effect from using all of the time-saving tools in Teamwork. Pravda’s client list was growing, and the team was consistently making on-time deliveries.

He also realized that Teamwork gave his team the freedom to work from anywhere, so he decided to run an experiment. He switched from a schedule that required team members to be in-house four days a week to a plan that only required them to work at headquarters one day a week. The other four days each week, they were free to work from any location they preferred.

The results were astonishing.

Clients are also getting a better service. They have increased transparency, know what is happening and when, and have more personal contact since team members are free to visit clients on site more regularly. Kfir has even started recommending Teamwork to his clients to help deliver work more efficiently across their organizations.

On top of this new success, Kfir also says that work is all-around easier. Using Teamwork has actually helped Kfir’s team work smarter, becoming more focused on impact and outcomes rather than busy work.

“What both my team members and I can attest to is our work is much more focused now. We’re not wasting time finding information, or trying to figure out next steps, or get status reports of other people’s work. We’re all 100% aligned now and working at full power, pushing ahead towards a clear goal.”