Delivering creative projects involves a lot of moving pieces. Spreadsheets are unreliable, and keeping project tools up to date can feel like a chore. With Toggl Plan, you can plan, prioritize, and track projects using simple, drag and drop timelines.
“We tried other planning tools, but none had the same client friendly view as Toggl Plan.”
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Atomic Smash is a WordPress and WooCommerce website design and development studio. Based in Bristol, UK, Atomic Smash builds business, ecommerce, and media websites. They also provide ongoing development, maintenance, and support services. Atomic Smash works with clients across the world, including Amnesty International, Huck Magazine, Bristol Pride, and Positive News.
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Like many early-stage businesses, Atomic Smash used a cobbled up spreadsheet to manage work. Every client had their own spreadsheet. And overtime, these spreadsheets became so complicated that it was almost impossible to share with clients. But, it was not just clients who found these spreadsheets difficult to use. Everyone, from design and development to operations, had to keep these up-to-date. As work progressed, it became more difficult to keep these spreadsheets updated.
Another big challenge was collaboration. Like any web design team, the design and development teams at Atomic Smash needed to collaborate to deliver projects on time and budget. But spreadsheets are not made for collaboration. This meant project information was spread across individual email treads and chat messages. Making it difficult to work together.
The operations team had its own challenges. Managing workload was a nightmare. Changes in one project affected other projects. This meant updating all the client spreadsheets.It was finally time to go out and look for a new tool. Toggl Plan helped Atomic Smash solve these problems and run a busy, growing studio smoothly.
Clients like to stay in the know about project progress, but are rarely concerned about day-to-day tasks.
Atomic Smash used a spreadsheet, both for tracking internal tasks and keeping clients updated with project progress. With everyone in the team updating the spreadsheet, it became too complicated for clients to understand.
With Toggl Plan, sharing the project timeline and milestones with clients is easy. Clients can see realtime as things get done, or are delayed. A shared timeline also means that clients don’t miss feedback deadlines, and helps deliver projects on time.
A project tool needs to be easy to use and update. Otherwise, team members end up wasting time instead of getting project work done.
As work progressed and more data was added, the Atomic team found that spreadsheets took ages to update. A growing team meant new team members were added frequently to projects.
This made updating spreadsheets tricky as all client spreadsheets had to be updated. With Toggl Plan, Atomic Smash can now easily add new team members. And with it’s intuitive, drag-and-drop interface, they can make any changes to a project’s schedule. Plus, the layout of Toggl Plan means running 30+ clients is easy and there is no problem with jumping between clients.
For a growing business, sharing resources across teams is a necessity.
At Atomic Smash, design and development team members often work across projects. As deadlines moved or the team waited for client feedback, it affected other projects. The operations team had to update all spreadsheets to ensure a healthy distribution of workload. Often, it meant some team members were overwhelmed with work.
Toggl Plan makes it easy for the Atomic Smash operations team to see everyone's schedule in one place. It ensures the team is working efficiently and is not overloaded. Plus, with Toggl Plan, Atomic Smash can group team members according to departments. This way they can quickly see developer or designer availability and plan schedules accordingly.
