Last Updated on December 10, 2024 by Owen McGab Enaohwo
The best way to keep track of your projects is to create and stick to a timeline. This helps in controlling and improving your workflow.
With it, you know when a project begins and when you’ll complete it. You’ll also have an idea of what materials to buy, when to order them, and how to accurately manage your project funds.
Timelines also help you avoid waste and get optimal value for your money.
At the end of projects managed with timelines, you’ll get the best operational value from all the resources involved and delivery will be on time.
In this post, you’ll get an in-depth understanding of how useful and valuable professional timelines are. You’ll also get access to 50+ free, editable, and downloadable professional timelines for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs, and Google Slides.
Let’s get started.
Chapter One: PowerPoint Timeline Templates
Chapter Two: Excel Timeline Templates
Chapter Three: Google Slides Timeline Templates
Chapter Four: Timeline Templates For Google Docs
Chapter Five: Timeline Templates For Word
Chapter Six: What is a Timeline and Why Should You Use One?
Chapter Seven: Timeline Templates: What Are They?
Chapter Eight: Timeline Templates Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Chapter One: PowerPoint Timeline Templates
PowerPoint timeline templates are great for their creative colors, well-arranged shapes, and icons that display information in attractive ways that every line manager would love. Here are some free and downloadable timeline templates for PowerPoint, which you can download, tweak, and use for your organization.
- History Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The history timeline template is used to list in a chronological sequence the significant events that occurred during a time period. In history textbooks and biographies, timelines are frequently used to illustrate what happened during a certain period or to a specific person, beginning with the earliest event and progressing through time.
- Event Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The event timeline template helps you to create a predetermined event framework to work with your projects, organize dates, check progress, and estimate the event budget.
This provides you with a rundown of what must happen before, during, and after your event.
- Business Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
A business timeline template allows you to manage business growth activities or schedules by listing the milestones in your company. This could include resources, such as the number of workers, locations, sales targets, estimated net revenue, and other goals. It also includes the dates they are expected to be fulfilled.
- Project Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
A project timeline template lets you create a visual representation of the project’s deliverables. It provides a straightforward and comprehensive visual picture of a project from beginning to end. With this, you get a thorough schedule that includes milestones, activities, dependencies, and delivery dates for your project.
- Project Management Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
This project management timeline template provides you with a file that can be quickly updated and used for project management activities like newsletters, publications, proposals, project evaluations, or scorecards. It allows you and your team to manage projects, collaborate, and instantly share project briefs with clients, partners, and management.
- Medical Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The medical timeline template helps you to manage the medical activity and specific procedures in your healthcare company. You can plan projects, execute proposals and visually share with stakeholders while keeping the team on track.
- Incident Response Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The incident response timeline template is a tool provided for security teams or emergency professionals to detect, eradicate, and recover from emergencies. It helps you respond swiftly to any external danger or threat.
- Crisis Management Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The crisis management timeline process provides you with the exact framework that your organization can employ to reduce a disruptive and unexpected incident that threatens to harm it or its stakeholders. For instance, large-scale industrial and environmental disasters could fold up an organization. This template shows crisis managers quick and easy ways to resolve any form of incident.
- Marketing Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The marketing timeline template provides you with an insightful process to manage your marketing duties. You can use it to plan your marketing procedures from start to finish by plugging in the dates for each activity, the duration, and the channels to achieve your marketing efforts.
- Gantt Chart Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The Gantt chart timeline template equips you with a two-dimensional representation of a series of jobs and their dependencies. You can use it to chart a detailed perspective of every aspect of your projects, such as current task progress, task priority, milestones, and time estimates.
- Event Planning Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The event planning timeline template allows you to checklist all the stages and steps involved in event planning and preparation. Plus it provides this in a chronological sequence. It functions mostly as a long-term event timeline that accounts for up to 12 months of lead-in time before an event occurs.
- Milestone Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
A milestone timeline template is used to document the specific achievements that should be met in the day-to-day running of a certain task. The timeline displays several milestones toward a project plan and assists you to tick the significant steps corresponding to certain achievement dates.
Chapter Two: Excel Timeline Templates
Excel is an intuitive tool for creating the professional timeline template. We’ve compiled some free professional timeline templates for Excel below, which you can download, tweak, and use for your organization.
