Case Studies

Increase Revenue

Through better project tracking

Background

Dublin, Ohio-based MediaSource is a successful provider of video news releases, TV media relations and video production services to companies and organizations throughout the United States. As the company grew, executive leadership recognized that the capacity of their spreadsheet-based project management and business management processes was being overwhelmed by the increasing volume of projects, causing business problems and leaving potential revenues such as reimbursable expenses and nonstandard employee time entries on the table.

Challenge

MediaSource needed a simple, cost-effective tool that would allow corporate management to gain control of a broad variety of costs and expenses that go into production of video materials for clients. The company also needed a method of identifying specific projects across the entire company and tracking all time and expenses for each project.

Solution

MediaSource implemented Vertabase 4 to address its identified issues with project tracking and integrating project management and billing functions. Each project now has a project number that is consistent across the entire company for every facet of a client project, from planning to production to billing to subcontractor invoices to the 500-cassette corporate video library of client work. Even overnight packages for clients now use the project number, so that costs can be billed back to the client. Where time entry for employees had previously involved multi-page spreadsheets that were manually reviewed and transferred to billing by accounting personnel, employees now use Vertabase Pro's time entry and review function to accurately and quickly track their time for billing purposes. Even film crews and producers on remote video shoots can log in to Vertabase 4 remotely and enter their time.

"We found the implementation process to be absolutely painless," says Lisa Arledge Powell, President of MediaSource. "We worked with our Vertabase contact beforehand to establish some of our basic functions, and once we decided to move forward, the training was straightforward and very user-friendly."

Results

"Vertabase 4 is responsible for a hundred-percent improvement in our business," says Arledge Powell. "It's friendly to use, and it just makes sense." All of the various expenses that go into production and distribution of a video by MediaSource for a client are now tracked, and billable revenues per project have improved as formerly-lost expenses are tracked and invoiced correctly. "As we have refined our internal processes, updating Vertabase 4 has been extremely easy. Since most areas are user-defined, editing within the program has been a great timesaver," Arledge Powell added. In addition to the basic time and expense tracking functions, she also uses Vertabase 4 as a method of tracking project progress against budget and identifying situations where projects are off track and the factors that are contributing to that deviation.

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