Industry: Architectural Design - Fred Zonzius

How long have you been using ManagePro and in what type of environment?

I have been using it for six years to manage a small architecture firm of less than 10.

What are the three biggest benefits you’ve experienced?

1. The ability to cross reference to-dos across each phase of each job and come up with a comprehensive list for each staff member that is prioritized and organized across projects is invaluable. They know what to do next, every day, every week.
2. Its flexibility. Every day things change, people change, dates change. This system allows me to easily update the projects with the changing information and, in real time, update each person’s to-do list.
3. The ease and adaptability of the reporting part of the program. It allows me to manage my customers and what they committed to do. I can send a report with just the information I want to each of my key clients, which saves me time and keeps the job on schedule.

What would you advise others using or deciding to use ManagePro?

As a small architecture firm we’ve tried all the packages. Time is critical and in every project there’s a ton of detail to manage along the way. We couldn’t find another package that would manage every detail like ManagePro does. And as all of you out there in similar small businesses know, it’s the attention to detail that slips when you get busy. At the same time it’s the attention to detail that makes your customer happy. We only use 3% of the program’s features and it creates incredible value for us.

What does the screen represent in terms of your usage of ManagePro?

Phases of a project.

Click on Image to See Screen Representation
 

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Industry: Business Consulting - The Profit Advisors, Inc.

Work Environment:

We have been using ManagePro for five to six years. We are a consulting group that helps clients improve their profitability, using focused initiatives based upon our methodology and an active follow-up program. We use ManagePro to meet with project champions at each client site to make sure the projects are completed. We use a template that we developed in ManagePro that corresponds to our consulting process. Our experience is that successful follow-up is easily half of the process in generating results for our clients.

What are the three biggest benefits you’ve experienced?

1. Full featured with lots of functionality. It has all the things I need; places to record general meeting requirements, the ability to track multiple agendas across multiple clients, etc.
2. I find it easy to use, but part of that is because I invested in attending a training class.
3. I have the flexibility to customize it to my needs, and to adapt it to my methodology and my client’s needs.

What would you advise others using or deciding to use ManagePro?

"Don’t try to do everything with it. Pick out a couple of features to use so you can get in the habit and discipline of using it. Without being consistent you won’t get the value from having the program. Secondly, get some training. It is a lot easier to learn and implement if you get some training and coaching."

What does the screen represent in terms of your usage of ManagePro?

This screen represents our consulting process.

Click on thumbnail image to see screen representation!

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Work Environment:

I have personally used it for about a year in our finance department. My main responsibilities are managing a number of projects' budgets and two direct reports.

Benefits:

1. Allows me to stay organized while standardizing my project management and work flow process.
2. Ability to track projects and easily generate status reports for both upper management and customers.
3. Improved communication to customers. Customers request a lot of information and now there is a report for every request that exists in-house in relation to its relative priority. ManagePro helps people understand their requests in the flow of existing demands. They appreciate it when we print them a status and progress report each week.

Advice to Others:

1. You have to force yourself to use it. It is a learned tool. You have to be committed to use it. It takes some time and effort to make sure it reflects your daily work environment. It is not a natural behavior. You have to prioritize it as a value. Don't just move from one task to the next, but actually come back and update the system. Sure it takes time, but the extra fifteen minutes it takes to update saves you so much time in the future by creating both a paper trail and a thought or decision logic trail.
2. Force people to use it by requiring reports. Require them to report each week on what they are doing by using the reports in ManagePro as the communication vehicle. Running our staff meetings off of MPro makes people want to update it so that they can get credit for all they are working on.
3. If I let it start taking second place to my other work I get a feeling things are getting out of control. I know that when I tell myself that "I can't afford to put stuff into ManagePro," that is the beginning of the end.

Sample Screen Shots:

Click on thumbnail image to see screen representation!

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Industry: Health Care (Breech Regional Medical Center)

Work Environment:

It is a business management tool at the top level. We have a main database for the president multi-linked to four additional databases (one for each director’s team).

Benefits:

1. The ability to establish focus by creating a system for tracking progress on goals.
2. The functionality of the calendar and the to-do list is very helpful and something we use daily.
3. The ability to track and respond to a complex project, with associated follow-ups and documentation is key. An example is responding to JCAH accreditation process.
4. We get better follow-up using it in meetings … just keeps people better focused.

