ZenPilot

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Project Manager of Commence Studio

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Commence Studio helps purpose-driven brands be seen and heard by means of branding & packaging design, ecommerce & web development, and digital marketing services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire ZenPilot to accomplish?

• Plan Capacity
• Project Management systems overhaul
• smooth out day-to-day operations

SOLUTION

How did you find ZenPilot?

Referral

Why did you select ZenPilot over others?

• Great culture fit
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

What was the size of ZenPilot’s team?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Derek, Maggie, Hannah and others on the ZenPilot team helped us at Commence Studio by assessing our daily operations from the top-down, creating a strategic operational blueprint, and guided the leadership and delivery teams through refinements within our Project Management system, process creation, template building, and our new and refined operational structure as a whole.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Get a grip on internal capacity planning and process refinement

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The ZenPilot team was extremely thorough and communicative. They consistently delivered on time, above expectations, and always went the extra mile to ensure our needs were met.

What was your primary form of communication with ZenPilot?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The ZenPilot team are experts when it comes to our preferred project management system, ClickUp. They also understood our needs when it came to our operational structure and systems, and knew exactly how to smoke out any issues we once had on this front.

Are there any areas for improvement or something ZenPilot could have done differently?

Nothing in particular!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Senior Director, Partnerships of Campus Multimedia

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

The leader in K-12 marketing - we bring value to schools through brand partnerships.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire ZenPilot to accomplish?

• Organization
• Clarity
• Accountability

SOLUTION

How did you find ZenPilot?

Online Search

Why did you select ZenPilot over others?

High ratings, Pricing first our budget, Great culture fit, Good value for cost

What was the size of ZenPilot’s team?

2-5 Employees

What was your primary form of communication with ZenPilot?

Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

ZenPilot first sought to understand our business objectives, which mainly centered around fully integrating our company's operations into ClickUp. Then, they helped create a customized solution for our business as well as led a 10 week coaching course on how to best achieve ROI.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Discovery of our objectives
• Creation of customized solution
• Adoption of solution

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

ZenPilot was fantastic at communicating clearly, effectively, and regularly. They often responded to questions within minutes, and had dedicated channels of communication for our business. Their client coach, Maggie, guided us through the implementation and adoption process from start to finish patiently while also being flexible to our needs.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They are champions of their clients, and our success is truly their success. Their employees are very knowledgeable and willing to help.

Are there any areas for improvement or something ZenPilot could have done differently?

There was nothing they needed to improve on.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of a digital marketing company. We have a team over 20+ marketers, designers, and developers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire ZenPilot?

We hired ZenPilot to assist our team in adopting ClickUp. We needed to move from an inadequate project management tool to something with more flexibility and reliability. We also wanted to make the transition quickly so it didn't impact our work.

SOLUTION

How did you select this firm and what were the deciding factors?

We selected ZenPilot because of the glowing recommendations we'd received from other agencies. It became obvious after talking with their team that they knew the ins and outs of agency operations and would be the best fit for getting us set up.

Describe the project in detail and walk through their service package.

ZenPilot provided trainings and resources to help us outline our processes, prioritize them, and then build them into a ClickUp in a way that could be replicated and refined for ease. They were extremely attentive to how we do things, offering advice and best practices based on their experience as well.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with the Co-founder on setting everything up and training our team. Since having fully adopted ClickUp and working within it, we've worked with other members of the ZenPilot success team to assist in making things easier and more optimized to our workflows.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the engagement that demonstrate progress or success?

Since following ZenPilot's strategy and best practices, our team is saving hours per team member every week. Communication has improved across the team and we're able to our clients better visibility in their campaigns. Margins have increased because of the efficiency as well.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our teams worked extremely well together. We used a Slack channel for communication and everyone was always in the loop with clear next steps on what needed to happen with the project.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Not only does ZenPilot know how to optimize ClickUp for maximum efficiency, they understand what agency owners and operators actually care about. They're able to couple these for a productivity system that's unrivaled.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

None. We were thrilled with everything.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a technology enabled services provider working with customer data to create personalization at scale for our customers. I'm the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire ZenPilot?

