When you take a look at some of the most successful businesses over the last few decades, you’ll often see that they were created by partnerships. Just consider Google, Microsoft, and Apple, to name a few.
While it doesn’t always take a partnership to build a global venture that lasts, having a solid relationship with a cofounder can really make all the difference when it comes to long-term success. Having a partner means more support, more ideas, and more skills and experience are brought to the table — but only if it works out.
If you’re keen to create a lasting partnership for your next or current business, it’s important to go about it the right way. Read on for some top tips you can follow today to help you make sure your professional relationships are as successful as possible.
The #AgencyLife isn’t easy! Among the many tweets shared by marketing professionals using that hashtag, you’ll often find remarks, complaints, or jokes about virtually every process within project management. In a world where everything is due by end of day, one of the biggest challenges for marketing and creative teams is to get real-time visibility into everything your team is working on.
From 15+ year old applications like Microsoft SharePoint to newer cloud-based solutions like Slack, I have used a wide range of marketing project management solutions to balance projects, assignments to team members, and customer expectations before and after launch. One platform that stands out from the crowd is Wrike, a project management solution that streamlines coordination across teams, development of campaign assets, and management of events, campaigns, and launches. Here are three reasons why.
1. Visibility of Bandwidth of Creative or Production Team Members
Depending on your organization’s hierarchy, the roles of project manager and account manager may or not be separate. Generally, the larger the organization, the greater the chance for disconnect between an account manager and project manager. When a client lands a lucky windfall and finds herself with extra budget available at the end of the quarter, she often contacts the account manager to push forward a project that got shut down a couple weeks or months ago. The catch is that the project must be complete this week.
Armed with an approved estimate of hours and team members, the account manager starts coordinating activities directly with team members. This completely disrupts the existing workflow that the project manager has in place. To address this issue, Wrike’s project management software does a great job of providing filters that allow you to take a look at existing tasks that are assigned to individuals in the creative, UX, and code departments. For example, the account manager could take a look at existing assignments that are due this week for the tentative team members and make a more informed decision about whether or not to accept the client’s project or outsource it due to lack of bandwidth.
The video below shows a step-by-step tutorial on how to setup this using Wrike’s project management tools:
2. Ability to Interact With Tasks via Mobile Device or Email
A big challenge with some project management software is that they seem to be stuck in the Mad Men era, when marketing professionals needed to physically go to the office to get work done. Nowadays you can complete most assignments with a smartphone and internet connection.
By enabling you to interact with tasks through free mobile apps (Android and iOS), as well as plain ol’ email, Wrike’s online tools for project management don’t chain you to a desktop. As an account manager, there’s nothing worse than holding off a task when all you need to do is to forward a file from the client to a member of the creative team. With Wrike, I really enjoy the fact that I can leverage my smartphone to complete tasks on the go and attach documents stored on my phone, or on my Dropbox or Google Drive accounts. Additionally, I can set up email notifications for specific tasks and chime in via email to approve a specific task.
In the video below, Redfoo, recording artist, CEO of Party Rock Records and LaFreak Clothing, and former member of LMFAO, explains in his own words how Wrike improved his businesses processes.
Before Wrike, his team at LaFreak and Party Rock would only complete 5% of meeting action items. Now, he and his team are able to track tasks and see each one’s status on the go via email and smartphone.
3. Built for Marketers
You wouldn’t use a hammer to screw a nail. However, many folks in our field test the limits of Microsoft Office productivity tools to manage projects. There are two reasons why this is a bad idea.
First, you may be able to get away with managing projects from a spreadsheet when you’re a two-person operation. However, as your company grows, you’ll quickly realize how a spreadsheet isn’t efficient, because it doesn’t reflect updates in real time and can’t be updated by several team members at the same time. Second, word documents and spreadsheets don’t “talk” with other critical software, including cloud-based storage solutions and creative apps.
Wrike addresses these two shortcomings with a robust platform that is tailor-made for marketing and creative teams with complete work management capabilities. Depending on the version that you choose, Wrike for Marketers is scalable from 5 up to 200 or an unlimited number of users. You can set up user groups and permissions to determine the right level of access for every single user according to his or her function.
Also, Wrike for Marketers has an extension for the Adobe® Creative Cloud® that enables creatives to place Wrike’s most important features into the Adobe tools they use everyday. Here’s an example:
The Bottom Line
In marketing, project management is more art than science. One way to make your life easier—and that of your team—is to use a project management system built specifically for marketing and creative teams. Learn more about Wrike’s solution for Marketing and Creative Teams, or check it out for yourself by starting a free two week trial.
