Hök Nik
A Website and Graphic Design Agency

The creative minds running Hök Nik will be the first to tell you the name of their shop is a bona fide mystery. When it comes up (and it does a lot), there’s much collar adjusting and ahhs and umms…and pregnant pauses…that usually ends in a company representative murmuring: “Yes, the name. The previous owners had a drinking problem…” That usually takes care of it, but if you dig a little deeper you’ll find out there were no previous owners. So, despite the mysterious name, this integrated digital agency in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, has been in business since 1995. Their creative portfolio is as vast as the frozen prairie where they reside. “Yeah, funny name, serious creative,” says Jeff Day, the group’s creative director.

Hök Nik describes themselves as an ‘integrated digital agency’ because they are neither an ad agency nor a web design company. They inhabit both fields, running a diverse set of projects with competing deadlines, tasks and billing arrangements. They offer a wide array of services — print design, web design, web development, multimedia, and anything else of a creative nature. And like many creative agencies offering web design and development services, using a web-based project management application like Intervals has allowed them to do creative work for anyone, regardless of their location.

To the Cloud!

We have gained huge insight into what company time actually means, especially overlooked time that usually isn’t billed to a project.

Before the introduction of Intervals, Hök Nik had developed their own web-based workflow software to manage their time and tasks. It was a rudimentary application that worked to a point. With their work becoming more complex, they hit a juncture that many creative agencies reach — their software was failing them. Should they invest unbillable hours trying to build something better? Or, start looking for online workflow management software that would fit their needs?

Hök Nik decided it was time to go to the cloud and embrace Software as a Service, but they had some concerns. Their primary, and most valid concern was the security and redundancy of data in the cloud. Going to the cloud would not be worth doing if they would be in a constant state of anxiousness.

Since using Intervals to manage their agency's creative work, Hök Nik’s fears have subsided. “We are so happy we have not had to worry about our data,” shares Jeff. “Intervals is so stable that if I were in charge of marketing Intervals I would put an emphasis on its stability of data in the cloud.”

Why Use Intervals?

With Intervals there is less intuit required, because it takes personality and emotion out of the equation. It’s really hard to argue with the data.

Hök Nik discovered Intervals while doing research on cloud services designed to manage time, tasks, and projects. “Intervals best suited us because it could track the different types of work we do,” says Jeff Day. “Intervals allows us to track it all in one place.” Intervals has enabled Hök Nik to track different creative teams working on different types of projects. And it’s not just the billable people that Hök Nik is tracking. Intervals is also helping Hök Nik track how much unbillable time is being spent by people such as book keepers, sales people, and office managers. “Intervals’ concept of modules has allowed us to track more people in our company for internal reporting,” says Jeff.

Hök Nik has spent several years refining their workflow with the help of Intervals’ online suite of time, task and project management features. Today, Hök Nik has more accurate tracking and billing of their time, greater insight into where their time is really going, and a creative team that has mastered its workflow.

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