if.team — a new ERP system for Obriy Design Büro design agency

if.team can rightly be called the patron saint of all designers: the Ukrainian ERP system helps to tame the creative chaos in the projects of dozens of companies. The talented team of Obriy Design Büro has also discovered new horizons of efficiency with the if.team ERP for the design agency. It’s hard to find another company that uses the functionality of if.team so comprehensively. Read our case study to find out which features were the reason the team migrated from Notion and how they help designers create masterpieces and make clients happy.

About Obriy Design Büro

Niche: UI/UX design and branding

Company size: 11–50 people

Start of ERP implementation: June 2024

Obriy Design Büro is a boutique agency originating from Ukraine that offers world-class design solutions. This is evidenced by more than 200 prestigious awards, each of which is backed by a powerful team of designers.

Obriy Design Büro creates engaging and effective design that solves real problems for businesses and even government. Since 2014, the company has built an impressive portfolio of over 200 projects, including a particularly important case in difficult times: the redesign of the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, which strengthens not only the image but also the interaction of the state with citizens of the country and the whole world.

To manage so many projects and exceed the expectations of clients from over 35 countries, Obriy Design Büro needed an efficient software solution. Before the if.team ERP system, the agency was using the Notion application, but its tools were not enough to satisfy the ambitious design team.

The value of an ERP for the design agency with the Time & Material model

Obriy Design Büro turns clients’ business ideas into successful digital products not only through smart design, but also through flexible cooperation models such as Time & Material, Fixed price, long-term partnerships and even outstaffing. However, most design agencies use the first two financial models – Time & Material and Fixed price. They are the basis for project management in the if.team system. And this is not a happy coincidence, but the specifics of an ERP solution that takes care of the operational and financial processes of project-oriented companies.

Simple short-term projects that have a clear budget, defined deadlines, and an expected scope and result of work can be conveniently managed using the Fixed price model. For large, long-term projects that meet the ambitions of Obriy Design Büro, the flexible Time & Material model is best suited. According to this type of project, the client pays not for a fixed cost of services or a finished product, but for the actual amount of work the team does, i.e. time. To effectively manage complex projects with dynamic requirements, if.team ERP for design agency has all the necessary software modules and functions, including:

Iterations are stages, subprojects, or mini-projects that make it easy to track not only the progress of tasks but also the time and budget spent on them. What’s more, each new iteration automatically increases the total budget, for example, if the client has ordered additional services under the Fixed price contract type. For Obriy Design Büro, a design agency that uses an iterative approach to its work, this feature allows them to quickly respond to client requirements and easily make changes to the budget as the project progresses.

A time tracker is a key tool for tracking working hours, allowing you to monitor task progress, analyse team efficiency and workload, automatically calculate salaries, and assess project profitability. The time tracker is built into tasks and available in the user’s profile, and has a customisable feature for manually entering hours worked and saving time tracking history.

Tasks are the building blocks of each iteration and project in the if.team system. Moreover, each task can be divided into subtasks and dependencies can be established between them for a clear and consistent workflow. In addition to the time tracker mentioned above, the task panel contains many features for work planning and team coordination: priority, status, deadline, estimated time, description and checklist, as well as comments with attachments and actions with notifications.

Workload is one of the task display modes that is ideal for companies that prefer to manually enter working hours after the fact. This is exactly how the if.team project management is done at Obriy Design Büro: instead of real-time tracking, the team tracks time by task and day. Thanks to the user-friendly if.team dashboard, this is not difficult for the team, but allows the manager to monitor the use of hours, calculate project costs, analyse the team’s workload and more.

Employee rates are not only fixed and hourly rates, but also standard and special rates, for example, for specific projects (commercial rates), unpaid tasks (zero hours), or days off work (holidays, sick leave, etc.). Different types of rates allow you to estimate the budget and forecast the profitability of projects, calculate employees and invoice clients.

Salary calculation is a tool for automatically calculating employees’ salaries according to the rates and actual hours worked. The salary accounting module allows you to create payrolls for each employee for a certain period of time, including non-working hours. Isn’t this the best ERP for business? The total amount of salary is adjusted not only according to accruals and deductions, but also in case of changes in the form of remuneration: from hourly to fixed rate, or vice versa. The payroll pulls up all related transactions and shows the distribution of working hours by employee project.

A budget burn chart is a financial tool that allows you not only to control, but also to prevent project costs in real time. The chart clearly displays dry financial indicators in a dynamic and current way: project cost and profitability, paid and used budget, total spend and payments to the team. It not only facilitates analysis of the entire project and individual iterations, but also predicts future financial trends.