- Vertical Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The vertical timeline template provides you with text spaces and timings, arranged vertically, to help you easily follow through with your project execution and delivery.
- Home Renovation Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
This home renovation timeline template allows you to create a process flow, bound by time, to complete your home renovation. For instance, if you have a home renovation that you’ve compiled into a mood board for 12 months, this template helps you make a budget, plan meetings with professionals, obtain estimates and finalize the start and project end date.
- Strategic Planning Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
This strategic planning timeline template allows you to combine your knowledge of insights, strategy, and business marketing methods into your project execution. It also helps you to think strategically when developing an action plan for large projects. It can be used to guide your research or as a basic brainstorming tool.
- Event Marketing Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The event marketing timeline template shows the progression of your event marketing strategy across time. With it, you can showcase your event marketing efforts, from the objectives that drive it to the strategy to accomplish action items.
- Annual Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The annual timeline template helps you to document the execution of long-term and repeatable projects. For instance, when planning a yearly cleaning project for an estate, this template comes in handy as it minimizes your planning and execution tasks as each year comes.
In addition, it provides you with a strategic point for project design and communication with stakeholders.
- Email Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The email timeline template provides you with the list of events that go into planning, designing, and communicating with your customers via email. It also informs you of the lifespan of emails and how to make your email communication strategy better.
- Goal Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The goal timeline template provides you with the guidance to track significant milestones that you have set out to achieve a set goal. It shows how far you have to go until you accomplish the goal. It also helps you evaluate whether the objectives you set are attainable.
- Conference Planning Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The conference planning timeline template is made up of standard ready-made activities that let you work with your projects online, organize dates, check progress, and estimate the event budget for your conference.
- Production Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The production timeline template depicts how far your production work has progressed. It includes the tasks that must be accomplished by a specific deadline. If you need assistance, it gives you guidelines on where to look in the production calendar.
Chapter Three: Google Slides Timeline Templates
Google Slides is an online presentation software that lets you create and format presentations, including timeline templates, and share them with other people. Here, we’ve compiled some free professional timeline templates for Google Slides, which you can download, tweak, and use for your organization.
- American Revolution Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The American Revolution timeline template depicts the American Revolution journey, the people involved, the time, and the events that took place at every point. It provides a starter pack for people learning about the revolution in America.
- Number Line Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The number line timeline template displays the events or occurrences of an event, project, or activity in a number line format. It is an excellent supplement for presentations, project plans, and proposals.
- Weekly Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The weekly timeline template displays the weekly activity of a project or event. It is used to manage weekly projects and documents project activities for discussion with stakeholders.
- Process Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The process timeline template provides you with the directives to follow to achieve specific tasks. This could involve the process of using forklifts to transfer items from one position to another.
- Numbered Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The numbered timeline template shows a list of events in the chronological sequence in which they occurred. For instance, it could be the order in which a police officer resolved a crime or a compilation of details about a significant period in history.
- Product Launch Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The product launch timeline template is a document that shows the steps and timescales for getting people to interact with a new product or feature. This template makes it simpler to determine your goals, lay out your strategy, and assign duties to different teams and individuals.
Chapter Four: Timeline Templates For Google Docs
Google Docs allows you to create timeline templates for your business from scratch. Below are some editable and downloadable timeline templates for Google Docs. You can download, tweak, and use them for your organization.
- Career Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The career timeline template provides you with a checklist of essential tasks for ensuring higher success during the phases of your career. To keep your career plan current, this tool will help you reflect on each phase, create goals, and re-evaluate yourself regularly.
- Research Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The research timeline template is a useful tool when working on a research project. It gives you the guidance to begin setting your plans for the research paper and a reasonable method to complete it. It includes suggestions on how to develop an idea and how to make your research flawless using beneficial resources.
- Real Estate Project Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The real estate project timeline template allows you to plan and execute your real estate projects. It involves how to list your house for sale and steps to take when a buyer agrees to buy it.
It also includes a variety of actions and duties that you must accomplish before the closing of a property can take place and transferring the property’s title to the buyer.
