useful, assigning different codes to activities like reporting,
email, design, affiliates, social and branding. “What’s more,
we found it incredibly useful to be able to assign multiple
users to one common Trello board. This means that any
changes made, by any member of the team, will see these
changes immediately,” adds Laurie.
Trello is a popular platform, but alternatives like Monday
and Microsoft’s own Teams platform are worthy alternatives.
Everon’s Marshall predicts big things, particularly due
to its integration with other widely used and handy
Microsoft applications including Skype and Sharepoint.
“It’s going to become a dominant app – a one-stop shop for
internal collaboration and time management apps – it does
exactly what Trello does. For printers in
particular it could be good for sharing big artwork files
around teams. It’s a product Microsoft is ploughing a lot of
time and effort into.”
Communications and transfer
Any business owner, large or small, can vouch for the sheer
amount of time emails eat. Apps which make communications
more streamlined and effective are fast making emails
look long in the tooth. Slack has found favour with many
companies, allowing quick and easy communication from
desktop and mobile. “Emails can be a black hole,” says
CEMET’s Smith. “They’re silos where only certain individuals
can have bits of knowledge. We use Slack internally for
communications – you can have discussion on projects,
arrange meetings, share articles and agendas, but it also has
overlaps with apps like Microsoft Teams.”
WhatsApp is an app you probably already have, which
you might not be using to its full potential for work “It can
be a handy tool for work,” says Sharp. “I set up WhatsApp
groups for particular projects. They are instant, easy for
everyone to use and people can respond quickly, plus you
know when someone has read the message. You can also
send visuals and screengrabs of important messages. I often
use these as a morning alert to flag up work that needs
attention that particular day. You can also opt to use
WhatsApp Business which allows you to upload your logo,
set up a profile and be in contact with your customers.”
Big, high resolution documents image files are part and
parcel of the print industry, and there’s a host of app-based
ways of getting the right documents to and from clients and
suppliers which are a far cry from the days of using ISDN to
send data, or even collecting it manually. We Transfer and
Dropbox are two notable platforms which work across app
and desktop. “WeTransfer has now been around for over a
decade and it’s extremely useful in the creative industry to
send artwork, photography, logos and so forth – I use it to
send large presentations to clients too. You also have the
added bonus of knowing when someone has downloaded
the files,” says Sharp.
We use Slack internally – you can have
discussions, arrange meetings, share
articles and agendas, but it also has overlaps
with apps like Microsoft Teams” Matt Smith CEMET
Cloud-based document sharing and transfer also means
that it’s easier than ever to keep track of the most up-to-date
version of a document – indispensable when you’re about
to start a print run – and also mean that team members are
able to access materials on the road. Speaking of being on
the road, customer relationship management (CRM) tools
like Salesforce and SugarCRM have their own mobile apps
which allow sales teams to effectively stay on top of leads.
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April & May 2020 Printweek
Altassian, has already curried favour with plenty of printers
and print-related businesses. It’s mainly used to work with
in-house teams, but it’s also common to see some businesses
give clients access to relevant Trello boards, so they
can see how projects are progressing.
Louise Laurie, marketing manager for Crewe-based
Cartridge People, is a big advocate of the platform, which
works across mobile and desktop. “Since embedding Trello
into the business, and in particular the marketing department,
it has become much easier to manage and track a
multitude of tasks all in one location,” she says.
“Throughout the year, various daily, weekly, monthly and
quarterly tasks arise, all of which can be detailed in Trello
and assigned to different colleagues. This also makes it
significantly easier to oversee these tasks and amend where
necessary,” she continues. “The capacity to assign individual
due dates to each task allows us to monitor which deadlines
are fast approaching. This enables us to prioritise
tasks accordingly.”
Colour coding is a feature that Laurie finds particularly ➔