Today’s Business is a full service multi-channel marketing agency based in northern New Jersey. The company’s 30-person team delivers comprehensive, data-driven digital marketing campaigns for its clients using a mix of marketing tactics including SEO, web development, email, and affiliate marketing.
“We needed an intuitive platform to improve the visibility and organization of our work, plus new business opportunities.”
When your agency offers myriad services to a growing portfolio of clients, staying organized can be a challenge. As Today’s Business discovered, this is especially true when you don’t have the right technological solutions for requirements like task management and time tracking.
“We were having to jump around on several programs to track everything,” said Joe Sanfilippo, Manager, Growth and Partnerships, Today’s Business.
“It was a case of too many platforms – one for project management, another for time management, another for sales tracking, and so on,” said Sanfilippo.
In general, Joe was happy with the individual tools Today’s Business used to manage its work. But the lack of integration between those tools was a problem.
Busy team members were logging into multiple tools and platforms each day, while accessing any specialist marketing tools needed for client work at the same time. This was creating a barrier to the team’s full adoption of important software and processes.
Sanfillippo explained how the various tools created more hurdles for his team and organization.
“Teamwide adoption was low, so we needed an intuitive platform to improve the visibility and organization of our work, plus new business opportunities,” he said.
Everything on one platform
Sanfililppo recognized that if Today’s Business wanted a high uptake of work software among its team, then the agency just needed a single interface. With one set of login credentials, each team member could access everything they needed, including sales, project management, and daily tasks.
After researching a variety of options, members of the executive team at Today’s Business, led by Executive Vice President Chelsea Giacchi, Chief Digital Officer Billy Ash, and CEO Tom Ottaiano, decided the right solution would be to adopt a selection of products connected to their existing project management solution: Teamwork.
They added Teamwork CRM for the sales process, Teamwork Spaces for collaboration and storing content, and Teamwork Chat for team communication. Implementing these Teamwork products gave Today’s Business all the key functionalities they needed within a single platform, eliminating the need to use a variety of separate software platforms.
“We are now able to time-track, manage projects, track sales, and chat from one place,” said Sanfilippo.
Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Today’s Business has switched from mainly office-based to a fully distributed remote model. Sanfilippo explained how this development made Teamwork’s collaborative toolset more important than ever.
“Now that we’re totally remote, it’s crucial that everyone has their tasks within Teamwork, and that they are tracking their time correctly,” said Sanfilippo.
In Sanfilippo’s experience, Teamwork CRM in particular, has played a big role in making internal collaboration better coordinated and connected across the organization.
“Everyone having access is the biggest thing,” he said.
“For example, if our billing person reaches out to me and asks things like what’s the contract term or who’s the primary contact, I can say hey, you don’t have to ask me this – go check the CRM.”
Financial pressures caused by Covid-19 created a need for businesses to spend their money more efficiently. Leadership teams have been faced with tough decisions about various areas of expenditure and software has been no exception.
In the case of Today’s Business’s decision, switching to competitively-priced Teamwork CRM made all the difference.
“It has helped us reduce our CRM overheads,” said Sanfilippo.
“If we had still been using Salesforce, we would have cut that as soon as the pandemic broke out because of the cost.”
Using Teamwork CRM has made it financially possible for his team to keep using a CRM system powerful enough to manage sales leads and business opportunities. Sanfilippo added that the business benefits of adopting Teamwork CRM have brought on a wide range of opportunities.
“From sales, to billing, to account management, all our internal collaboration is better coordinated thanks to the CRM,” he said.
“I love the simplicity of Teamwork CRM. I love that it integrates with all of Teamwork’s other tools. This has helped us increase CRM adoption and become more efficient in growing new business.It’s part of why I want Today’s Business to scale with Teamwork.”
Sanfilippo is impressed with the power of Teamwork’s solutions to improve coordination between team members and with the overall pricing. But it seems the most crucial benefit of all has been the accessibility of Teamwork’s suite of integrated tools.
“I was comfortable with some of our previous tools, but no-one else was really using them,” he said.
“Switching to an integrated set of Teamwork tools gave us the teamwide buy-in we needed, which has become more important than ever since we went completely remote.”
Whereas Today’s Business once used a hodgepodge of tools to organize its work, the agency now has a single suite, which team members can access with one single login.
“Teamwork has given us one system, one tool,” said Sanfilippo. “Based on the pricing we got, the simplicity of the tools, and our need to integrate everything under one roof, we felt it was best to switch over fully to Teamwork – and I’m glad we did.”