- Nonprofit Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The nonprofit timeline template allows you to gather sources, operating expenses, program costs, and your nonprofit capital structure in the standard frame. It’s a tool to plan your nonprofit growth by attaching numbers to it for donors to identify how their donations impact your organization’s goals. It also explains the charitable nonprofit’s income sources and how they sustain its operations.
- Social Work Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The social work timeline template serves as a road map for both you and your client as you attempt to resolve social issues. It details your social work treatment plan, your explicit goals, and directions on how all factors will work together. Also, it identifies the difficulties a client wants help with.
- Social Media Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The social media timeline template demonstrates how your social media strategy should work overtime. It details which social media platform to concentrate on at a particular time, and when to post on them.
- Fundraising Event Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The fundraising event timeline template provides you with the process of raising funds for your event, campaign for a cause, charity, or non-profit organization program. It points you to where to seek funds, how to plan the process, and strategies to adopt.
- Simple Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The simple timeline template provides you with a guideline for managing your tasks effectively. It also provides you with the procedure to discuss project specifics with stakeholders and keep the team on track.
- Trauma Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
A trauma timeline template provides you with the framework to walk through the history of one’s client’s unpleasant life events that have left them feeling abandoned, frightened, confused, scared, unhappy, angry, humiliated, guilt-ridden, or trapped.
- Visual Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The visual timeline template provides a graphical display to work with a timeline. It can be used for displaying the process map of a particular project.
- Internal Communications Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The internal communications timeline template provides you with strategic pointers for interacting with employees in your organization. It helps you develop actions to attain these objectives. It’s the road map that will lead you to success in internal communications.
- Colorful Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The colorful timeline template provides a colorful timeline design for project planning and management presentations. This includes handy layouts for preparing and presenting your project plan to an audience.
- Story Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The story timeline template provides you with the path to create a timeline with stories by adding imaginative effects to the process as they occur. It is also an excellent addition to any presentation, as it makes your display richer with details while you share information with your clients and keep the team on track.
- Keynote Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The keynote timeline template lets you create a contemporary slideshow for project management or business presentations. It includes more than simply dates and route maps, as it has maps and charts to help you communicate the depth of your topic.
Chapter Five: Timeline Templates For Word
Microsoft Word is one of the most popular tools for making a timeline template.
Here are some free timeline templates for MS Word which you can download, tweak, and use for your organization.
- Horizontal Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The horizontal timeline template presents the timeline in a horizontal format. It has a more intuitive, horizontal outline that is well placed in presentations and posters. You can use this template when you don’t have to be limited by space.
- Historical Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The historical timeline template is an instrument that assists you in pointing out some fantastic highlights on the twists of events in your life. It provides you with the guidance to express past events in a detailed, educational, and entertaining way.
- Construction Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The construction timeline template allows you to take charge of your construction projects. It is used to hasten the process of producing construction timelines and project schedules without having to start from scratch each time.
- Wedding Day Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The wedding day timeline lets you plan the wedding event in an exciting and fun way for the engaged couple and their audience. This includes the cocktail hour, the wedding reception, etc.
- Wedding Reception Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The wedding reception timeline assists you in planning the reception for your wedding. This involves the cocktail hour when your guests begin to enter the reception, the wedding party entrance planning, dance, grand entrance of the newlyweds, the couple’s first dance, welcome speech, and reception meal/dinner.
- Wedding Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The wedding timeline template states how the wedding is being planned. It involves the names of guests, the ceremony date, and the location.
- Personal Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The personal timeline template enables you to effectively build a framework to keep track of your personal happenings. This not only helps you visualize your past experiences, but also helps you attach the corrective effect on you, manage the present, and make the future better.
- Chronology Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
This chronology timeline template summarizes an event’s specifics. It allows you to visualize the succession plan of separate events that comprise a larger story or process by emphasizing key dates on a timeline.
- Blank Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The blank timeline template is an open book that you can use to create a timeline of your choice. It has all the necessary formatting and layouts for you to key in your thoughts.
- Monthly Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The monthly timeline template allows you to quickly create monthly updates of your milestones and tasks in your plan. With it, you can plan a monthly project from start to finish. It also keeps you abreast of the importance of each day.
- Employee Timeline Template
Click here to download the Timeline Template
The employee timeline template provides you with a guide to create an employee calendar that includes their names and shift times for a certain time period. It lets you assign hours to each of the tasks that employees do and provides everyone with a reference sheet for shift timings. You can use this when onboarding new employees to the company.
