Inside Project Management: UAB “Northern Baltic”

Our series of conversations with Paymo customers is continuing today with UAB “Northern Baltic”, a company providing construction, design, contractual, and labor hire services in compliance with the highest international standards in Norway. They were kind enough to take time out of their busy schedules to thoroughly answer our questions, so we appreciate it.

Tell us a little bit about UAB Northern Baltic. When was it founded?

UAB Northern Baltic was founded in 2006 in Lithuania. From 2012, our company has an engineering consultancy office where we help our clients solve different engineering questions. We are involved in many projects during the year, it is important for us to handle big amount of projects at a time. Our company’s main work is to provide workforce labor and engineering consultancy services to our clients abroad.

How many people do you have working with you? Do you all work in the same office?

25 employees work in our Vilnius office. Also, we have 200 builders and carpenters who travel in different parts of Norway to assembly wooden frame houses for our clients. Only the engineering office uses Paymo on a daily basis currently ~15 engineers.

What workflow challenges do you face in your daily work routine?

At the moment we don‘t have workflow issues inside the UAB Northern Baltic engineering division. But, we are not using the Paymo platform for project planning, only for time tracking, because we need more functions like easier project/task management. Missing project received/started/finishing dates. Currently, there is no project status information, you cannot find which projects are in progress, which aren’t started or finished.

How does Paymo help you in your business?

Paymo helps us track the time spent on engineering consultancy work. Analyze how much time was spent on particular tasks. It is very important for us to have accurate invoices. Paymo is the perfect tool for time tracking – easy and intuitive to use. We use both Paymo widget and Paymo browser systems for time recording. I think software add-ons really make you a bit different from other similar cloud-based project management systems.

Which are the features you love most about Paymo and which are the ones you find the most helpful in your type of business?

1. We like very much the time tracking possibilities – through browser or widget – all employees can choose what is easier for them to use;
2. Very easy and fast invoicing function;
3. Easy making of reports and statistics about time spent on different types of tasks.

If you could share 3 tips for better project management, what would they be?

1. Project management should be easy and fast. Easy to see overall view of project status (fewer clicks, more drag and drop functions).
2. All employees should be involved in project management at their level. Plan their tasks’ delivery dates, update project status.
3. To have the most updated information about project status every second – this helps the task manager to plan finishing dates, predict workload in the future.

Finally, what do you guys do to take the edge off work?

When we aren’t working, the engineers from the Vilnius office play basketball once a week. Also, a few times per year we gather all office colleagues and go visit other countries and have a good time together, partying, playing sports together – we’ve been to Malta island last year, this year we’ve been to Nida resort by the sea in Lithuania. Also, our teammates like sports, we have 3 team members who came to work by bike during the whole summer ~30-40km per day. People in our office are averagely around 27 years old, so we are an active and innovative company.