I woke up to an email from a marketing agency to whether Brightpod can help them manage their marketing production pipeline so not only they feel in control of their work but also get the big picture of how work was moving from a request (idea stage) to final production. I thought it would be a good idea to spin out a blog post and explain how this can be possible with our project management software - Brightpod.

Capture project requests

Project requests or creative briefs are standard in large companies. They come into the marketing team/ department, and then the marketing team needs to decide where the request needs to go - a new project, task within a project or if the request is already a task within another pod (our lingo for projects). There are no limits to the number of requests people can send so it is best to have a pod called "Marketing Request" and use the Brightpod Send feature to have all requests emailed into that pod. It is better to have all requests come into one place rather than give people the option to send them to different pods. Let there be one or two people who decide where to route them into their respective projects.

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If your team fancies forms, you'll can even use a Wufoo form to email in these requests.

Each request will be a task within the "Marketing Request" pod (project).

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Routing

What is the easiest way to route these requests to a project management team for execution? Routing is moving and assigning those requests (when someone has gone through them) to the right pod and person. From the "Marketing Request" pod a request (which is now a task) can easily be moved to an ongoing pod of your choice.

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Workflows

Is there a way to automate similar projects? Projects that are similar can be created as a workflow, and the same workflow is applied to any new project. Workflows are a set of milestones, task lists and tasks that you can easily apply to a new project.  

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Files & Documents

Is there a central location for all our project files? Each pod has a "Files" section which allows for draft documents to be stored and shared among team members working on a project. These files could be uploaded to the Files area or also linked from their respective Dropbox or Google Drive account.

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Calendar & Reporting

We want to know when the marketing request (which was a blog post) will be actioned and published? The Me page and Insights will tell you who is working on what and which of your team members are overloaded (or not). Since each task can also have a "Published Date", the calendar will not only show you when the task is due but will also show you when it is going to be published.

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This way it is easy to plan, organize, and track your entire marketing production pipeline with Brightpod.

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Managing marketing projects shouldn’t be chaotic —Try Brightpod for free and start focusing on what matters.