What is our primary use case?
I own a 3D design studio in Belgium and work with several clients in Belgium and the Netherlands. My team consists of 12 3D artists and three project managers.
We work on up to 30 projects at the same time which means keeping track of each and every project can be difficult and get very messy sometimes. That's why we use a tool like Monday to keep a good overview of each project and in which phase each project is.
We track the next deadline, the amount of previews that our client has already gotten, extra notes, etc. Basically, it helps us to be organized and never have a project fall out of sight.
How has it helped my organization?
Monday has given us a clear overview of all our projects as well as all our tasks.
We write down to-do lists for the other managers so they know what's a high priority and a less high priority. We can also see which task has been done which is super handy.
We have project overviews to keep track of each client and project and I can also see what the other managers are doing. Is the project ready or still in review. Now I can just look on Monday and see what is going on internally. We save a lot of time with this.
We also have integrated Monday into many other systems like Airtable and Stacker and built a whole system around it to make our lives so much easier.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of Monday is that we have a clear overview of what is actually going on in our company.
I can see in which phase a project is and what the next deadline is as well as if the project is on hold or almost done.
Each project is categorized between the different 3D renders that get ordered and we can keep track of each individual render step-by-step.
When I am away my other colleagues can check the Monday board and find the status of each project that I have been working on. The note option makes it very convenient to leave little remarks for my colleagues as well.
What needs improvement?
Monday could be improved if it could be linked with Google Calendar. This way, I can add deadlines directly on Monday for my whole 3D team and they can automatically see it in their Google calendars or the general calendar when their next deadline is going to be and for which project. Now we fill it in separately and it could save us a bit of time.
We also use Clockify to track the time spent on each render. Maybe it would be handy to have some type of clock or icon that shows how much time is left within the budget that the specific project got sold for.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for 1.5 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
So far, we had not had any incidents with Monday.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have an automation in place that allows us to easily duplicate setups.
A standard workflow is pre-made and it saves us a lot of time when starting up a new project.
We set up our project in Airtable and all the data gets processed on Monday automatically.
How are customer service and support?
Customer service replies fast and has helped me many times.
I can't say anything bad about it.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not use another solution.
How was the initial setup?
Standard templates were not suitable for our company after a while.
We, therefore, built a whole automated system with a professional which is quite complex to do ourselves.
What about the implementation team?
We did not have any outside help.
What was our ROI?
There is no way of directly measuring an ROI, however, it's my understanding it saves us a couple hours per week.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Monday can get expensive if you want to add a lot of members to it. Only members can change things on the board. Click-up is free, however, Monday is just much easier to work with so that's why we went with Monday.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We also looked into Trello, Asana, and Click-up.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.