Chapter Six: What is a Timeline and Why Should You Use One?
A timeline is a chronological statement that describes a series of events or actions that occurred at a specific point in time. It is a visual representation of data, defined by lists, tables, or graphics, in which everything is jotted down and sequenced in the same order.
A timeline is a simplified format, similar to that of a flowchart, and aids users in identifying certain patterns in a scheme or course of process by concisely depicting different temporal linkages. It is also very simple to look at, easy to understand, work with, and remember.
Timelines are important for documenting any form of progress since they provide an easy-to-follow sequence and help viewers understand past and current patterns and relationships. They can also be used for administrative purposes and in other areas of your life.
For example, when you’re working on projects, you will want to show milestones, deadlines, and other critical dates and events during the project’s lifecycle. Connecting these goals to specific dates will determine your actual progress and success.
What is a Timeline?
A timeline is a diagram that shows a well-detailed series of events along a drawn line, allowing managers and executives to easily understand temporal linkages. It could be used to refer to a tabular chronology, year-by-year paragraphs, or a purely conceptual chronology. For a better presentation, timelines are increasingly being displayed and explained in infographics that combine text and graphic imagery.
The Benefits of Using Timelines
There are lots of benefits attached to the use of timelines. Some of these are:
- You can add timelines to your agreement plan between workers and the management. This includes proposed times and dates to activate an action plan toward project completion.
- You can tie a timeline to your payment plan. That way, you mix and match your payment terms in chronological order alongside the desired results. With bullet points and bold text of the exact date, you can indicate when the project begins and include other crucial dates.
- Timelines also help you to condense information by using visual resources. The essential points that are difficult to grasp can be displayed in a simple form to the team.
- Timelines help individuals and organizations to organize facts. This is necessary because not everyone is proficient with note-taking. This tool lets you imbibe creativity to make the project work achievable.
- Timelines bring everyone on the same project to the same page, so you’re less worried that people will be left out. It is also a proactive method that eliminates guesswork.
When to Use Timelines
Using timelines is applicable in almost any business or career. It’s recommended that you use it before starting any project. This is because it helps you set a clear direction and priorities on how the project will be accomplished.
Since the timeline is used to track multiple activities that you are performing, it is good to make it visual-based. Using a timeline at the beginning of the project will help you check what is necessary to do, the next steps to take, and action pillars that are needed.
When Not to Use Timelines
Timelines are best used at the beginning of a project or business activity. The next best time to use it is in between projects, as there’s always time for improvements.
But when projects are going smoothly and resources are well documented and managed, then there may be no use for timelines.
Chapter Seven: Timeline Templates: What Are They?
A timeline template is an indispensable part of the statement of work, as it provides a structured guide to communicating every single detail about a project. It simplifies the process of creating an excellent project plan, proposal, or any other document by helping you outline project specifics clearly for stakeholders and teams.
With its well-designed layouts and formats, a timeline template ensures activities stay on track, making it easier to assess successes and address challenges within the given timeframe.
Why Use a Timeline Template?
Using a timeline template is as important as using timelines. The beauty of it is that you will have a ready-made layout that only requires visual inputs to pass along any information. For a business or personal project, a timeline template can make your overall timeline plan easy, accessible, and functional.
A timeline template is a good place to start when you need to present an overview of an event’s details. By highlighting crucial dates on a timeline, it aids stakeholders to visualize a series of separate events that make up a whole story or process.
It saves you time and money, so you can divert these important assets to other important parts of your business or personal projects. It is also necessary for the creation of standardized layouts making your documents clearer and more consistent.
With timeline templates, you will be able to satisfy your customers by using consistent layouts that they become familiar with and can easily find the information they need.
When to Use a Timeline Template
Are you on a shoestring budget? Have less time on your side? Don’t want to put in the effort to create a timeline from scratch? If you answer “Yes” to any of these, then it’s the right time to use timeline templates.
A timeline template can be a go-to layout to tick off any part of the project, the challenges therein, and what remains for completion. That way you’re able to deliver your task easily, faster, and at low use of resources.
What Can a Timeline Template Do?
