Diarmaid Mac Mathuna

Head of Client Services

+353 1 7088154

AUGUST 28, 2012

Video projects and digital campaigns using social media can get very complicated very quickly. Here are the top three online tools we use for project management and boosting productivity right across the Agtel team. These “software as a service” tools help us keep our projects on track – and they help keep our clients in the loop on everything that’s going on too.

1. Basecamp from the team at 37signals is what we use to manage all our projects. We love it so much they even featured us in their product blog. We use it to set up schedules, assign milestones to specific people and share everything from scripts to video files in one central place. It’s password protected, and our clients (especially our international ones in the US and across Europe) really like being able to log in anytime to see a dashboard of what’s happening on their projects.
2. One Page CRM is how we make sure we keep in touch with clients. We’re lucky that we’re busy, and when different people on our team are dealing with the same client about different things it’s important that we all know what the last interaction was. That’s why we love OnePage CRM because it keeps everything central and it’s action driven – so our clients always know we’ll be in touch (and they don’t have to repeat themselves). Oh and it’s Irish too (created by fellow Top 30 Irish Business Tweeter@micfitzgerald) which is nice.
3. Where’d we be without Evernote and Skitch? We work in a visual business, and Skitch saves so much time and effort simply by helping us share designs and visual references really efficiently. I use the Snap tool all the time – screen grabbing an image from any application and adding text and arrows to it to highlight the bit I’m talking about. Then I just drag it into an e-mail or document and send it out. No Windows version, unfortunately, but it’s great on a Mac. Its big brother Evernote is useful too when you’re researching a big project or tender and need to pull together lots of different reference materials from different websites. The web clipping applet sits in my web browser bookmarks bar and works great.

These are just three of tools we use here at Agtel when we’re working on everything from fast turnaround event videos to longer term marketing videos – and even when we’re organising live webcasts. Is there a particular tool you use that you’d recommend? What types of tools would you like to see featured? Drop me a note or post a comment to let me know.

This “Tools We Use” blog post is an occasional feature that gives a behind the scenes look at the software, apps and other tools we use here at Agtel.