We had been using Clickup to track tasks but were not taking full advantage of the capabilities of the platform. We were not really enabling our organization to streamline processes and enrich our business with operational insight. We were simply using the task tracking. We felt to truly scale our business we needed to harness our project management system to manage our work more fully and enrich our understanding of our business.

SOLUTION

How did you select this firm and what were the deciding factors?

We reached out to the partner network at Clickup and found a few potential partners. From the first outreach to our contract signing we felt confident that Zenpilot truly understood what we were trying to accomplish and had not only perfected the process through their extensive work but had created a community of likeminded individuals all working on scaling similar styles of business. Deciding factors were the depth to which they understood our business, their clearly and well constructed discovery process, and clear project plans.

Describe the project in detail and walk through their service package.

The project included Discovery, clear descriptions of Services/Solutions, Workflow Development, Relaunch of our Clickup Instance, Training, Ongoing Support.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Lead consultant and project team (3 individuals). On our ongoing services we have a lead consultant and 2-3 project managers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the engagement that demonstrate progress or success?

We have redepolyed our Clickup environment completely, trained our entire team on it's use specific to our workflows. We have gained compliance across the team and are starting to see deep insights from the work that we do. Where we are committing more time than contracted on certain functions, where we have burgeoning resource constraints, and a host of other valuable insights. Most importantly this has been helpful to the sales process in creating more clarity around pricing and packaging.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Extremely effective workflows. I attribute most of that to the experience of the zenpilot team in delivering similar solutions.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They are focused on growth and supporting high growth companies. They significantly focused on developing scalable and highly performant solutions.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

The only note I can deliver is in the ongoing solutions support KPI measures. Many of the standard KPI's the solutions team deliver to inspire continued adoption are not pinpoint precise to our business and more general in nature. We just simply chose to focus on some and not others. Maybe that will be more custom in future iterations?

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I own Kogneta, a remote digital marketing agency

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire ZenPilot?

We hired ZenPilot to help us develop a strategy to migrate from TeamWork to Clickup along with providing us with on-going support post-implementation

SOLUTION

How did you select this firm and what were the deciding factors?

Out of all of the firms that we evaluated, ZenPilot was the highest recommended and the content on their site showed they are heads and shoulders above other options when it comes to ClickUp knowledge.

Describe the project in detail and walk through their service package.

ZenPilot initially worked with us to develop a migration strategy that provided a blueprint on what the transition from TeamWork to ClickUp should look like. From there, they coached and helped us with implementing the migration strategy and helped us avoid significant roadblocks and time delays. Post-migration, ZenPilot provided leadership and team members with coaching, insights, and answers to deeply technical questions.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We coordinated with several individuals through the process based on the stage of the migration we were at. This included client coaches, product specialists and account managers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the engagement that demonstrate progress or success?

They allowed us to save months of work migrating from TeamWork to ClickUp along with allowing us to gain key operational insights into how we deliver our services to clients.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Extremely effective. They provided us with ongoing support and high-touch service which included emails, Zoom, and Slack support.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their professionalism and ability to answer our highly technical questions were impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Nothing

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of operations for Seaworthy Strategy, a digital marketing agency.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with ZenPilot?

We were trying to find a way to streamline our processes better and configure the Click Up system to work for us, so we needed guidance on how to accomplish that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

ZenPilot offered a custom solution we can learn to adapt to our organization and are currently helping us with consultation and software implementation. They answer our questions, provide feedback, and send us video tutorials so we can fully understand the program.

They use Teachables to conduct their two training courses for our team, which they use to get certified for project management and Click Up management.

What is the team composition?

I mainly interface with Gray (Co-Founder) and Jeff (Client Coach).

How did you come to work with ZenPilot?

I crossed paths with Gray and ZenPilot through multiple referrals from prominent agencies.

How much have you invested with them?

I would say we’ve invested about $4,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership started in December 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Since partnering with ZenPilot, our productivity level for project management and product tracking has increased by 400%.

We’ve also improved our profitability in the past six months by 25%, and I believe our engagement with them is a huge contributor to our ongoing success.

How did ZenPilot perform from a project management standpoint?