With timeline templates, you can perform exceptional activities in your business or personal projects easily and understandably. You will be able to keep track of activities using timeline templates.
With it, you would be able to give a summary of whatever happens in your business and also make a schedule or itinerary. Timeline templates can also be used to highlight important moments and make connections between crucial information that could otherwise go unnoticed.
What Can’t a Timeline Template Do?
The timeline template can’t help you activate the plan. You have to do that by yourself. It can only keep you on track to meet your goals, directing and informing you of the path you are on at that moment and specifying what you need to do to get to the next stage.
As much as a timeline template creates a good feeling and sense of direction for your business by helping you focus on the necessary tasks, it cannot do it for you. You have to take action yourself.
Chapter Eight: Timeline Templates Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Here are some answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about timeline templates.
What Does a Timeline Include?
A timeline should include the series of events and activities, whether milestones or tasks, that you wish to exhibit on your graphic display. It must also include the dates to highlight their occurrence throughout a specific phase.
Whether you’re using this form of visual content to share knowledge or track the development of a project, there are two major elements to keep in mind when planning the structure of a simple timeline.
The first is setting specific deadlines or time reference points and outlining the main steps of your plan. This is to estimate how much time each task will take. Divide your work into tasks with start and due dates.
The second is to identify the logical order in which your tasks will occur. This establishes which tasks must be finished first and which cannot begin until others have been completed.
How Can You Create a Timeline?
Creating a timeline is easy if you follow the steps below.
Step 1: Choose a title and description for the project
This describes what the event is all about. It should also have a segment to illustrate the time. For example, in projects, identify when work will begin and when it must be completed. With this, you can determine the scale of the timeline.
Step 2: Create a line and divide the timeline equally
Create a line and use small vertical lines to divide and label them accordingly. For instance, if your timeline covers a year, you may want to divide it into months, days, or hours. If there is a period with no activity, you can skip it by adding a line or zigzag.
Step 3: Add events
Add events by placing small circles along the lines you’ve created whenever it has been achieved. Then add some visuals using pictures, if possible, to further illustrate the event or task on the timeline. This can add clarity and increase the visual appearance of your timeline.
Here is a video walkthrough that shows you how to create a timeline.
Where Can You Make a Timeline?
There are many available tools in the marketplace to create timelines for different purposes. Here they are in no particular order.
- SweetProcess: You can use this tool to create timelines for specific tasks you’ve assigned to your team members.
Let’s say there is a specific procedure or process you want an employee to complete at a particular time. You can use SweetProcess to assign that task to them, and also create a timeline for performing the task.
Here is how it works…
From your SweetProcess dashboard, click on “Tasks.”
Once you do, you’ll be redirected to a new window. From there, click on the “Assign Task” button:
From the new window that pops up, you can assign tasks from existing procedures or processes to a teammate. You can also create a new procedure or process from scratch.
After choosing the procedure or process, the next step is to choose the teammates you want to assign it to. You can create a timeline (in the form of a start and due date) for the person (or team) who’ll be performing the task.
Once this final step is completed, the employee or team in the company will be notified of the assigned task. You can also see a list of your assigned tasks in the dashboard.
As you can see, creating timelines for your employees and teams on SweetProcess is seamless.
- Canva: You can use this tool to create your timeline from scratch or choose from a library of ready-made designs. You only need to picture what you want, then choose from the available design concepts depending on the font, color, and style you want.
- Office Timeline: This tool provides you with professional and easy-to-understand templates that will wow your team. You can use it to create professional timelines for your entire team.
- Tiki-Toki: With this timeline maker, you can make timelines that display in three dimensions. They’re easy to create and look great on screen.
- Sutori: Though this tool is used for collaboration and presentation in the classroom. It has a story panel, similar to Prezi and PowerPoint, that you can use to make beautiful timelines.
- Preceden: This tool is a simple timeline builder that assists in visualizing a project and communicating its progress with your team. You can also add events to stay organized and see what’s been completed, what’s ongoing, and what’s coming up next.
- Timeline Maker Pro: You can use this tool to make a chronological timeline where you insert your data and it creates a timeline for you in a unique style. You can easily customize the data columns to reflect how you keep track of your data.
