I’m Kristian Scharling, founder and CEO of the copywriting agency Somera. For the last five years, I’ve been fine-tuning our project workflow automation with our Podio Premium plan.

We forward quite a lot of emails to our clients to make sure they are up to date on their project at any given time. With roughly 1,000 projects on a yearly basis across more than 300 different clients, we used to spend many hours spent emailing back and forth. That also leaves a lot of room for human error which leads to unsatisfied costumers.

Saving 20 hours a week

Until 2016, we manually kept our clients updated on their projects through email. But then we discovered workflow automation, which gives us the ability to automate and send emails directly from Podio. From the moment we start a project, through each new stage, we’re able to click the appropriate button and Podio automatically forwards an email with relevant information to our customer.

To give you an idea of how it functions, look below. You’ll see an example of our workflow automation setup, and a replica of the email we send to our customers when we start their project.

The first notice lets them know we have started on the project. We introduce the copywriter, and inform them of the deadline. They are also provided a link to the project so they can follow the progress live if they wish.

Typically, two additional emails follow. One when we’ve finished the first draft of their content and are awaiting approval; the second when the content has been proofread. Their proofread version is then attached to the last email.

All this is possible due to a fairly simple setup in Podio. Learn how to automate emails using GlobiFlow in Podio here.

On a weekly basis, I estimate that we save up to 20 hours of manual work. And on top of that, we leave minimal space for human error.

Using Podio to make sure we make a profit

Besides simplifying our daily workflow, it is important for me to make sure that all of our projects are profitable.

Directly in our Podio app, we count the hours spent along with other costs on a project, all integrated into one calculation. That is an easy way to determine whether a given project made an adequate profit or not. A typical algorithm is calculated as:

@Project price – @Expenses ((hourly wage x hours spent) + other expenses)

Our calculation setup, however, is slightly different due to our very specific setup, as seen in the following example. Here is how we make our profitability calculation:

By having access to such digestible data, it quickly becomes evident which customers are, and which are not, as profitable as we would like them to be.

The end result

It’s quite simple by using Podio with workflow automation, all of our employees have a brief overview of everything that is going on in our business, and we make sure all of our clients are kept up to date without spending a lot of time doing manual work. You can check out the Podio pricing plan here.

About the author

As the CEO of the copywriting agency Somera, I help companies develop their content marketing strategies and create their marketing materials. I work closely with my Denmark-based content manager to make sure all of our copywriters are constantly cultivating brilliant results for our clients.

On top of that, I’m a full-time traveler, running our agency from different countries all over the world. Throughout the past year, I’ve been able to work from Europe, Asia and South America knowing that I can check in on any project at any time from any location with Podio.