To many college grads, going to business school and earning a master of business administration is just a way to delay the inevitable entry into real adult life. Conversely, to those already in the workforce, MBAs seem to be a step toward a better future. Still, for both types of MBA-seeker, life after their advanced degree can be difficult to imagine. In particular: What kind of career will they have?
The answer is both frustrating and exhilarating: almost anything. Most MBA programs provide the perfect training in practical business skills, which means companies big and small clamor over new MBAs for hire. Yet, such freedom of opportunity can be stifling, so to help those interested in pursuing an MBA, here are nine real careers they can absolutely look forward to.
There’s a growing sentiment that anyone can start a business, regardless of their background. All you need is a great idea, and a willingness to put in the hard work — and the ability to handle setbacks — and you can start a successful business.
Whether or not that is the case is up for debate, but one thing that isn’t debatable is that business education, specifically an MBA, is immeasurably valuable for entrepreneurs. The lessons one can learn while studying for an MBA can be applied to nearly every aspect of life and business, and the hands-on, real-world skills gained through the study of business can actually make it easier to run a business and prevent some of the setbacks and difficulties that many entrepreneurs face.
While typically students must take practical coursework to learn the principles of business while they earn an MBA degree (click here to learn more), there are also a number of theoretical lessons learned as well. Whether you are just starting out with your own business or you have several years of experience under your belt, learning these lessons can help you run your business more successfully.
Entrepreneurs are a strange breed. More than anything, they aspire to autonomy and self-started success, and they harbor the confidence and passion to achieve it, yet many remain hesitant to blaze their own business trail, fearing the consequences of failure. Indeed, failure is always a possibility in the business world, but that risk should not scare an eager entrepreneur from chasing his or her ambition.
The following eight lessons will motivate entrepreneurs to forget the risks and launch their startups as soon as possible.
Whether you’re living large as a millionaire or struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck, you can always make some improvements to your personal money management. Turns out that one in every three Americans lack a future financial plan.
The Oracle of Omaha said it best, “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago”. The key to financial success is to have a plan. To help you get started with one or strengthen your current one, here are seven ways to save and spend your funds more efficiently.
In many ways, there has never been a better time to start a small business. Interest rates are low, the economy is doing well, and technologies that can make your work more efficient and effective are getting less and less expensive. Still, even the best-run and best-funded small businesses could use a little help in the revenue-generating department. Depending on the industry you’re in, a partnership may go a long way in shoring up your bottom line. Here are five options to consider if you’re looking to increase your chances of success.
It’s Monday morning. You arrive at work bright and early, ready to tackle the day. When you log in to your email, you see a message from your boss marked urgent, and asking you to initiate a wire transfer of $100,000 to cover some consulting fees. Wanting to impress your boss, you do as you’re asked — only to find out a few hours later that your boss never sent the email, and your company is now out $100,000.
Congratulations. You’re now the victim of a whaling scam.
It sounds so simple: Just choose a name for your brand-new website. Shouldn’t be hard, right? Just go with “name of your business dot com” and you’re done.
But wait. You’ve finished building the site and are ready to register the domain name, but there is already a website with that domain name. Or maybe you just want to come up with something else, something unique and memorable that says more about your brand. Either way, you need a domain name, and suddenly what seemed like a simple task feels like the biggest decision you’ve ever had to make.
It’s easy to figure out how to make a website on your own with sites out there featuring easy-to-use templates to quickly get you up and running. Especially simple if you chose a provider that offers free domain name registration, which is now where your focus turns to. While you can update and redesign the site anytime you want, the domain name is often much more permanent.
To help you out, here are six best practices for choosing domain names that will take some of the guesswork out of finding the perfect name.
Changing careers is something most people do a lot over the course of their life. Whether due to a shift in the marketplace or a shift in interest, tackling something new can often prove to be a boon to your bottom line and quality of life. That being said, changing careers isn’t something that happens overnight or without proper preparation or forethought. From going back to school to investing in training or other certification, a shift to a career IT often takes both time and money.
If you’re looking to make a break for it and take your career in a new direction, but aren’t in a position to quit your job to get the necessary training and experience, don’t lose hope. Here are six ways you can break into an IT career without ceasing to draw the paycheck that’s currently paying your bills.