They consistently adhere to our schedule and are always on time with their deliverables. Their communication is unmatched; their response is fast and highly detailed, and we typically interact through Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with their vast knowledge and strong methodology, as it makes them a highly valuable asset to any organization.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything they need to improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would advise them to start right away to save time and headaches in the future.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Producer for our Digital Marketing Agency. We redesign and optimize websites, create and manage advertising campaigns for web, social, and Amazon, optimize and design Amazon products, pages, and stores, among other similar things.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire ZenPilot?

We had been using ClickUp for a few years and knew we could be getting more out of it & wanted to systematize and streamline how we were using it. We hired ZenPilot to audit our usage and provide a blueprint to how we can make it and use it better, which we also hired them to help us implement.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

They had a very good understanding of agency work, which is what we do, and had great reviews online for what they do. They clearly know ClickUp and were able to share solutions for problems that we didn't even know really existed in our usage of the platform.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The first stage was the Blueprint process, which is when they spent a few sessions meeting with our team and learned about how we use ClickUp and what we do. We made a Process Prioritization spreadsheet where we had to break down our service lines, departments and delivery roles. This fed directly into an audit of our system and its usage which they used to create a custom Blueprint for the changes that we should be making and why.

After this stage was over, we had the option to just take that and do what we will with it, implement it with more instruction from their team, or have a guided implementation where we had dedicated ZenPilot staff walk us through the entire process.

We chose the Guided Implementation, which I am so glad we did. This included weekly meetings with our two team leads (Jeff & Paul), weekly "homework" of videos to watch and some ClickUp work to do, and then building processes from the previous stage's Process Prioritization sheet. This was extremely detailed and required a lot of work, but totally necessary.

From this we made list & task templates and spent the rest of the time creating these in ClickUp with Jeff reviewing and providing feedback. Along the way there was a lot of troubleshooting for things we needed to figure out that didn't quite fit the mould, which was extremely helpful and always ended with a solution of some sort.

We had a migration day once we got to a point where we had enough to start using this new system that we had been working on, which took about 2 days to get it right. After the migration, we began on the non-client work side of things and continued to build processes. Even though our engagement is over, we are still left with plenty to do!

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with Gray (Co-Founder) who got us set up with the initial Blueprint Process. From there we worked with Andrew (Co-Founder) who ran the Blueprint process. We then worked with Jeff (Client Coach) and Paul (Client Coach) - but more directly with Jeff - during the entirety of the Guided Implementation.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We have a better idea of how much we can work on each day for ourselves and our employees, which has helped with scheduling and capacity planning. Additionally, we have more buy-in from our employees on the usage of ClickUp (and benefits!). From our Production Department specifically, we spend less time tasking out projects with the new templates we made and can quickly roll out each month/instance need.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It was great - using Slack for comms was extremely helpful and they pushed us just enough to ensure we stayed on track but didn't give us grief if we needed to take more time.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The fact that they were able to systematize their Blueprint process and yet make ours feel so unique is pretty incredible. The Process Prioritization process was extremely challenging but it was SO needed and definitely a different and achievable way to break down these processes to get to the meat of what we needed in order to do this work.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I feel like the process wasn't super clear from the beginning. We didn't really know what we were supposed to prepare for with a few of the Blueprint meetings. I wish the process was a little more spread out, to be honest.

We definitely pushed through to the Migration period but were still working on a lot of stuff directly after that to clean it up/continue creating processes that we didn't get to. I feel like more time on the backend of the project to go over the internal space templates/setup would have been really beneficial. During the pre-migration some of this stuff was gone over in meetings, etc. but it was hard to really retain the information since we were deep in the migration work and it was hard to start really thinking about anything other than that.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder of Relentless Digital, a digital marketing company for the trades.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire ZenPilot?

Our company has been growing quickly and I needed assistance setting up Clickup. Zenpilot is the leader in this field and VERY good at helping navigate common problems with Clickup. If we hadn't hired them, we would have really struggled with implementing everything and organizing our data in a way that made sense and made our team more efficient.

SOLUTION

How did you select ZenPilot and what were the deciding factors?

ZenPilot was highly recommended to us by our coaching organization and they did a great job delivering.