Reports is an important module of an ERP for a design agency that automatically generates data on hours and money spent for a selected period, both for a specific project and for an employee. This tool is useful not only for reporting, but also for invoicing clients for work by project, iteration and even task. To generate a report, all you need to do is select the required data using a filter and you will get a ready-made MS Excel document with a single click.

Providing roles and access to clients is a key feature for communicating effectively and monitoring the progress of long-term projects. And if you have many such projects, it only takes a few clicks to add a client to the system. All you need to do is create the role once and set up a set of if.team access rights that suit the agency’s needs. For example, you might want to give a client access to a project while restricting their ability to view financial data.

These are just some of the flexible if.team tools that give Obriy Design Büro full control over long-term projects based on the Time&Material model. Iterations, tasks, ratings and roles, as well as time tracking, which is used to generate reports and calculate finances, including salary costs. All of this allows a design agency not only to automate routine and organise creative processes, but also to easily adapt to the changing conditions of long-term projects.

CRM module for a design studio? Here you are!

A familiar but much-needed task manager, interactive financial analytics, and boring automated accounting. What else can an ERP system for business offer in the creative industry? A powerful CRM module that can optimize customer service in one, two, or three steps.

1) Leads is a tool that will not let you miss a single potential customer and will allow you to build long-term partnerships. This is possible due to convenient options such as:

• quick creation and processing of incoming leads,
• adding flexible fields in the card for personalised analytics,
• adding Utm tags to track promising traffic sources,
• scheduling touchpoints with reminders and deadlines,
• commenting, attaching files, and saving contact history.

2) Kanban is a way of viewing leads as a board that visualises interaction with customers using cards. To move a lead through the sales funnel from stage to stage, simply drag their card to the current status column. And when a sale is made at the final stage, the lead card can be converted to a project with a single click. All statuses can be easily configured in the admin panel of an ERP for design agency, which means that you can build your own sales funnel according to the needs of the company or even a specific case, as Obriy Design Büro has done.

3) Customers — a single database of the company’s customers, partners and counterparties. The client list consists of cards, each containing clickable contact and payment details, as well as projects, leads and transactions. In addition, a legal entity customer card can contain several cards of individuals (e.g. company officials). Effective work with the customer base is possible thanks to a convenient panel equipped with a filter, search and settings that allow you to easily hide or show table columns.

As well as effective project, team and financial management, Obriy Design Büro also has all the CRM tools needed to improve sales and customer service. Prompt processing of leads, planning of future contacts, storing the history of interactions and a single customer base greatly simplify the work of sales managers. The same goes for the Kanban board, which allows you to visualise and track deals at every stage, and which can be easily customised to suit your needs.

Summary, or what benefits an ERP for the design agency provides

Ambitious teams that want to think outside the box and create unique projects don’t need one-size-fits-all solutions. At Obriy Design Büro, where world-class design is born, a specialised tool focused on project activities was needed. So if.team became the design agency’s successor to Notion, and with good reason:

• Task manager with time tracking allows you to implement large-scale projects on time;
• Financial tools help to control budgets and calculate expenses in real time;
• Automation features allow you to generate reports, predict results, and ultimately free up time for creativity;
• CRM solutions ensure effective communication and relationship building with leads, which results in increased sales, customer loyalty, and competitiveness;

An ERP for the design agency Obriy Design Büro enables not only the creative team, but also clients and stakeholders interested in efficient and transparent project implementation, to work together in a single workspace. All participants can comment on tasks, share files and quickly solve problems online. In addition, the if.team system includes all the necessary tools for flexible project management: from time and task tracking to budgeting and real-time analysis. Despite its powerful features, the system remains easy to use: regular updates add functionality without cluttering the workspace. This allows the design agency to focus on what matters most — achieving project goals, and automating finances and routines frees up time for creativity and innovation.

The case of Obriy Design Büro shows that the flexible if.team system does not limit creativity, but helps to unleash it. An ERP for a design agency makes it possible to optimize the work of a creative team: react instantly to changes in the project, distribute the workload between designers, add new iterations and easily adjust budgets. At the same time, the team at Obriy Design Büro, who are constantly striving to improve their own workflows, are helping to identify weaknesses in the system’s design and improve the user experience when interacting with if.team. Thanks to the feedback from a globally recognized agency, if.team has become an even more useful tool that not only meets the needs of design and other project teams. It also contributes to the development of the creative industry in particular and the service sector in general.