For any project management implementation, the measure of success isn’t whether the system was built — it’s whether the team uses it. A hundred automations running perfectly in a system nobody opens is still a failed implementation. The engineering software company at the center of this engagement didn’t just want monday.com deployed. They wanted 100% adoption.
That’s exactly what OrangeDot delivered.
What We’ll Cover
- About the client and their marketing team’s operational needs
- Challenge 1: Misaligned dashboards, no automations, and manual reporting causing confusion across the organization
- Challenge 2: Multi-assignee project workflows with stage-specific ownership that standard project management couldn’t handle
- How OrangeDot mapped every business process and built six project-type boards connected to the company intranet
- How 150+ automations, stage-based assignment, and management dashboards gave every role exactly what they needed
- The result: 100% user adoption and a marketing team working from one reliable system
About the client
This client is a leading provider of multiphysics engineering software for product development, testing, and operation. With over 4,000 employees, the company offers finite element analysis software that helps engineers simulate the properties of components and structures — determining how a product will perform without conducting physical crash tests. Their portfolio also includes software for data storage and management, data backup and recovery, academic research, and teaching.
The marketing team at the center of this engagement supports a complex product portfolio and regularly produces a high volume of varied deliverables: assets, webinars, blog content, web pages, and marketing automation campaigns. Coordinating all of that work across multiple contributors and project stages required a project management system that could match the team’s actual workflow — which their previous system had never been able to do.
Two gaps that were costing the team time and clarity
The marketing team came to OrangeDot with two interconnected problems. The first was structural: their existing project management setup didn’t align with how any of their projects actually worked, making reporting difficult and daily navigation confusing. The second was process-specific: their projects involved multiple assignees handling different stages of the same item, which standard project management tools weren’t designed to support cleanly.
The company’s previous project management system had multiple tasks spread across several dashboards that were not aligned with the specific processes of any individual project type. Asset creation workflows were structured the same way as webinar planning, which was structured the same way as blog production — despite the fact that each of those project types involves different steps, different stakeholders, and different definitions of done.
That misalignment created confusion for team members who couldn’t intuitively understand what they were supposed to do next, and for managers who couldn’t pull meaningful reports from a system that didn’t reflect how work actually moved. Everything was manual: status updates, notifications, and reporting all required someone to actively maintain the data. No automations were in place. The system was adding overhead to the work rather than reducing it.
Recognizing that monday.com could solve all of these problems, the company chose to migrate — but they wanted professional implementation rather than the guesswork of figuring it out themselves. They needed a system that was built for the way their marketing team actually operates.
A project management system that treats all project types the same way creates friction for every project type that works differently. When the structure doesn’t match the process, team members have to mentally translate between how the system is organized and how the work actually flows — which adds cognitive overhead to every task and makes reporting unreliable because the data doesn’t reflect reality.
The marketing team’s projects didn’t have a single owner. A blog post moved through a strategist, a writer, an editor, a designer, and a web developer — with each person responsible for a specific stage and then passing the work to the next. Monday.com’s default model of one assignee per item didn’t reflect this reality. The team needed a way to assign different people to different stages of the same item and ensure that each person was notified automatically when their stage was ready for them to begin.
Without that structure, stage handoffs defaulted to manual notification: the person finishing one stage would have to remember to tell the next person that their work was ready. That manual layer introduced delays, led to dropped handoffs, and made it impossible for managers to have clear visibility into whether work was moving or stalling at any given stage.
When project coordination relies on people remembering to notify each other, the cost of every forgotten message is a stalled project. In a high-volume marketing operation producing multiple deliverable types simultaneously, manual stage handoffs don’t just create delays — they create a management visibility problem. You can’t tell where work is stuck if the system doesn’t track the handoffs.
The solution part one: process mapping and six project-type boards
Detailed interviews and full business process mapping
OrangeDot began by conducting structured interviews with the marketing team to understand every project type they manage, every role involved in each type, and every stage each project moves through from request to completion. The result was a comprehensive process map that documented each workflow in full before any configuration began — ensuring that the system built in monday.com would reflect the team’s actual work, not a generic project management template.
Six dedicated boards for six project types
OrangeDot created a new workspace with six boards — one each for asset creation, webinars, blogs, webpage creation, marketing automation, and related project types. Each board was structured around the specific process for that project type: the stages unique to that workflow, the roles involved at each stage, and the conditions that move work from one step to the next. For the first time, the system reflected how each type of project actually worked.
Intranet-connected request forms for each board
Each board has its own request form connected to the company’s internal intranet portal. When anyone in the organization needs to request a blog post, a new web page, an asset, or any other deliverable, they navigate to the intranet, select the appropriate project type, complete the form, and submit. The form submission automatically creates a new item in the corresponding monday.com board — no email, no manual entry, and no risk of the request being lost in someone’s inbox.