Advice to Others:

"Most businesses are confronted with more and more demands. Having a tool that can keep us on track is the key. We can all speak the same language, keep appraised of each other’s progress and know immediately where we are going with a given plan… otherwise you just take care of problems, continue to fire-fight, and never work on a long term fix."

Sample Screen Shot:
This screen depicts our work process in responding to a JCAH accreditation.

Click on thumbnail image to see screen representation!

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Industry: Manufacturing and Rental of Heavy Equipment – Ware Energy, Inc.

How long have you been using ManagePro and in what type of environment?

I have been using it between three and four years. The more people I manage, the more invaluable it is to me. Currently, I have 10 direct reports, each with a different functional area and different goals. I also head up a process improvement team.

What are the three biggest benefits you’ve experienced?

1. The biggest benefit is goal tracking, to be sure everyone is on track..

2. The help it gives me in terms of feedback and online resources to proactively manage individuals and teams.

3. I can have my team members key in progress notes and report on their goals. This frees up my time, gives me great visibility, plus keeps them focused on their goals.

What would you advise others using or deciding to use ManagePro?

"Be sure they understand the goal structure. I didn’t read the instructions and started out using the program at the detail level and just created more lists. It works much better if you start by laying out your work goals and then proceeding from there."

What does the screen represent in terms of your usage of ManagePro?

"The layout of our goal structure."

Click on thumbnail image to see screen representation!

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Industry: Land Development/Construction 

Work Environment:

We have been using ManagePro for the last five years in a 15 person office covering multiple large projects simultaneously across multiple states.

Benefits:

1. To have better control of hand-offs in task execution and responsibility and, in general, better manage individual responsibility within a team environment.
2. Personal comfort with having all the data in one place, instead of walking around with it in multiple formats; e.g. folders, phone messages, post-it notes, planners, notepads and memory.
3. It gives you an excellent view of multiple projects and their issues. You can see forward in terms of what needs to be done in 30, 60 and 90 days, and also easily translate that into action items due today.

Advise to Others:

"Start with training and don’t assume that your staff is going to pick it up and use it just because you’ve purchased it. Secondly, you need to focus on and communicate a real strong ‘why’ for using it. Finally, you need to clearly set out your goals and strategies, otherwise it just becomes one more long list of action items."

Sample Screen Shot:

This depicts our typical layout of a project. It’s our basic screen to work from on a project by project level.

Click on thumbnail image to see screen representation!

Work Environment:

Network administration and Information Technology Support. Use ManagePro to coordinate people, projects and track completion of the strategic plan. Have been using ManagePro for seven years within a multiple database configuration that multi-links up to 400 users.

Benefits:

1. Monitoring and tracking strategic planning initiatives; as it is both a productivity enhancer and an on-going snapshot of the big picture.
2. We use it to manage and monitor the network services division. It allows us to make sure things don’t fall through the cracks, especially using the status board and calendars.
3. It allows us to track all personnel records for appraisals and year -end reviews.

Advice to Others:

"Plan for the implementation and get buy-in before starting to use the software across a team. You won’t have a successful software roll-out across a team or department(s) unless you have active support and buy-in from upper management…. And remember, the number of uses for ManagePro is only limited by your creativity."
 
 

Sample Screen Shot:

This screen depicts our work process using one of the planning initiatives from both a list and graphical representation.

Click on thumbnail image to see screen representation!

Industry: Telecommunications; Air Touch

Work Environment:

I have been using ManagePro for the past five years to manage groups and departments of up to 17 people.

Benefits:

1. It keeps details from slipping through the cracks on all the projects that various employees are working.
2. The calendar really helps follow-up as it creates ongoing visibility on the status of each person’s to-dos and projects. Being successful at follow-up is a function of having a good system and this program has excellent tracking ability for just that… and being successful at follow-up is what good management is all about.
3. The benefit on performance and accountability that comes from the ability to track objectives for each person and enter progress and feedback notes on their performance throughout the year.

Advice to Others:

"Be prepared for a learning curve, ManagePro is easy to use but you need to invest the time to learn it. Secondly, realize that ManagePro requires discipline to use effectively. It helps you with the discipline, but ultimately it requires that you work in a manner where you define your objectives and regularly follow-up on their progress."

Sample Screen Shot:

Calendar, I keep it as my screen saver, and performance review.

Click on thumbnail image to see screen representation!
 

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