In shopper marketing, a big part of my budget is spent on third-party creatives and field agents who do our in-store displays and demos. I’ve got a job to do in proving that spend drives lift.” Prior to Monitask, I received invoices and prayed that the hours were accumulated. Now, I get data. I use it exclusively for following the freelancers who design our point-of-sale materials and the agencies that report on store conditions. The project-tracking capability brings me the ability to make a project titled “Whole Foods Summer 2024 Launch” and have every hour logged against it, whether I was doing graphic design, vendor management or reporting. The auto screenshots – (we use a “blurred” setting) are like my sanity check that work is actually taking place on our assets, not just being billed. It has taken a form of subjective vendor opinion and turned it into an objective performance review.

Listen, my team is on the ground 90% of the time. There was nothing I could do about this, other than observe and speculate about what happened between their a.m. check-in and after-hours email, prior to Monitask. Did they really spend three hours at the store, or was there two hours of driving and an hour-long “planning” coffee break? I have the mobile app on my phone to look at the dashboard. GPS location combined with the activity log is the killer feature for me. What I can see is the rep was at a Target store from 10AM to 12 PM and their device reflected active work in your sales app during that time. It validates their effort. Mostly, they use the basic “time tracking” feature — when they enter a store, they clock in to a task called “store visit,” then clock out on their way out. It makes people lie a little less, if Iʼm honest about it, exaggerated time reporting is down by around 30 per cent.

It lets me see the progress of multiple projects simultaneously without micromanaging.I jump back and forth between campaign strategy meetings with views on analytics and what the group is checking on all day (yes, literally). It lets me know where our time has been invested: SEO efforts, content development, or running campaigns without distracting the group. Summaries of activities are so helpful. They’re the first thing I read with my coffee every morning and give me our status.