The solution part two: 150+ automations, stage-based assignment, and management dashboards
Stage-based automation chain: from request to completion
When a request form is submitted and the item is created in monday.com, the first automation triggers immediately: the point person assigned to that board is notified that a new request has arrived. The point person reviews the item and can approve, reject, or request more information using the Status column. Once approved, the point person assigns specific team members to each stage of the project — writer, designer, developer, and so on — with hours associated with each assignee in their respective columns.
From that point, the process moves automatically. When the person responsible for the first stage changes their status to indicate completion, the automation notifies the next stage’s assignee that their work is ready to begin. Each stage handoff happens the same way: a status change triggers a notification to the next person, who then completes their stage and triggers the next notification. With approximately 40 automations per board, no handoff is ever left to memory or manual communication.
Multiple assignees, hours tracked by stage
OrangeDot configured monday.com to support the multi-assignee model the team required. Rather than a single assignee per item, each stage of a project has its own assignee column with associated hour tracking. This gives managers clear visibility into not just who is working on what, but how many hours each role is contributing to each project — making workload distribution and budget tracking possible in a way the previous system never allowed.
Management dashboard for reporting and bandwidth forecasting
OrangeDot built a unified management dashboard that consolidates the reporting information leadership needs into a single view. Managers can see how many completed requests were produced each month, the hours allocated to each project type, whether projects are running over or under budget, and which specific employees are working on which items. The bandwidth forecasting capability allows managers to distribute work fairly across the team and plan resource allocation proactively rather than discovering overloads after the fact.
The result: 100% adoption and a team that works from one system
Every marketing team member using the platform daily
The measure OrangeDot and the client agreed to evaluate together was adoption: was the entire marketing team using the boards as part of their daily operations? The answer was yes. 100% of the team adopted the new system — not because they were required to, but because the system was built to make their jobs easier. When the platform reflects how work actually moves, people use it because it helps, not because they have to.
Manual notifications and stage handoffs eliminated entirely
With 150+ automations handling every stage transition and every notification, the manual coordination overhead that had been consuming team time is gone. No one has to remember to notify the next person in the workflow. No one has to check whether a request has been picked up. The system communicates automatically, and the team focuses on the work itself.
Reporting that reflects reality
Because the board structure matches how each project type actually works, the data generated by the system is accurate and meaningful. Managers can pull reports that reflect the real state of the team’s work, make resourcing decisions based on actual hours and capacity, and forecast bandwidth without having to manually assemble information from multiple sources.
6 project types, each with its own form and stage-specific workflow · 150+ automations handling every handoff · Hours tracked by assignee per stage · 100% adoption from the first day the system went live
FAQs
What makes the difference between a monday.com implementation that gets adopted and one that doesn’t?
The primary driver of adoption is fit: does the system reflect how the team actually works, or does it ask them to work differently to accommodate the system? When OrangeDot maps the business process before building anything, the resulting configuration matches the team’s real workflow — which means using the system is intuitive rather than confusing. Automations that handle the routine coordination work also contribute to adoption, because the platform demonstrates its value immediately by removing tasks the team previously had to do manually.
How does monday.com handle multiple assignees with stage-specific hours tracking?
Monday.com’s default item structure supports a single assignee, but the platform’s column system can be configured to add assignee columns for each distinct stage of a project. Each stage assignee column can be paired with its own hours column, so estimated and actual hours are tracked at the stage level rather than just the item level. This gives managers granular visibility into how time is distributed across roles on each project — which is essential for accurate bandwidth forecasting and budget management in a team where multiple people contribute to every deliverable.
How does the intranet form integration work with monday.com?
Each board has a monday.com form that can be embedded in or linked from the company’s internal intranet portal. When a team member or stakeholder submits the form, monday.com automatically creates a new item on the appropriate board with all the submitted information pre-populated in the relevant columns. The point person assigned to that board receives an immediate notification. There’s no email inbox to monitor, no manual data entry, and no risk of a request being missed or delayed because it landed in the wrong place.
Can the bandwidth forecasting dashboard scale as new team members or project types are added?
Yes. The dashboard is built on live board data, which means it automatically reflects new team members as they’re added to projects, new project items as they’re created, and new hours as they’re logged. Adding a new project type is a matter of creating a new board with the same structural pattern — form, stage columns, assignee and hours tracking, and automation chain — and adding it to the dashboard view. The reporting infrastructure scales with the operation without requiring a rebuild each time the team grows or adds a new deliverable category.
Final thoughts
100% user adoption isn’t a metric that comes from telling people to use a platform. It comes from building a platform they want to use because it makes their work easier, clearer, and faster. For this engineering software company’s marketing team, that meant six boards that matched six real project workflows, automations that handled every handoff they’d previously been managing manually, and reporting that finally reflected the actual state of the team’s work.
The implementation that OrangeDot delivered wasn’t just technically complete. It was designed to be used — and it is.
If your team’s project management system isn’t getting the adoption it needs, we can help you understand why — and build something that will. Talk to an OrangeDot expert →