Brightpod Customer Case Study - Monica Keith from Colby College

Monica Keith, Director of Advancement Operations at Colby College, // Waterville, Maine

Monica's favorite gadget is her iPod shuffle (1st generation and still kicking). Her favorite news-reading app is NYTimes.
Her favorite time-saving trick: dual screens, alt-tab and multiple applications open at once. Monica's favorite blogs are Inside Higher Ed, Huffington Post and Techcrunch.

What does your company/ institution do?

Colby is one of the top private liberal arts colleges in the country.

Describe an average day at your workplace?

At any given moment, there are several ways we actively work together to communicate, engage and connect alumni, parents and students with the College, to each other for enhanced networking and career opportunities, and to key college philanthropic initiatives.

What is your work routine? How do you start and end your day?

My routine begins and ends with good tunes on my very brief commute to/from work. Every day is a little different depending on the projects and departments that are in need of our expertise in anything from updating or pulling data, writing reports, updating web content, technology training, software implementation or strategic planning. I like to check in regularly with various stakeholders to keep the lines of communication open and plan accordingly for new or updated requests.

"We adopted Brightpod because it was very easy to adopt, cost effective and the ability to link to Google apps since we are already using those tools."

What are your top 3 productivity hacks that help you work smarter?

Personal contact (saves on typing emails back and forth); checking email; running at lunch time.

How many projects and team members do you have in Brightpod? Could you give us some insight on what kind of projects/ work you manage with Brightpod?

We have about 40 pods and about 20-25 people in all (about 50% of our total division). The most common projects are those that involve multiple departments - significant events that involve planning and staffing across the division, and software launches, and/or web projects for other departments.

Were you using any other tool or method before Brightpod? Why did you make the switch?

A few of us had tried to use Slack, but nothing formal for the division. We have a few Google calendars for on-projects and events. We adopted Brightpod because it was very easy to adopt, cost effective and the ability to link to Google Apps since we are already using those tools.

Have you ever relied on Brightpod for something unexpected related to a project or a client etc.?

Yes, we used it for our first web platform launch this past Fall/Winter - which had a very aggressive implementation timeline of 6 weeks. So, it was really great to be able to create a project plan, share it with those who were on the implementation team, and the dept. supervisors so they could see all the steps involved, who was responsible - and over time our progress and be able to comment on the the timeline, tasks or milestones along the way. It was a great success and I like that we can archive and reuse those steps for other/future implementations - it's a win-win.

"I can't think of any other program that is so simple, intuitive and offers a visual representation of projects so well."

Was there a learning curve associated with Brightpod? How did your team/client adapt to a new software?

There is bit of a learning curve but I have found that once we show people the basics of setting up a pod (project), and syncing to their calendars - they are pretty much able to run with it. And the early adopters have been great champions for new members they invite to the platform. So, the more users we have, the more they are used to adding it to our collective "daily work stack".

What is your favorite, or most used Brightpod feature?

I love the ability to switch from viewing the tasks via the flow view for planning, to printing the list view to share for review with teams- and then milestones for leadership. And, I probably use linking/viewing documents from Google drive the most to share documents with others.

How would you feel if you could no longer use Brightpod?

Words couldn't do justice! ;) I can't think of any other program that is so simple, intuitive and offers a visual representation of projects so well - and I have reviewed many platforms and even presented on project management software (before I discovered Brightpod). I have come to rely on it as a way to check in and report on project progress in 'real-time' any time, more so than meetings.

Are there any other thoughts that you would want to share with us regarding our service, product etc.?

The service has been great - it has been a pleasure working with your company!

Thank you for your time, Monica!