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!
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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
If you recall from this week’s first, second, and third posts, Anna is helping the Biology team at her textbook publishing company get ready for a conference. She is responsible for both putting together an initial budget and submitting purchase orders for specific expenses. After the event is over, she must assemble a final report that summarizes the key accomplishments of the conference, and that shows the preliminary budget versus actual spend.
How MindManager Can Help
Anna puts together a budget in her map by using the MindManager AutoCalc feature, which allows her to automatically create budget and actual topic cost properties in her map. She also uses the Smart Fill feature to set up the colors of her topics based on the state of her budget for each topic. Once she has created all of the key topics that she needs for quotes and purchase orders, AutoCalc makes it very easy to add in the budget information during the planning phase, as well as the actual amounts spent during the execution phase. Anna can then use the map itself to highlight her budget performance during the post-conference report. As she presents to the team, areas that are within budget appear green, and areas that are over budget appear red.
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Want to learn more? Join us for our webinar, "What's New in MindManager 14 for Windows?" taking place this coming Tuesday, 9/24, at 10AM. Register here.