Describe the project in detail and walk through their service package.

We chose their guided implementation package, which helped us learn how to better utilize the features inside of Clickup, so we could continue to learn and grow ourselves vs having ZP do everything for us and not understand how to create our own systems and processes.

How many resources from the ZenPilot team worked with you, and what were their positions?

They had a few team members on our weekly calls to help with any complicated issues.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the engagement that demonstrate progress or success?

We are more efficient than ever and have streamlined our communication so it's organized and on task, vs having a huge slack channel or slack mess.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Workflow was solid. ZP answered any questions with loom videos, showing us how to work on everything. We had weekly meetings that were productive with homework to push our team to completion.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They have a lot of experience working with digital agencies and it shows. They had a comprehensive understanding of the platform, how to maneuver, and practices for streamlining processes.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

No

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder of a small paid ad agency. We provide ad management services to service and ecommerce businesses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire ZenPilot?

We are growing form an incredibly small team and have been struggling with putting a plan together to develop and launch processes and workflows that will allow new team members to deliver services as we expect them to be delivered.

SOLUTION

How did you select this firm and what were the deciding factors?

We worked with a freelancer and it didn't work out previously, and had seen ZenPilot do training seminars with the project management tool we were using.

Describe the project in detail and walk through their service package.

Essentially, this is a training program and primarily self-guided implementation of a project management and process/SOP building system. They bring you on board with a recommendation blueprint for you how should go above building, then provide with you access to (admittedly excellent) training videos and other assets to help you implement the system, and then direct access to your implementation specialist and other team members via the slack channel.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We had one primary point of contact, the implementation specialist, though there were probably 3-4 other team members who were involved in the shared slack channel.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the engagement that demonstrate progress or success?

Our processes are much more organized, and we have an ongoing structure with which to iterate on current processes and create new ones. Far fewer things are slipping through the cracks when it comes to client deliverables, and the consistency of our deliverables has improved.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Workflow was pretty strong. Jeff was always available in the slack channel, and would sometimes even be responding on the weekend when I was working. Getting responses from some of the other team members could be spotty at times, but Jeff, our primary point of contact, was always there and on top of things.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I think that have a pretty unique approach to structuring project management, and they put a great deal of thought into how to build it out while leveraging the unique strengths of ClickUp. Our implementation partner was also super helpful and encouraging throughout the process

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I think parts of the system they've developed were more conducive to agencies with a more linear workflow and fewer recurring tasks. Think web development agencies instead of advertising agencies that have tons of recurring workflows on weekly/biweekly/monthly cadences.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are an SEO Link Building Agency and I am the Founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire ZenPilot?

We hired Zenpilot to help us develop a better service offering and step up sales process as well as Clickup integration and consulting.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

I had listened to their podcast for quite some time and decided to reach out to them regarding some consulting. After our first meeting with Gray I knew he was the one to help us grow our company and build out solid processes because he just seemed like a very genuine guy who wanted to help businesses grow. Turns out, I was right!

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We started with their roadmap process which actually helped us develop a preliminary offering to get our clients sold onto a retainer on the back end of our preliminary offer. We still use this exact process today and it has helped with client acquisition and increased our authority significantly with clients.

Gray was excellent to work with in this process and he was thorough and incredibly helpful in guiding us through the process of developing this offer. On the Clickup side, our goal was to have them help us integrate Clickup with our agency and help us train our clients. Zenpilot made Clickup easy and did an excellent job with training us on how to train our employees.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with Gray and Andrew throughout the entire process and both of them are founders at Zenpilot.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We were able to develop a rock solid preliminary offering that allowed us to train sales reps on how to sell and then ultimately made it easy to convert clients onto retainers with us.

This had a ripple effect on our business in that it ultimately allowed us as owners to step away from the sales process and let it run while we focused on growing the business. We would not be where we are today without taking that first step with Zenpilot!

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was smooth and intuitive and we used Slack and Zoom to communicate freely.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I found the care that Gray took with our company incredibly impressive. He treated our agency like it was his own. They really helped us guide our vision for growth.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I wouldn’t change a thing! Keep opening doors for small businesses boys!