Huddle, the company that lets you connect and work securely with other people in the cloud, has been selected by AKQA, an independent digital marketing agency, as its project management platform. The technology enables 900 employees across seven global offices to work together on worldwide campaigns and pitches.
Huddle empowers teams at AKQA to brainstorm project ideas, collaborate on pitch material and share content with clients in a secure, branded environment. Clients, including Nike, Gap, Volkswagen, Heineken and the Royal Navy, have full visibility of project timelines, how a campaign is progressing and what documents, artwork and images require their approval.
With offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai and Washington D.C., AKQA’s employees often collaborate with their colleagues across multiple territories. In addition to email traffic between members of AKQA staff, suppliers and clients, a significant amount of time is spent travelling to and from face-to-face meetings. Multiple tools, such as Basecamp and an extranet, were being used to share information across offices and with external organizations. However, recognizing the need for a standard global collaboration platform that could be used by people within and outside of the organization, AKQA deployed Huddle across the company.
Using Huddle, all material relating to client campaigns can be stored in a central workspace that can be easily accessed by the planning, creative, technology, media and analytics teams, regardless of their physical location. With Huddle, these teams can also manage their relationships with key suppliers, to ensure the efficient delivery of the end product, and present work to their clients. To accommodate the needs of AKQA’s growing business, the technology is also scalable and easy to both manage and roll out so that it does not place extra pressure on the company’s IT resources.
“As a global creative agency, we assign multiple teams on a project regardless of which office they are based in,” said Robert Burns, Executive Director of Information Technology, AKQA. “We treat our employees as a global talent pool. For example, in one campaign, the creative team could be based in Washington D.C. and the technology team in London. Huddle enables us to keep track of projects in real-time, view client feedback and clearly identify final proofs. We also appreciate the ease and speed of Huddle’s intuitive interface, ensuring that new members of staff and clients understand it immediately.”
Huddle provides AKQA with enterprise support and integration with Microsoft’s Active Directory, which enables single sign on for users.
“Many digital agencies come up with creative campaign ideas that involve brilliant websites, mobile applications, video content and online advertising, yet they still communicate with their clients and suppliers using email,” said Andy McLoughlin, Co-founder and EVP Strategy, Huddle. “Inboxes are clogged up with large files and the network of teams involved in a campaign, whether within or outside of the organization, struggle to share information. Using Huddle, AKQA has highlighted its position as a thought leader in the market, using cloud computing technology to engage with all stakeholders in its projects.”
About Huddle
Established in 2006, Huddle (http://www.huddle.com) is the world’s only true provider of cross-business collaboration in the cloud.
Powered by Huddle’s intuitive productivity and collaborative tools, users discover a smarter way of working. They can instantly connect with colleagues, customers, partners and suppliers, share information and work together in a single place securely to get the job done.
Huddle counts employees at Fortune 500 companies, small and medium-sized businesses, freelancers and national, state and local governments amongst its active user base. Household names including Disney, Panasonic and P&G use Huddle to securely manage people, projects and information inside and outside of their business.
Huddle can be accessed online, on desktops via Microsoft Office applications, on the move with BlackBerry, iPhone and iPad apps and on social networks: LinkedIn, Ning, XING and Facebook. It is currently available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese.
Headquartered in London with a San Francisco office, Huddle has a network of thousands of channel partners spanning the globe, including partnerships with HP and InterCall. The company donates more than $400,000 of software to charities worldwide each year and supports the start-up community by organizing its flagship entrepreneur DrinkTank event in London, Paris and San Francisco. Privately held, Huddle is backed by top US and British venture capital firms, Matrix Partners and Eden Ventures.
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