Marketing Agency Haberman Helps Clients Succeed
Resource Management by Smartsheet provides several benefits to Haberman, both internally to improve operational efficiency as well as externally, helping the company to better serve its clients.
"With Resource Management by Smartsheet, I don't have to keep all this information in my head. I have about 23 active projects right now. These platforms help me track progress and answer questions on the fly. They help me be smarter in meetings for people who need answers. They support how I show up for my team and with leadership."
Associate Project Management Director, Haberman
Haberman is a full-service independent marketing agency located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The company offers its clients a variety of services, from strategic planning to creative execution across a variety of channels. The company has a unique mission: To tell the stories of pioneers in a variety of industries who are making a difference and driving social change throughout the world.
Crafting “The Best Work” for Clients
As a 50-person agency, Haberman's employees are adaptable, flexible and willing to wear many hats to reach their goals. Corrina Wertzberger is associate project management director on Haberman’s project management team tasked with fostering efficient operations and collaboration. While Wertzberger handles client work, she also has an eye on internal processes to make sure the company is working as effectively as possible.
“At the end of the day, we want to make the best work for our clients and, for our team, the best possible experience for creating that work,” she says. “That involves a variety of things, from accurate scoping to workable schedules to an approach that aligns across departments and within budget.”
Haberman sets tailored metrics for each of its clients. The company needed a way to measure and track their success while improving internal operations.
“The complexity and scope of our project work varies greatly, so we need to be able to adapt and flex,” says Wertzberger. “We need data to help us determine the who, what, and why of everything we do.”
The project management team supports the entire agency by using the Resource Management by Smartsheet platform as central sources of information — from resource planning to budget tracking, the available data helps them make critical decisions on a daily basis. “Translating talent and effort to dollars and deliverables is tricky,” says Wertzberger. “Both tools support how we’re able to manage that.”
Resource Management by Smartsheet provides several benefits to Haberman, both internally to improve operational efficiency as well as externally, helping the company to better serve its clients.
Improved Project Planning
“With Resource Management by Smartsheet, I don't have to keep all this information in my head,” Wertzberger says. “I have about 23 active projects right now. These platforms help me track progress and answer questions on the fly. They help me be smarter in meetings for people who need answers. They support how I show up for my team and with leadership.”
When Haberman starts to work with a new client or launches a new project, the team develops a statement of work (SOW) and outlines project deliverables, budgets, and timing. Using Smartsheet, the project managers create budgets and a timeline. Next, the project manager marks the project as tentative in Resource Management by Smartsheet to hold the team’s time for the project and outline assignment needs.
“As the project proceeds, we can see how we’re moving against that budget and we can adjust the timeline as we go,” says Wertzberger, “both in Smartsheet for detailed step-by-step workflow, and in Resource Management by Smartsheet as it pertains to assigning and shifting hours.”
Haberman teams also look at past projects to help with the planning. Wertzberger uses filters to scope similar work, searching for phase names or project types.
“We learn from the past and can price more accurately,” she says. “Smartsheet accounts for every single day in the duration of the project, with the meetings and milestones. With Resource Management by Smartsheet, the project is broken down in phases, with hours allocated across the days.”
Transparency Sets Expectations
Resource Management by Smartsheet provides a high-level view into resource management for every member of the company. Haberman uses Smartsheet to create and share project timelines. For larger projects, Haberman breaks down the deliverables, the timing and the budget at a granular level. The project management team constantly updates project timelines in Smartsheet, so they can work from the same project sheets.
The platforms also provide a sense of checks and balances. “We’re not kicking off a seven-month project, for example, with a specific amount of dollars and hours, and then seeing in seven months if it worked,” says Wertzberger.
“We break down the project into phases and build our timeline in Smartsheet, and make adjustments as needed. Maybe we were under budget for a previous phase; we can reallocate people in Resource Management by Smartsheet and make those changes real time.”
Project managers update and share the timelines, providing a behind-the-scenes look at how we suggest approaching the deliverables. “It's really helpful for people who aren't in the weeds to see that detail and have confidence in the plan,” says Wertzberger.
Effective Post Mortems
After a project is wrapped up, the Haberman team likes to do a project wrap-up meeting to gain insights to take to the next project. Project managers pull data from Resource Management by Smartsheet to better understand the hours incurred at various stages of their projects, and gather learnings and insights to apply to future projects.
“A whole host of reasons might contribute to overages and Resource Management by Smartsheet helps us have important conversations so we can take what we learned to the next project.”
—Corrina Wertzberger, Associate Project Management Director, Haberman
Data Access, Time Savings, and Ease of Use
At Haberman, various teams need to view data in different ways. While some teams need access to every detail, others prefer high-level overviews of projects in flight.
According to Wertzberger, software platforms they use “need to be flexible, bringing value to projects as well as the diverse personality types that use it.”
“A creative director may need input about someone on their team they feel is at overcapacity or underutilized,” says Wertzberger. “We can instantly give them that data from Resource Management by Smartsheet. We can also get leadership data like our top-line profitability or how we’re tracking overall.”
Before ramping up with Resource Management by Smartsheet, the data that teams needed wasn't consolidated and accessible.
“With Resource Management by Smartsheet, I can pull up real-time information in minutes. If we’re having a resource meeting, for example, I can pull an analytics report in Resource Management by Smartsheet while we're speaking instead of saying, ‘Let me get back to you.’ It's instantaneous.”
In addition, the platforms Wertzberger uses need to be easy to use, as some platforms come with a steep learning curve. However, employees at Haberman found that Resource Management by Smartsheet are both intuitive and easy to learn.
“I train a lot of people on how to use these platforms and quickly realized how easy new hires take to them,” says Wertzberger.
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