What did Intelco’s teams do to streamline projects, track their working time, and work as one?

Intelco is a software house that provides services for large industrial groups of various kinds, from the motorway to the airport, engineering, retail, textile, and many others. They are positioned in the Italian market as a true strategic partner for companies that outsource personnel administration. The company offers a wide range of services thanks to the “tailor-made” customization of the IRIS software, an Intelco-owned platform made up of about 42 modules to optimize, rationalize, and digitize human resource management processes.

The company, based in Gussago, Italy, faced an all-too-common scenario. Their teams worked out of disparate systems, needed more visibility, and couldn’t track work efficiently or see work in progress or a historical record of completed projects. They were determined to find ways to optimize their processes and work smarter. Change management was needed. Although change seemed intimidating, they knew it had to be done to reach their end goal — improving collaboration and streamlining processes.

Working the Old-Fashioned Way

Before Wrike, Intelco used antiquated methods to track work, like Excel and handwritten notes, so it was challenging to collaborate and work together efficiently. Their teams spent too much time working over email and phone calls and wanted to simplify and improve processes. They wanted to work smarter and find software where all their teams could unite and work as one.
They decided change management was necessary. While it’s never an easy process, they needed to ensure the outcome would vastly improve project management for all teams if they were going to disrupt the only way of working they’ve ever known.

Discovering a Better, Flexible Way to Work
The solution they were looking for needed to be centralized, where all their employees could streamline project processes and organize and prioritize their time. As they began evaluating their options, they watched multiple demos to determine which solution best fit their needs. It became clear that every provider was too niche, clunky, or not customizable to Intelco’s needs.
After being introduced to Wrike, the Intelco team saw how robust the platform is and how they could customize it to how they wanted it to work. “The other platforms were not as flexible, and that made all the difference to us,” says Mattia Ronchi, Project Manager at Intelco.

Upgrading the Request Process
One of Intelco’s main goals was simplifying requests and kickstarting work faster. Their clients couldn’t initiate new requests without first emailing or calling the service team. That meant the service team was inundated with inbound inquiries whenever
a bug needed fixing or someone sent a change request. The problem is, with multiple channels to field requests, there was no organized, easy-to-track system to handle everything. So, Intelco’s first action was to implement Wrike as an upgraded ticketing system to automatically consolidate new requests and route them to the appropriate team member— no more emails and inbound phone calls.
Initially, it took some time for Intelco’s teams to acclimate to this new process, but they soon realized that having a single platform to track work was the way to go. Ronchi explains, “Wrike has helped us organize tasks every day because it gives our people a platform they count on. Every morning when our teams arrive, they can easily see a prioritized task list in Wrike of what they have to do, so they don’t have to spend time guessing.”

Dedicated Spaces for Every Team
Establishing a streamlined method for new requests was just the beginning. Beyond the project management team, they began rolling it out to other areas such as legal,finance, IT and Research and Development. Each department set up individual Wrike Spaces to organize their work and it’s been a game-changer ever since.
“Everyone in the company uses Wrike. Each department has its own dedicated space where we set up projects and can track activities. It’s wonderful because all our work can be kept separate yet still housed in the platform.”
From that point on, kickstarting projects was not only faster but smoother, too. “Our teams like to use Wrike Blueprints because with each new request submitted, teammates get auto-assigned, and all the tasks are created instantly with appropriate due dates.”

Tracking Time’s a Breeze
Until Intelco started using Wrike, none of their teams tracked working time, so there were no benchmarks that indicated the required time to complete a variety of tasks. As more teams got onboarded and client requests came in, the company expanded its Wrike usage and realized time tracking was becoming a more critical focus.
Wrike’s timesheets have been eye-opening for Intelco, as they can now see how much time is spent per task in real time. They have a proper program, and planning and forecasting are easier because there’s more visibility and a record of time spent. According to the Intelco Project Management team, the benefits are clear:
“It’s helpful to see the saturation level of our teams so we can better plan for future projects considering the incoming projects and those who might have priority on already planned tasks. Furthermore, we can track all our activities back and forth in case we need to accelerate a project or shift a task from one colleague to another without losing track of our global planning efforts.”

More Visibility Equals Superior Planning
With all the work in progress came their next big pain point — reporting — in particular, planning and decision-making for executive management. Prior to Wrike, managers couldn’t easily determine how many projects were in progress, where to find tasks to get status updates, or information on past projects. Now, Intelco can track everything, and they love the visibility.
Everyone, including managers, can see which projects are being released and their respective statuses. No more digging through emails, spreadsheets, or handwritten notes because it’s all in Wrike. Ronchi elaborates, “Not only is it in the platform, but managers have created their own custom dashboards using Wrike Analyze, which has helped us quickly understand which teams are performing the most compared to others and where we need to improve.”

Big Plans On the Horizon
Intelco shows no signs of slowing down as they continue onboarding more teammates, optimizing workflows, and exploring more of Wrike’s functionality. They plan to leverage Wrike Integrate to consolidate their Salesforce account and other software from their tech stack.
Ronchi concludes, “Based on the success we’ve seen, I recommend Wrike to any company who wants to improve their team’s collaboration and enhance their project management processes because the platform is unrivaled in its flexibility and customizability to suit your needs.”