Canada-based TDG Marketing is a full-service marketing agency with a talented team of strategists, graphic designers, videographers, video editors, content creators and copywriters working across Ontario and beyond. The agency handles a wide range of projects, from large government-funded initiatives to smaller projects with local startups and delivers a broad spectrum of services, including, strategy, brand identity, research, graphic design, video production, web design, email marketing, and more.  

Founded in the year 2000, TDG Marketing is focused on helping its clients expand their reach with captivating content and impactful messaging. 

We sat down with Courtney MacDonald, Studio Director, and Kristy Crompton, Account Director, at TDG Marketing to learn how their team is using Hive to align and streamline daily workflows and planning.

How the agency worked before using Hive

The team at TDG Marketing are no strangers to project management software. Before adopting Hive, they used Monday.com, but ultimately, were unhappy with the overall experience. When working with the previous software, TDG’s key pain points were tracking hours, managing workloads, siloed communications, lack of review functionalities and the need for repetitive manual input. Team members were using emails, video calls and Word documents for briefing, project updates, resourcing and more. Alongside a lack of functionality, the team felt they were not supported or listened to by their previous provider. 

Agency leaders created a detailed wish list of all the functions they wanted from a project management solution. Time tracking, workload capacity monitoring, client project intake, review and markup capabilities, and Google Suite integration were all key priorities. 

Courtney and Kristy interviewed six different software companies in their search for a solution.

“Hive stood out due to its user-friendly interface and its ability to meet our critical needs,” Courtney explains. “Hive’s time tracking, workload management, project templates, and review functionalities addressed our pain points and streamlined our project management processes. We really liked the Resourcing tab and the ability to integrate the Google Suite.” 

The TDG Marketing team transitioned to Hive over several months during 2022. Let’s take a closer look at some of the remote agency’s favorite features in Hive.

TDG Marketing’s favorite Hive features

Resourcing

Using Hive’s Resourcing function, managers can set team member capacities and assign new work in just a few clicks. The resourcing dashboard enables leaders to gauge their team’s workloads, bandwidth, and task completion times, making it easy to plan, track time, and monitor workflows. 

Hive also helps with arranging people’s vacations. TDG team members now fill out a Time Off Form instead of requesting time off via email as they did with their previous software. When this Hive Form is submitted, Courtney and Kristy are notified and can either approve or deny the request. Approved vacations are automatically added to the resourcing timeline, removing the need for manual input.

“Our last platform allowed work to be assigned to a team member during their time off, which was a huge issue,” Courtney says. “With Hive, we’re notified when time off is scheduled, so work is not assigned to people when they’ll be away.”

Hive Forms

As well as using Hive Forms for time off requests, TDG uses Forms to collect information from both internal users and clients. 

Details from submitted Forms have been set up to automatically populate action cards, which means that client requests, internal project briefs and other work-related requests that come in via Forms are immediately routed into the system. Forms have now completely replaced all other methods of intake and eliminated the need for extra emails and documents. 

“We used to fill out a brief for every single project using a Word document template. Now, we just use Forms in Hive. Our team members fill out a briefing form, and then all those details are added to the Project automatically,” explains Courtney. 

The agency uses several forms with dynamic fields that populate with specific information depending on the type of work the user selects. There is also a custom Form for their clients to fill in externally. 

Kristy adds, “We have clients using the Forms now, which is fantastic. It has significantly reduced the amount of time we spend on briefing and removed the need for extra emails and briefing documents.” 

Time tracking

Hive time tracking enables the agency to record how long each action takes within a Project. The agency has built time allotments into their action card templates, so users can track their time directly on the action card of the task they are working on. 

Everything is tracked in Hive, even client meetings are tracked within a dedicated ‘Meetings’ action card within each Project. Team leaders can access timesheet reports and analytics, so they can keep projects on budget.

“Getting more accurate time tracking has allowed us to see how profitable we’re being on all our accounts. We can see where we’ve been over-servicing accounts, which has enabled us to make changes and become more profitable,” says Courtney.

Templates

Using Hive’s Project template function enables the agency to apply a custom set of actions with pre-specified assignees, due dates and information. The team has found templates particularly helpful when setting up new Projects or adding new elements, such as social media, to an existing Project. This ability was not available with TDG’s previous project management platform.

“One of the major reasons we chose Hive was the ability to build out all those templates and save time. Our templates have all of the sub-actions and time estimates preloaded, which really speeds everything up,” explains Kristy.

TDG uses labels to direct creative teams to the right project type in Google Drive. 

“All the correct fields will come up, depending on the project type. And then the card is automatically added into the right project,” Courtney adds. “And then we apply our template that has all the sub-actions and time estimates preloaded in, we assign it out, and it’s in the system. So, this has just sped everything up for us.”

Conclusion: Looking forward to a future of growth and achievement with Hive

Courtney and Kristy say that switching to Hive has shaved off as much as one to two hours in their day that was previously spent on laborious email management. The team is way more efficient than before, and TDG now enjoys better visibility over their workflows and profitability. They feel they are now on top of things they were not before. 

What’s more, they really love the support they get from their dedicated Hive account manager Geneen Grazioli.

“Our team members are now more empowered to work cohesively, driving projects to successful completion,” Courtney concludes. “Hive has proved to be a game-changer for our team, revolutionizing our project management practices and propelling us toward a future of growth and achievement.”