Professional Services Company Keeps Remote Workers in Sync with GQueues and Google Apps

Established in 1996, Krengeltech is a software development and professional services company serving a variety of industries, with a primary focus on transactional document processing. DocuTransfer ®, its flagship postal automation software, provides significant cost-savings to businesses with high volume transactional document processing needs. While Krengeltech's main office is in Minnesota, a majority of its 15 employees work remotely from locations across the Midwest.

Switching to Google Apps

After using Microsoft Exchange for five years, Krengeltech switched to Google Apps in 2011 to reduce IT costs and time spent managing email and calendar services for its remote workers. Google Docs and Sheets were also a valuable part of the switch and enabled employees to collaborate on files much easier than before. Embracing the idea of collaborating in the cloud, they also started tracking tasks with Docs and Sheets, but soon realized these were not ideal tools for managing work. Quentin Krengel, the company's founder and President, discovered GQueues and immediately appreciated how easy it was to create tasks out of emails and re-order tasks based on priorities. While a number of task managers out there had features similar to GQueues, "the deciding factor regarding utilizing GQueues was the Google Apps integration," Krengel recalled.

Managing the Flow of Business

GQueues' support for collaboration and integration with Google Apps made it an ideal choice for Krengeltech's distributed workforce. Chris Franz, Professional Services Manager at Krengeltech, uses GQueues with his team to track and manage the flow of business with clients. Whenever an estimate is needed for a client a task is created in the "Estimators" shared queue, given a due date and assigned to the appropriate person. At the next stage of client engagement a task is created in the "Statement of Work" shared queue and delegated to a team member. When the deal is closed a task goes into the "Projects" queue for a person to set up the plans in their project management software. Since all three queues are shared with the whole team, everyone knows the current workload for the group, the current stage of each client engagement and who is responsible for each task. As a manager, Franz particularly appreciates the visibility GQueues provides him, and noted the shared queues "really help keep everybody focused." Taking advantage of GQueues' integration with Google Calendar allows team members to track task deadlines and get reminders for upcoming work.

Besides tracking work for clients, Krengeltech also uses GQueues to collaboratively create agendas for their staff and company meetings. At any point during the week employees can add items to the agenda queue, creating notes and subtopics as necessary. With the collaborative agenda their weekly conference calls are kept productive and efficient, ensuring everyone's items are addressed without having to spend time during the meeting determining discussion topics.

GQueues also helps Krengeltech employees track their individual daily tasks and commitments. Franz uses GQueues for Gmail heavily, turning emails into actionable tasks and clearing out his Inbox. He and many others also rely on the GQueues Chrome Extension as a quick way to capture tasks at any time so nothing is forgotten.

Simple Solutions Work Best

Having used GQueues for over 3 years now, it has become a staple in Krengeltech's collection of software that helps run their business. Franz cited the collaborative functionality of GQueues as the most valuable aspect of the service, which, "keeps them on track so nothing falls through the cracks." He went on to explain, "if a group of people at Krengeltech has something to do, most of the time we're going to manage it in GQueues." He also pointed out GQueues' simplicity as a major advantage over other tools that often require significant time managing the tool instead actually doing the work. The intuitive interface, along with its integration with Google Apps makes it "pretty much a no-brainer" for anyone getting started. In fact, all new Krengeltech employees are given a license when they start, because as Krengel noted, "GQueues' tight Google Apps integration keeps us all in sync and effective. It's a great tool for getting things done."