Welcome to our latest and greatest Conspire series, “MindManager Showcase,” featuring none other than — you guessed it — Mindjet MindManager. From working as traditional project managers in non-traditional organizations, to overseeing high-level international communications, we know our loyal users need tools that can capture head-to-toe information and keep them ahead of the productivity game. And so, to highlight some of our favorite MindManager features, we’ll take you through a variety of situations that many of our customers face in their daily work lives. Sit back and enjoy!
*****
Anna’s Role and Needs
Anna is the event coordinator for a large textbook publishing company. She is responsible for organizing and scheduling meetings and events for authors, executives, and six different departments within her company. She is responsible for communicating with vendors, managing travel itineraries for authors and executives, tracking high-priority contracts, planning company events and participation at conferences, financial planning for events, and the purchase or rental of things like chairs, booths, shelves, electronic equipment, and any other items that are required for a given event. Anna is also responsible for organizing the minute-to-minute processes of the events, including catering, product delivery and setup, badge obtainment for employees attending conferences, accommodations, banner and table setup, and overall, ensuring that everyone and everything is where it should be, when it should be. She needs a tool that can help her manage, track, and execute her various responsibilities, create several schedules, track communications and budgets, and organize the many aspects of each event in one easily-accessible place.
Her Major Pain Points
- No team; must ask for help from random people whenever available
- Reports to VP’s Executive Assistant although he is not her official manager, which means she is largely on her own in terms of getting information about her responsibilities
- No allotted budget; she must first research costs and submit proposals, which are often rejected without detailed explanations or suggestions
Today’s Problem
The Biology team at Anna’s company has a conference coming up in two weeks, where the Executive Editor of the Bio list will be presenting a new type of hybrid textbook that exists half in print and half online. The Executive Editor, Assistant Editor, and Media Editor will be attending. The Executive Editor will be giving the presentation, and they will be collectively running a company booth. Anna needs to create an information hub, or dashboard, to capture all of the resources and schedules she needs to gather for the conference. She needs something she can use to manage all of the vendors, venue information, and specific goals associated with the event (i.e. speaker engagements and announcements). She needs to be able to communicate information clearly to both internal and external audiences, as well as have detailed or sensitive information available for her own use.
How MindManager Can Help
Anna can use a MindManager map to collect and organize the information for the event. She starts in the desktop product and sets up hyperlinks to all the key information associated with the event, including start dates, locations, and links to the internal travel site, with recommendations on best flights to take and hotels to stay at. She use ProjectDirector to post the map onto her public events folder, which allows her to send links to both outside vendors and consultants she is working with, as well as internal audiences. ProjectDirector allows her to invite as many “guests” as she needs for these maps, without requiring them to pay for any software. She can restrict the guests to read-only access (where appropriate) so that they can review the information in the map without being able to change it. She is also able to link to a budgeting map on her Microsoft SharePoint site, in a folder that only she has access to.
(click for full-size image)
Want to learn more? Join us for our webinar, "What's New in MindManager 14 for Windows?" taking place this Thursday 9/19 at 10AM. Register here.