ClickUp Customer Reference: Tiffany Dyar at National Registry of EMTs

Speaker: Tiffany Dyar, Director of Innovation, National Registry of EMTs

Tiffany Dyar: Hi, my name is Tiffany and I lead innovation at a national non for profit where we have about 100 employees right now. And the problem we were trying to solve before we chose click up was really just how do we do work better together? We were thrust into remote work during the pandemic, like many other companies. And we wanted to figure out how to collaborate and communicate more efficiently without having to have more meetings, everybody was burnt out on having meetings. So before we even chose to move forward with picking a tool, we actually asked staff what all they were using to track their work. And honestly, it was just so many things, everything from post it, notes and paper, journals to excel sheets and word documents and various task and project tracking tools. Really no one was using the same thing and that put us at risk for not only information silos, but really not being able to see the scope of work that we had both operationally and in terms of formal projects that were going on throughout the organization. Um So what we actually did was get all the staff together and brainstorm, how can we do work better? And what sort of features would we need in a tool if we decided to purchase one? So we took the features that we came up with from that brainstorming session and we made a list of must have and like to have features that we would like in a tool. And then we went out and score carded 9 to 10 different workflow or project management software tools including click up and click up. Not only hit all of our must have features, but it, it hit all of our like to have features as well. And it was the clear winner for us.

Tiffany Dyar: So click up is really transforming the way that we're working together and it's been really great. So, first of all, you don't need to be a project manager to use this tool. And that's one of the really great things. Um previous tool that we were using was really quite complex. And um it wasn't very user friendly for people in the organization who weren't formally trained in project management. And so click up is allowing us to capture a lot more work than we were previously. Um We're also sending less emails. So previously, we would send emails to make requests of each other or to set deadlines for deliverables. And now we're able to just create tasks or list and assign those to people, create a due date and click up will do the reminders for us. Um We're having less meetings, which is really awesome. It's giving people time back to do really important work. So now we can work asynchronously, we can leave updates and comments or status changes on tasks and projects and no matter what time zone we're in and everyone can see that it's transparent and click up, does a great job of, of keeping a good historical record of all of the changes made, things are more transparent just in general. So you don't have to have special access to a bunch of different tools to understand what's going on in the organization. If you want to see what's happening uh across the organization, a lot of the work is captured there. And that's really helpful in reducing those information silos. We're also able to better track our OKRS using the goals feature and um just using lists and getting into a good routine. And that's been really helpful in seeing our progress and our big strategic goals. And then additionally, we are able to automate a lot of processes like our hr on boarding uh project management and we've created templates for those things so that there's consistency across the board. So it's been really great.

Tiffany Dyar: So we chose to work with the professional services team to help us on board with click up. And honestly, it was a great decision. Um Shout out to Juan, who was our consultant. He did a fabulous job working with us. And I think the biggest benefits of it were, you know, click up has so many features and so much to offer that having someone walk you through it who has experience building workflows is really, it just gives you a head start. Um Our consultant walked through how we do work on our various different teams and would help us come up with ideas for workflows that could help us be more efficient or collaborative and then taught us how to build those. And there were things that um even though I'm pretty software savvy, I would have, it would have taken me much longer to figure out without our consultant. And so we really appreciated having him on and he was just great.

Tiffany Dyar: So for our roll out and on boarding experience, we first wanted to really make sure our project management team was comfortable with the tool and felt like they could really work through the new workflows. Well, that was essential. So we really spent a lot of time training them first and making sure that they were comfortable. We also did a call for team champions. So we looked for at least one person from each team to get early training, to be early adopters and to be the champion for their team that uh their team members could come to them for help and support with click up. So we did early training for those champions and um we made a big deal out of it because it was special any time you're rolling out a new software or a new process, you know, there are always early adopters and people that lean into it and then there are others that are more hesitant or skeptical and they take their time. Um And so having those early champions was really important. We created an on boarding experience through click up and I I highly recommend uh using click up university since it's interactive and it's up to date. And so, you know, now when new employees come on, they automatically get trained in, click up through, click up university. And that really helps with the on boarding and adoption much quicker. Now, we would roll out different workflows for different teams. We kind of staggered it, like I said, for starting with project management and then um continuing to roll out different workflows with the various different teams. And so that was what we did. That was our approach and you know, about six months, 6 to 8 months into a adoption, we had our account um consultant pull usage stats for us. So you can see last time somebody logged in, you can see some activity. Uh and we were pleasantly surprised to see that there was a large majority of our staff actively using click up and using it regularly and across teams that we thought may not have as strong of a use case for such a workflow tool. Um And so that was really great to see and we keep our eye on those things. And so that's what's been helpful for us.

Tiffany Dyar: I think some of the biggest benefits that click up has had on our organization is just really transparency and accountability. So we are all much more aware of the work going on throughout the organization outside of our various teams. And so it's much more cross collaborative and we've really reduced those information silos and that's so important because that saves time and money. If you don't know what's going on with another team or other projects, um you can make decisions that are not well informed, that can cost the business. And so having that transparency is really important and then having the accountability, um you know, not that we had a problem with accountability with our employees, but it's just things are laid out in an easy to see way and it also helps us better scope, you know, what we have on our plate in the next coming months, then where can we fit in this new project and to really be more strategic about taking on new work. And so those things are really helpful and it's also helped us track when we've had setbacks better and, you know, we don't have to comb through a bunch of word documents to try to find what we said in a certain meeting about a certain task or milestone. You know, now it's just logged right there in the project or the workflow and that really helps us as well. So those are some of the biggest benefits I've seen right off the bat in addition to just the meeting reduction, which was huge for us um to be able to spend your time doing the more important work or spend your time thinking or strategizing or brainstorming instead of, you know, tracking down information is, is the cost savings in and of itself. And, um, you know, our employees are happier to not have so many meetings.