- Timeline 3D: You can only use this tool if you’re a Mac user. It is a user-friendly tool for creating stunning multimedia timelines. With it, you can create 3D timelines to show links and clarify historical events. You can also use it to discover links and explain linkages between historical events.
- Aeon Timeline 2: This tool allows you to create timelines that easily display perspectives on your data, show connections between distinct people, locations, and events, and show interactions using multiple view types and filters.
- Timeline JS: This tool allows you to create aesthetically appealing interactive timelines. Just like with Google spreadsheets, you can design a timeline that catches every moment that you want to mark. It is also a free and open-source program.
- Timetoast: You can use this timeline creator to make a simple timeline ranging from ancient history to the far future. It helps you to create stories by using stunning interactive timelines that bring past life tales back to reality.
- ReadWriteThink: This tool, though mostly used in the classroom, helps you to create events progressively down a line. You can use it to build a graphical depiction of a process. It also allows you to group by the time of day, date, or event, and you can add a label with short or long descriptive text.
Who Makes the Timeline Template?
Anyone who is in a position to oversee the project can create the timeline template. This could be the business owner, line manager, project manager, member of the team, etc.
You can either make your timeline template professionally using well-detailed guides or get the templates from someone who is a professional in crafting it to capture your business goals and objectives.
Why Do You Need a Timeline Template?
Having a timeline template makes it easy for you to complete it while directing energy saved into some more pressing needs. A timeline template naturally calls for team collaborations if it’s in a group business setting. This is because the template would iterate everyone’s responsibility and the steps needed for the completion of the project.
This would also open doors for effective communication by which everyone can see what each person is doing and express their opinions, ultimately gaining a sense of ownership over the project, which is an important aspect of collaboration.
Chapter Nine: Create Timelines For Your Employees and Teams Using SweetProcess
With SweetProcess, you can create and manage timelines enabling your employees and teams to complete their processes and procedures faster. Here are some companies that have leveraged our tool for this purpose and many more.
ShipCalm is an e-commerce-focused logistics company. It offers fulfillment services via an omnichannel, shipping directly to consumers and retailers. Established in 2016, the company has built strong partnerships across the industry with e-commerce giants such as Amazon, Shopify, WooCommerce, etc., and leverages its network to provide the best delivery services to customers. They resolve any issues encountered in the shortest time possible.
As a third-party logistics company, the organization stores products in a warehouse and ships them to consumers who order them as soon as possible. ShipCalm channels its software systems and employees toward enhancing the customer experience.
The CEO of ShipCalm, Ted Fogliani, reveals that one of the greatest rules in his line of business is that you do not do anything without work instructions. He and his team members rely heavily on that to be efficient. Their growing customer base came with several challenges that were difficult to manage in the absence of a solid workflow management system. He said both his employees and the facilities were getting stretched beyond their limits. He needed to fix it immediately before it got out of hand.
In his words: “Every company faces growing pains. SweetProcess has been a way for us to manage the growing pains. No company should ever tell you they never had growing pains. In this economy, and what’s going on with COVID, we are growing, and it has pains to come along with it. Your systems get stretched and your people get stretched and your facilities get stretched.”
However, Ted was familiar with workflow systems due to his years of experience in the construction industry. Having used several systems previously, he knew exactly what he needed when he moved onto the e-commerce logistics terrain. Thus, creating an enabling work environment for his employees and satisfying his customers were top on his agenda, so he sought a workflow software that would enable him to achieve this. A trial of SweetProcess was all the convincing he needed that he had found the right system.
He said, “I had been hunting for years for something that was easy to do, and the thing that got me attracted to SweetProcess was that writing revision one of the procedures is the easiest thing in the market. I’ve looked at them all. Writing revision one was the easiest thing to do with these guys.”
When employees underperform in handling clients’ projects, the organization takes the fall. Ted makes sure that his employees are properly trained on the tasks they are handling before they get to work. Thanks to SweetProcess, he can track their training and assess their competence.
