For a marketing agency to excel, it must always nail the best strategy for its new and existing clients, but even the most compelling campaigns won’t add value to their business if the race with hours-till-deadline is lost.

As the portfolio of our clients is becoming more and more international, last year we opened a regional office in Dubai. We welcomed this change with immense enthusiasm, but it made collaboration a bit more challenging for our design and account management teams. As team members were traveling around the world, feedback and production time were negatively affected.

Luckily, the pot of online apps and platforms that come to rescue in this hectic day and age is also growing more and more robust. Here’s the list of tools that won our hearts, helping us keep our clients content. They have one thing in common - each is extremely powerful when it comes to maximizing our collaborative workflow.

• Slack

Who has time to write elaborate emails and verify the recipients' list these days? If you have - consider yourself lucky. Since gathering inputs from every team member at all stages of project development is crucial for us, we shifted our internal communications to Slack. It’s a classic messenger with one extra feature I appreciate most - the thematic channel. We set up a new one at the beginning of each project, for all team members involved, no matter their role. In this way, everyone stays up to date with project progress and working documents and can provide their input, even on the go, which is a huge advantage as the clock is ticking.

• Google Drive

Surely, these don’t need the be introduced. The beauty of Google’s cloud storage solution is that you can save any file safely and make it available to anyone you want. In this way, we have access our work at all times, anywhere, and can opt to share selected pieces with our clients, so attachment-size is no longer an issue.  With Google Docs, even large team efforts are brought together in one place, which is an invaluable productivity booster! If time is money, then productivity is your best savings plan.

• Toggl

Toggl is the average timesheet taken to the next level, helping you make the most of the hours-till-deadline and allowing for more accurate project planning in the future. Once you start a project, you can measure the efforts allocated to each activity to a minute, with a clear division of task and assignees on display on your screen. For Clipatize, it’s extremely helpful in estimating the number of hours required to execute more and more complex projects as they keep coming through our door. How it keeps our customers happy? They get precise information about deadline feasibility before the implementation phase starts.

• ProofMe

This online tool dramatically reduces the “logistical” aspect of content production: sharing, reviewing and finalizing. By bringing creatives, account executives, content managers and clients to one ProofMe place and allowing them to comment or approve the smallest details, once again we’re cutting short the time from ideation and final product delivery. Why we love it? Because it’s also integrated with our favorite Slack, as well as Adobe Creative Cloud, Vimeo (check out our own channel!) and many more.

• Wunderlist

It’s wonderful to have so many tools available to collaborate, but it’s equally important to ensure that no task is overlooked if the team workflow is to run harmoniously. Organizing projects by dividing them into tasks and subtasking them to specific assignees is immensely helpful in planning and prioritizing effectively, while reminders and due dates ensure that the plan is actually followed. Thanks to “Mail to Wunderlist” feature as well as integration with Slack, everything you and your colleagues need goes on your list.

Just these five tools are enough to make your team productive and efficient. In fact, there’s one more thing all these tools have in common: they’re all free! That’s the best news for any growing business.