Case Study: LifeSnapz as a content and project management tool
Businesses are using LifeSnapz in creative ways, and throughout the course of the year I will blog about some of these use cases. This particular post highlights content management, marketing planning, and project management uses of LifeSnapz.
The Company
One of the businesses using LifeSnapz is marketingFOLIO, a Connecticut-based marketing consulting firm that works with clients to map priorities, define strategies and identify means to increase return on marketing investment. The seven-year old firm focuses on mid-market companies in the industrial business-to-business sector—engineering-oriented, operations-driven, sales-focused organizations that often lack strong in-house marketing expertise but whose leaders value the primary research, strategy framework and sales-ready programs that marketingFOLIO creates and implements.
The Use Case
Katherine Ventres Canipelli, founder and president of marketingFOLIO, is using LifeSnapz as a simple but effective collaborative planning and tracking tool for a multi-year retained client engagement with Odyssey Logistics & Technology (OL&T), a chemical and process industry logistics services company. The marketingFOLIO engagement has covered a wide range of marketing elements, including positioning strategy, updated branding, in depth case studies, and lead generation components—and an all encompassing web-centric marketing plan. marketingFOLIO is effectively this client’s “market manager”: working with the OL&T VP Marketing & Sales Operations, dealing directly with client managers on three continents, and overseeing joint work product with two other retained specialist marketing firms (Connecticut-based Fathom, a brand/interactive design firm and Ohio-based NMV Strategies, a PR agency).
Below is an interview with Katherine on how LifeSnapz works in this context.
Katherine, could you please describe in detail how marketingFOLIO is using LifeSnapz?
We’re using LifeSnapz in a variety of ways.
First, it’s a tool for marketing planning. Specifically, we map the plan and committed deliverables as “Events” in the LifeSnapz group set up for OL&T. The LifeSnapz site is simple and intuitive—the interface allows us to log what we’re planning to do, when and where they’re happening and describe specific deliverables. For example, the industry meetings and speaking engagements are set up as Events—noting details (what, where, when), who attended, with linked photos tagged with participant names, and post-event evaluations. We also use LIfeSnapz to document market “buzz”; every OL&T news release or corporate communication is recorded as an event—and any editorial or major mention also recorded. All tagged by pre-defined category, thus very easy to find. The dynamic timeline makes it easy to visualize and communicate the plan as whole—and not just as a series of isolated tactics.
Second, it’s a platform for sharing important information. As tasks are completed, details are catalogued by Event. Contributing team members then add comments, suggestions, etc.. For example, in 2008 we (marketingFOLIO) project managed the creation and launch of the new OL&T market portal—which involved four contributing “partners”: the client, the brand/interactive design firm (Fathom), the public relations firm (NMV Strategies) and, marketingFOLIO ourselves, as chief content strategist. As we approached Phase I project completion, we uploaded to LIfeSnapz an image of the new site, the new logo design, tagline and word mark versions, and images and photos used to support new OL&T positioning. Now we have a “living record” of what was done, when and where it first appeared.
Third, it’s a tool that facilitates collaboration. Although three of the “partners” are in Connecticut, we’re each located 60 miles from one another—and several of our OL&T client contacts are elsewhere, here in the U.S., or in Europe or Asia. Getting together in one room is rare—and web conferences aren’t necessarily the right solution. For example, NMV Strategies recently did a photo shoot at OL&T’s North Carolina location that also captured a strategic supplier conference—we uploaded dozens of photos to the LifeSnapz event and gave OL&T operations managers LifeSnapz access rights so that they could identify the people pictured, documented in one place, quickly and efficiently. All completed in a couple of days instead of weeks—without having to email scores of images around.
Finally, LifeSnapz’ tags and search capability enables us to find what we need when we need them. If I want to find all activities related to branding, I simply click the “Branding” tag and up comes the corresponding list of Events. Need to see just those Events on the timeline? Easy. One click. Or if I want to see all contexts involving the CEO, I just click on his name in the “They were There” cloud. Or use the search box if a tag isn’t granular enough.
How have you integrated LifeSnapz into the way the client and the three marketing firms collaborate?
For one thing, each of us is a bit different in our styles, but LifeSnapz is so straightforward that it doesn’t require us to change to get value from it. We rarely meet face-to-face as a group, yet we must approach each week’s work in synch. It’s become our virtual Grand Central Station, where we can see and share aspects of our collaborative efforts. The social media attribute of LifeSnapz has made it easier to share not just the words or images but also the core creative and strategic ideas. It complements our separate serial conversations in a way that spreadsheets can’t. This is what communication is really about—any one of the core marketing team can develop a marketing element and have the other three just a few clicks away from seeing how it fits it and adding insight via comments.
Who is using LifeSnapz? How difficult was it to master?
Introducing the tool to our extended marketing team was no problem—the interface is clean and easy to understand. And getting the OL&T execs and managers to jump took about ten words to explain. Despite varying technical savvy across this group—some of whom are on the high side of that magic demographic divide of age 50—everyone picked it up very quickly. Who’s using it? At core are we three small business CEOs and our team members, plus the OL&T VP Marketing & Sales Ops. In addition, periodic users include a dozen or so corporate VPs from sales, operations and IT, as well as some of their managers, analysts and admins.
Why do you like LifeSnapz for performing this task (these tasks)? Any particular feature(s) that stands out to you?
It’s the simplicity—LifeSnapz is uncomplicated and intuitive. The registration and invitation process requires very little information, yet it’s easy for me to monitor and control user access. It’s easy to upload and find information. The usefulness for our collaborative business process is that it’s not complicated—this is a great example of how engineered simplicity is more effective than a “got-every-bell-and-whistle” system.
Overall, how would you summarize the benefits of LifeSnapz?
As they say, you can manage what you can measure. LifeSnapz has made our project planning, milestone tracking, and recognition of deliverables more transparent. In practical terms, this translates to higher perceived value of what the three marketing firms do individually and collectively—and puts a spotlight on how the three firms and the client organization work very productivity together.
Thank you Katherine and marketingFOLIO for your input and for using LifeSnapz!
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