Project management is often the difference between a great design project and a complete failure. It’s particularly important to my company, Triario. Let me explain why.

We are a digital marketing agency and the first HubSpot Certified Partner in Medellin, Colombia. We have identified expansion into the North American market as a critical element of our 5-year strategic plan.

We’ve received funding from the Colombian government to support our market entry into North America. The funding is helpful, but we know that our project management process will be the key factor to our success.

We are confident of our talented team, but the best design project is worthless if it’s not delivered on time and to specification.

Our project management skills were put to the test very early in our US market entry. We worked with our North American partner, Rapidan Inbound, to help roll out a cybersecurity product for one of our joint clients.

In the first 30-days of the engagement, we were required to produce:

• 8 product description PDFs.
• HubSpot landing page, blog, and email templates.
• An 8-page report that was distributed in a press release to support the product rollout.
• Several development projects to help integrate their website with HubSpot

And the client needed everything yesterday! Our project management process was what enabled our team meet this challenge. Here are 3 project management tactics that enabled us to meet the client’s expectations.

Make the Client Feel That You Are In The Office Next Door

Yes, it might sound a bit exaggerated, but we did it despite the fact that we were thousands of miles away from their offices in Washington, DC. How, you ask? Simple!

We set an email response deadline for our team - all emails needed to be answered within 3 hours of receipt. If we didn’t have an answer, we would acknowledge the email and tell the client what we were doing to resolve the issue.

Being always “on” in Skype and other web conferencing platforms - if the client needed to talk, we were ready.

Treating the client like they were the most important (and only) customer we had.

Use Project Management Technology to be Agile, Versatile, and Available

We were working on multiple projects at the same time for this customer. We managed priorities and deadlines for all of our assignments with Basecamp. This let us not only manage all of the task, but also to communicate status and client requirements for each. If we or the client had any questions, we used the communications channels mentioned above to quickly get on Skype and resolve any questions. 

There are many project management platforms available, but project managers should choose the one that works best for them and use it to give the client confidence that: 

• Your team understands the requirements, priorities and deadlines for each task
• You are communicating progress and roadblocks as you work through the tasks
• You are working towards meeting the deadlines that have been established

Find the Right Balance Between Cost and Quality

Budget always counts when it comes to project management. This is not only true for the client, but for the vendor as well. And quality is not only shown in the final product, it is displayed to the customer throughout the entire production process. So, if you answer yes to the questions below, you’re finding the perfect balance between price and quality.

• Are you committed with timeliness of product delivery?
• Did you make your client feel that you were ready to help anytime?
• Were you clear and accurate in the communication of tasks, priorities and deadlines?
• At the end of the project, did you and the client both feel that value was delivered for a fair price?

At the end of the day, both Triario and the customer were happy with the outcome of the project. In fact, we are continuing to work with them as they evolve their marketing strategy and tactics.

We learned quite a bit through working together and feel that we successfully passed our first test as we expand our operations into North America. We have negotiated a partnership arrangement with Rapidan Inbound and are ready, willing and able to work with other HubSpot partners. 

And we know we couldn’t have been successful without a rigorous project management process that kept us all working together as a team as we completed our project goals.