Ted said, “I can assign people to be trained on tasks and I can track that training. I come from manufacturing medical devices where I actually had to prove to the FDA that my people touching it were approved.” He also said, “If I was a customer of mine, I would say, ‘Hey, how do I know that Mike knows how to do my stuff?’ and I can say, ‘Oh well, Mike’s been trained on it. Here, he had an hour and a half, it was tracked. Here’s Mike signing off on it…’ It’s nice to know that Mike’s been trained and that Mike’s read the procedure.”
Atlantic Sapphire is a salmon farming company. It changed from the traditional method of farming salmon in the oceans to land-based salmon farming to prevent harmful exposure to ocean creatures and water pollution.
Founded in 2010, Atlantic Sapphire is fighting environmental pollution caused by the continuous air transportation of salmon in non-sustainable packaging from one country to another, including the United States. It grows the fish at its facilities in Denmark and the U.S. and distributes them via road transportation instead of flying.
The company has been producing salmon at its Denmark facility, called Bluehouse, since 2011 and has produced more than 25 generations of Atlantic salmon. It recently harvested its first batch of salmon at its new Bluehouse facility in South Florida and sells its salmon in stores across the U.S.
However, the emission of a massive carbon footprint when flying salmon to the United States was a concern for Atlantic Sapphire, and it resolved to produce the fish locally and sustainably. Doing that required strict adherence to operational procedures by employees. They needed standard operating procedures to guide them in their duties—but they were nonexistent.
The team at Atlantic Sapphire was not oblivious of the importance of workflow software. Stanley Kolosovsky, the technology process coordinator at Atlantic Sapphire, reveals that the company was trying to document its business procedures and processes when he started working there, but he found the system difficult to use despite having a minor in computer science and being an ISO 9001 certified auditor.
“I found a lot of the software funky. I went on a research spree to find what we could use and then I found SweetProcess. It was the most intuitive software that I found that basically anybody can use,” he said.
Also being able to track employee activities on the software and assign tasks to them were some of the features that initially got Stanley hooked on the system.
“I like to be able to check who has checked something. I’d say I really like how thorough it is in recording data. If I want to see what somebody has done or if they even visited the page or have they ever opened it before? That’s huge for me and being able to assign tasks as well.”
This was what Stanley had to say when asked about using SweetProcess: “It’s very powerful but it’s also easy enough for somebody to get up and running. Probably in a 20-minute session, they know the basics.”
He further tells us just how powerful the system was in setting things straight at Atlantic Sapphire. First is the streamlined business process documentation. There are several workflow software systems on the market to choose from.
But as someone familiar with the terrain, Stanley understood that adopting workflow software was not the end of it. Software that is hard to use makes people abandon the processes documented in it, almost as though these processes do not exist.
“It’s easy to use because procedures can be written as well as you’d like, but if they’re not easy to use, they won’t be followed. You can really have any software and put procedures in there, but if it’s not easy to use, it won’t be implemented.”
Also, he commented on the seamless employee onboarding and training and said that any means to simplify employee onboarding and training is a keeper. It saves the organization time and enhances employees’ confidence in their performance.
“It also shortens training times. It’s a very easy software to say, ‘Hey, read through this, and then we’ll test you if you know what you’re doing.’ And with all those step-by-step instructions, it’s really hard to mess up,” says Stanley.
SweetProcess facilitates learning in the shortest time possible. A typical employee onboarding training could take weeks or months. But with this system, they have all they need to know at their fingertips when they start work. Employees can also easily refer back to it in the beginning, when procedures and processes are still new and unfamiliar.
Stanley explains that this has reduced the number of questions asked.
“There’s not a lot of questions about what needs to be done for the day on the operation side. You come in, there are these procedures. The training is right there if you need it. This is what you need to do, no questions asked, so it really helps make business processes go smoothly.”
You can get started with a 14-day free trial of SweetProcess to create and manage your company’s timelines. You do not need to add your credit card details to sign up for the free trial.
Conclusion
Timeline templates are essential tools for any business because they simplify and make the execution of your project or plan easy, understandable, and achievable. They are created to put projects in check using a visual representation of data defined by lists, tables, and graphics in sequential order.
Smart companies have well-crafted professional timeline templates whenever they want to do anything important, be it business or personal.
Want to choose the timeline templates that are best to use for your company?
Click here to download the templates relevant to your industry, and get ahead of thousands of businesses that must build them themselves from scratch.
