Today there are quite a few options online for any creative agency researching project management software to run their day-to-day workflow. A quick search on Google will turn up several web-based applications self-described as being revolutionary or redefined. But what does that even mean? Revolutionary is a lofty word, usually reserved for wars and scientific breakthroughs. Redefined is a less weighty adjective usually reserved for the latest and greatest in tech. I’m not sure either of them have a place in the web-based project management software space. If you want to be different, unique, to stand out in a crowded marketplace, you are going to want more then superlatives when choosing software.
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What, then, makes Intervals any different? Intervals is a wonderful hosted application for tracking time, managing tasks, and managing projects, but don’t other web-based tools do that, too? The answer is, yes. There are baseline measures by which every option should be weighed — a clean and intuitive interface, quality features, reliability, security. Intervals has made every effort to use this baseline as a foundation upon which to build a different and better project management application. Below are the main components which makes Intervals one of the best options available for managing projects at a creative agency.
Built for creative agencies, by a creative agency
Pelago is a web design and development agency with more than nine years of experience. We’ve been deep in the trenches along with more than 100 clients, completing a total of over 300 projects. Needless to say, we gained a lot of experience in both the right and wrong ways to manage projects. Every aspect of Intervals, every feature and design decision, has been made from this perspective. Our goal for Intervals is to build a project management application that will help others avoid the mistakes we made while accomplishing the same or higher level of success.
End-to-end workflow
Intervals was born from a need for project management software that could address every step of our workflow as a web design agency. As a service company billing by the hour we needed an application that would track every minute of our workday. As a web development shop building sophisticated online applications we needed software to manage the issues, bugs, and tasks that arise during any development project. As a small business we needed project management features, such as reporting, document sharing, and invoicing, to tie all the pieces together. Once we built and began using Intervals ourselves, our billable hours increased by 30%, a testimony to the need for comprehensive project management software that can handle the multiple components of a company’s workflow.
Extensive customer support
On the customer support front, we do more than just respond to emails and answer questions about how to use our application. We often find ourselves sharing our own small business experiences with others like us. During our free one hour trainings, Intervals often takes a backseat to more business related discussions. We’ve discussed with our customers everything from how much a creative agency should charge per hour to how often you should bill a client. We’re not just here to reply to your inquiries with canned irrelevant responses, we are here to help your small business succeed, with or without Intervals.
Revolutionary time tracking
I’m kidding. However, our time tracking feature is pretty cool. From the very beginning, Intervals has focused on coupling time tracking with tasks and projects to help customers fully understand where their time is going. Staring at a timesheet can only tell you so much about your work day. When viewed through the perspective of a task or a project, the tracked time becomes far more valuable. As a small business using Intervals you now know the who, what, when, where and how of every minute tracked. We’ve accomplished this by building persistent timers that follow you throughout the interface. Once completed, the tracked time can be applied to any project, task, module, and work type of your choice. This flexibility becomes a life saver when in the midst of a client crunch you need to run reports justifying your billing, or when planning and predicting future projects.
Familiarity
Perhaps what makes Intervals more different is that it is not different. Time has been with us since, well, the beginning of time. People are used to tracking time using conventional methods that have been around for centuries. We still cross off squares on a calendar, much like the ancients. And we’ve been using stopwatches since the early 1800’s. Just because we have a new online medium doesn’t mean we need to reinvent the tools. We just need to interpret them in their new context and make them easier to use. Our goal for Intervals is for it to be inherently familiar to our customers, who are used to checking off tasks, tracking their time, and seeing projects through to the end.
