Project work and communication: .diff agency relies on Stackfield

About .diff

.diff communications is an agency for relevant communication from Nuremberg - owner-managed, international and interdisciplinary. The 32-strong team focuses cross-medially on customer goals and the respective brand. Here, conception is linked with creation, new with established, and analog with digital. In close cooperation with the customer, .diff creates individual solutions that ensure a convincing experience along the customer journey.

The initial situation

Trello, Slack, or Confluence: .diff had tried out many "island solutions" in the past to cover various requirements during the work process. However, as a result, information was scattered across several locations, meaning that in the end, no one knew their way around. In short, the digital helpers were getting out of hand. That's why Jakob Kugler, managing director at .diff, and the team were looking for a tool that would consolidate the systems and turn them into a "single point of truth". This means bringing all the information together in one place while retaining as much of the functionality of the previous solutions as possible. The agency's wish: communication, project and task management as well as work organization coming from one software.

Why Stackfield?

After a period of extensive research, .diff chose Stackfield, which has now been in productive use since the end of 2018. Predominantly, the selection was motivated by:

• All-in-one approach
• Privacy and data security as part of Stackfield's DNA
• Individual and personal support

Information that used to be scattered across several tools can now be viewed by the agency with just a few clicks: What needs to be done, who is responsible for a task, and what the project's progress looks like. According to Kugler, organizing with Stackfield makes work easier for departments such as strategy, project management, consulting, and agency leadership, as well as for the "project implementers" from conception, design, and development. As a result, transparency has increased as well: "Our employees know where to look to find all the information they need - every morning, every evening, and during the day." Team members can get the information they need independently and quickly, without interrupting anyone else's work, which is especially important with Remote Work.

More flexibility in collaboration

Kugler adds, "The beauty of Stackfield is the flexibility we hold." There are workspaces - so-called rooms - in which several different projects are handled, and rooms in which a single large (customer) project is organized exclusively. The individual structure that can be created in the tool is used by .diff primarily when working with customers. For most of the customers, a room group is created in Stackfield right at the beginning of the project. In turn, there are separate rooms for specific use cases: a room for internal agency communication, a room for coordination and approvals with the customer, or so-called project rooms in which freelancers or other service providers can be integrated - depending on the circumstances of the project. "For me, the room concept has the major advantage that employees are only invited to those areas that are actually of interest and relevance to them. This ensures clarity and protects against distraction by irrelevant topics."

Another crucial aspect: The structure and transparency of the rooms ensure that status updates with the customer, vacation handovers, or onboarding have become much easier.

95% less internal emails

Furthermore, Kugler describes one of the most obvious impacts of Stackfield: Emails that used to be written to coordinate or to inform colleagues about the status of a project have become obsolete - no more mail chaos! This effect is hardly noticeable today, as it has become a habit not to write emails anymore.

Data protection as a core idea

The initial goal of replacing the existing tools with one solution while maintaining the diversity of functions, was successful thanks to Stackfield's all-in-one approach. However, there was a sticking point for .diff from the start, which mainly affected providers from non-EU countries - such as the USA: data protection and data security. "Things were just kicking off with the GDPR at the time, and we were suspicious of where the data resided with U.S. providers. Of course, these were mostly free tools, but you know what you end up paying with - the data and information that's sitting there." With the decision for Stackfield, there were no more data protection concerns in the internal and external collaboration: "I was glad that with Stackfield we found a solution that unifies all functions and at the same time ensures data protection because it is anchored in the core of Stackfield."

Service oasis - support worthy of its name

Standardized contact forms, chatbots, and dead service hotlines: that's the norm for many services. Personal support, as understood at Stackfield, is therefore exceptional for Jakob Kugler: "I think it's great that the hurdle to get in touch with Stackfield is incredibly low. By integrating live chat into the software, I always have the opportunity to ask questions to the support team and get an answer immediately - and I take advantage of that!" In addition, Kugler sees that his inquiries arrive at the right place and that his agency has not become an interchangeable number in the customer file, even after several years: "Once I have made a suggestion or feature request, I am actually informed via the chat when the feature is integrated. You can tell it is worth it and has an effect. It leaves me feeling like I'm being taken seriously and like I'm not as anonymous."