Workamajig

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Workamajig

Workamajig,[1] formerly known as Creative Manager Pro, is a customizable, web-based project management software for creative groups, such as advertising agencies, design firms, in-house creative departments[2] and public relations firms.

The software has the ability to track expenses and time use in an entire company, from new business and account management to accounting and financial reporting. Workamajig is compatible with both Macintosh and Windows operating systems and, once centrally installed, can be used from any location a user chooses.

Workamajig is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system developed for Marketing organizations. The functionality of Workamajig can be broken down into the following areas:

a. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

b. Project Management[3]

c. Resource Management

d. Collaboration

e. Finance

f. Business Intelligence

Market Served:

Workamajig was designed for all marketing organizations. Over the years, clients have changed how they identify themselves, so the list of types of companies is dynamic and is subject to change. Here is a reasonable list of the types of firms Workamajig is sold to today: Design Firms, Ad Agencies, PR Firms, Digital Agencies, Inbound Marketing firms, and in-house marketing and creative departments.Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

History

Back in 1986, A La Carte Systems (ALC) was started as a consulting/technology business, with the goal of helping marketing and creative organizations improve the way they ran their organizations. ALC provided business process engineering (BPR) aimed at improving the firm’s business operations and workflow. Once the BPR project was complete, ALC would develop a needs analysis document that defined business needs that needed to be addressed through an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. The last step in the process was to vet the various software solutions, select the best fit to their clients needs, and then implement the system.

However, marketing organizations typically rejected the up-front effort and fees associated with the BPR. They wanted to buy an ERP system to improve their business and figure out the process and people side of the equation as they implemented something new. The software industry promoted their products as a magic pill that would solve all their problems and the market basically bought this concept.

Creative Manager, Pro was born:

In 2002, ALC connected with software developer Greg Geiger who had started a small business to provide custom web-based applications in .net. Greg’s company, Streamline Technologies, was a small start-up that had already begun building a project management system for marketing organizations that was named Projectapps.

Projectapps was just beginning to be built, but Greg’s organization lacked industry knowledge along with expertise in marketing, sales, and delivery (i.e. training/support). A La Carte Systems possessed everything Streamline lacked and vice versa. A partnership was formed and the new business, Creative Manager, Inc. was formed to develop/market/sell/support the first web-based ERP system designed for marketing organizations.

The original product was called Creative Manager Pro (CMP). The first version of the product was built in .net and offered via a Software As A Service model. In 2004, CMP was released, and it was one of the first Software As A Service products ever built.

As it grew in the initial few years of its release, hundreds of marketing organizations were implementing Creative Manager Pro. The product was well received and the business was growing, but since cloud-based computing was in its infancy, the typical business user was accustomed to using a client-server based system with an app installed on their computers. CMP’s clients were pushing them to make the user experience more like a locally installed client/server system.

Since Creative Manager Pro was a .net web based experience, it had certain limitations that could not be overcome. For example, the product would operate differently based on the browser/platform being used, a functionality such as drag and drop Gantt charts could not be created, data from the database to create functionality such as automatic type-ahead table lookups could not be cached.

Introducing Workamajig:

Options were researched to rebuild the product into another platform and the decision was ultimately made to use Adobe Flex. Flex addressed the fundamental user experience issues. Adobe was investing heavily in this technology and Apple was also embracing and supporting it at the time. This was all before the iPhone took off and Apple pulled the plug on Flash. It was also before HTML 5 was the mature platform it is today.

As the product in the Adobe platform was being rebuilt, Workamajig also gave it a huge UI facelift. The interface was completely different and it would be hard to know it was the same product just evolved to the next level.

At the same time, the product was being rebuilt, the need to develop a strong brand was recognized. The initial branding was weak and the name Creative Manager Pro could not be copyrighted. This allowed competitors to advertise their products using the company name as a keyword in Google. As a result, the new version was rebranded and called Workamajig.[4]

Workamajig Platinum:

Shortly after the release of Workamajig, a new technology that nobody was using at the time - the iPhone - started to take off and later sparked the mobile revolution. It changed how everyone worked and did business. It also created a huge challenge for Workamajig because Apple decided to kill support for Flash on their IOS devices.

Given the questionable future of Flash and the need to be 100% mobile, Workamajig began researching alternative options. The next generation of Workamajig, as a responsive user design using HTML 5, was decided on. In addition to making the product a responsive design, there was the goal of making it far more intuitive, significantly improving the look and feel, dramatically simplifying the user experience, and updating the design standard to a modern look.

Workamajig Platinum is an extensive project and will be released in phases. The approach is to roll out Workamajig Platinum in multiple releases tied to specific roles in a typical marketing firm. The first role was Workamajig Platinum for Creatives. This version has already been released and includes all the capabilities needed for someone assigned to work on projects (i.e. designers, copywriters, programmers, etc.)

Below is the current estimated release schedule for the job role modules for Platinum:

Creatives................................Live

Sales.......................................February 2016

Account/Project Managers....March 2016

Resource/Traffic Managers....May 2016

Owners...................................July 2016

Client Portal............................September 2016

Billing Management................November 2016

Purchasing Management........January 2016

Other Accounting....................March 2017

Media......................................May 2017

The majority of the heavy lifting has already been done. However, each role is being redesigned and built out consecutively. This transition is far more than just a face-lift and a port of functionality, which means features are being added, some existing features will operate differently, the functionality and testing usability is being laid out, and a few features are being left behind.

Today Workamajig has satellite offices in New Jersey, Arizona and Michigan.

References

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External links

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