Cerebra

Towards the end of last year I wrote a post on Timesheets in a Digital Agency. We were tossing around ideas of time logging on our accounts and after several trials were set up, training workshops conducted plus some testing and feedback sessions (cue tears, frustrations and also joy) we finally partnered with a company who we felt suited our agency culture and workflow the best.

Enter Magnetic.

What we're learning

We have been using Magnetic to track time and tasks against workflow for almost three months. We spent two months developing a process around our company structure, implementation and training. From January we starting reporting and fed data back into the company for insight into how the teams are performing. We'd always had a sense of how many hours were committed to a project but it was enlightening to have this tracked with a backup to support claims. We are now able to monitor actual and billed time to manage capacity and under or over delivery on accounts.

Why this tool?

One of the reasons we chose Magnetic was because of the simple and easy to use interface, as adoption was key for us. We wanted a system that the users would be comfortable navigating, and which wouldn't be too time consuming. Logging time and capturing tasks proved efficient as we weren't wasting time working with an overwhelming system and once the team got familiar with the tool they realised it only took a few minutes to log a day's activity. As well as meeting our needs on a functional level, the team at Magnetic are very accommodating of new requests and are very polite when we send our ideas to them.

Traffic Managers rejoice

From a traffic / project management perspective it is 100% transparent so every team member can be accountable for tasks. Team leaders can track and add tasks for the members and it allows communication and collaboration on activities. Soon you will be able assign people to specific project groups. There is also an email integration tool that is perfect to maintain company contacts databases.

The challenges

We are all trying to find the right mentality for time logging. You can have a solid process and great tool, but your way of thinking has to be right. Employee's need to be aware of their actions throughout the day so they can record activity to put into the system. Unfortunately when we fail it's because, ironically, we ran out of time to capture the day or, we lost track of time as were so consumed by a task to notice the hours fly by.

Tick tock, back to work.