Today we’d like to share with you a customer story from an Australian project management startup Sitemate. We talked to Lance Hodgson, Head of Marketing & Growth at Sitemate, and learned how they work with heavy industries and create their own working environment using Standuply.

Sitemate is a SaaS platform that enables other companies to streamline their projects, teams, forms, and photos efficiently on-site and in the office thereby making the company smarter and more productive.

It is the simplest and most effective way to create, organize, deliver and analyze work with user-friendly and software structured around the daily jobs of people, projects and teams. No more bulky document storage!

Sitemate was designed specifically for companies in heavy industries (construction, infrastructure, power, mining, oil, and gas & much more) and it works for and across all functions (commercial, production, quality, safety, enviro, financial).

That’s why thousands of engineers, foremen, and managers in companies of all sizes from small residential builders to multi-billion dollar projects including NorthConnex.

Sitemate’s product Dashpivot is a flexible platform and app which companies use to document, organize and track their project and site and fieldwork.

Enables companies in the industries to digitize and streamline how they capture, organize and track work for making them smarter and more productive in the office and on-site, every day.

Today Dashpivot has users in 170+ countries and is used by companies including Lendlease and Hatch.

Lance shared with us a story about Sitemate’s birthday: “The idea of Sitemate was born when the founders, Hartley Pike and Sam McDonnell were at University. Hartley Pike was a civil engineer working out on-site who had experienced the pains of project management and paperwork on construction sites first hand, while Sam was studying industrial design.” 

“The idea for the product was a part of a university project. After gaining some traction and belief in the ‘business’, Hartley & Sam traveled to Europe for the University Startup World Cup to pitch their idea. They continued to work on the idea and coming out of an accelerator program in Australia, the team and software have continued to grow with increasing international demand,” Lance says.

Sitemate is headquartered in Sydney, Australia. But the team has distributed members on 5 other continents as well: Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, and South America. 

Lance says, “Now our team consists of 14 people: 6 people in HQ and 8 remote workers. Even our ‘office’ workers are often on the road going to actual construction sites to visit customers and prospects, so it’s crucial we can work and update the team from anywhere.”

It’s no secret that communication in a remote team requires a separate approach. The lack of constant offline contact, different time zones and the inability to control the work of each employee-all this complicates the usual work for the offline team.

But still, working remote, the result is important, and special tools will help to support this process.

Here are some of the ones Sitemate uses:

• Slack is for messaging;
• Front is for email communication,
• Trello is for task tracking
• Zoom for video conferences.
• And Standuply is for general progress, blockers, reports & updates

Lance highlights the main problems that the team faced in project management:

• Standardizing how people report on their own progress which is critical for efficiency in moving and tracking information.
• Ensuring departments are tracking and documenting the right things each week, month, etc.
• Keeping a team on the same page in regards to general business progress.
• Keeping all departments aligned on progress, milestones, and blockers
• Giving workers a forum for flagging blockers and headaches which otherwise don’t get surfaced.
• Understanding what was done the previous day or week, and what can be done to improve progress or outcomes moving forward.
• Being held accountable for daily, weekly and monthly targets.
• Celebrating wins (small, medium or large).

Working in different timezones can affect certain problems with the timeliness of tasks. Lance says, “We had workers in different timezones doing very different jobs, and it didn’t make sense to jump on a video call to cover everyone’s progress. We wanted to create custom reports which asked people the right questions so that everyone could document and share their progress efficiently.”

Lance explains, “As a result, we came to the conclusion that we need a separate tool to solve at least some of these problems. It was especially necessary to find a solution for a quick and easy way of performing ‘remote standups’ which would enable any team member to document their own progress from anywhere, and others to see and monitor that progress on a regular cadence.”

This is how Sitemate found Standuply.

“Standuply enables us to monitor different people and different departments in one place.”

Lance Hodgson
Head of Marketing & Growth at Sitemate

As soon as the Sitemate team started using Standuply, it was obvious that it was the solution to many of the problems they had experienced and the growing void which was becoming more evident.

Lance explains, “As soon as the team started seeing daily reports about progress and mentioning certain people in regards to certain blockers or issues, it was obvious we were going to get very real ROI on Standuply. We keep using it because it actually provides more and more value as we grow.”

Typically, the larger the team becomes, the more problems it faces in project management.

Lance confirms, “The more people we have and the more specialised their roles are, the more sense Standuply makes for keeping everyone in the loop without having to micromanage or worry about what’s actually getting done. Just like on autopilot!”

Lance also notes, “We see Standuply as a critical business tool. It enables us to monitor different people and different departments in one place –  whilst also sharing knowledge and information across the company in a succinct and valuable way.”

Sitemate team uses Standuply for these challenges:

Lance provides a great example of how they use Standuply for their weekly reports. He says, “Every Monday, department leaders get a series of questions which update the rest of the team on last weeks’ progress.”

“We’re sure Standuply is the right choice for our team. Why? It is simple, minimalistic, and effective, that’s all we need.”

Lance Hodgson
Head of Marketing & Growth at Sitemate

Guys are excited about how easily Standuply adapts to individual work schedules. Lance says, “Standuply fits into our current workflows by sitting on top of Slack, which makes seeing reports and collaborating and communicating with each other extremely easy.”

He also notes, “It enables our remote workers to feel more aligned with the rest of the team, and enables the company to better monitor and adjust progress – which is crucial to growth.”

Setting up Standuply for the team and individually for each employee, Sitemate noticed big improvements in project management.

“Standuply is one of those tools which is incredibly easy to implement.“

Lance Hodgson
Head of Marketing & Growth at Sitemate

Lance notes, “We have seen very real improvements in how people document and track their work. We can create the perfect set of questions for summarising any team members’ progress, no matter what their job. We can also instantly update this set of questions to reflect new goals and changes in the company.“

Finally, he concludes, “Starting to conduct these types of reports, questions and updates on Standuply is a win-win!”

Standuply is great for the company and management at Sitemate. And it’s also great for Sitemate workers who want to be held accountable for what they are doing and what to be recognized for their good work. Standuply provides Sitemate a flexible yet structured way of keeping track of progress, issues, and outcomes.