Fannit

At Fannit, a marketing agency with clients and workers located around the globe, clear communication makes the world go ’round.

“We have remote workers. We have employees who travel. Everything has to be built for that kind of world,” Tony Lael, a partner at Fannit, explains.

Fannit needed an efficient way of communicating internal processes with a remote workforce. But that wasn’t all—they also needed to communicate clearly as they provide services for a broad range of clients.

That’s why Lucidchart has become a staple for both internal and client-facing projects at the company. Cloud-based and specifically built for real-time collaboration, Lucidchart is designed to help employees share ideas and information easily both with each other and with clients, regardless of their physical location.

Tony says:

“I can say that Lucidchart plays a part in keeping a little over 60% of our recurring monthly revenue. Lucidchart helps us stay in communication with clients and constantly be a step ahead of them."

Streamlining internal communication

As the company continues to grow its remote workforce, clear documentation is crucial for success. Tony and his team use Lucidchart to create internal documentation that helps to keep the whole org on the same page, regardless of their location.

The company is currently building out their operational success blueprint, which describes every major piece of the business, from marketing and business development to sales and client success. The team uses Lucidchart to build visuals for the blueprint in order to clearly explain company processes such as payroll and quarterly planning. The whole team can work in real time on a single document as they build out and refine these processes. The documentation helps new employees come up to speed quickly and serves as an easy resource for everyone to access.

Tony explains:

“Lucidchart makes it easier to communicate because so much of our communication is online. We’re always on conference calls and things like that. Having Lucidchart lets me communicate more easily and connect with my internal team."

Not only does this documentation serve as a reference for current employees, but it also helps Fannit prepare for the future. As partner, Tony must help transfer the knowledge of how the business works to the next generation—and Lucidchart makes that possible. The visuals help ensure that the processes and ideas that make Fannit tick are passed on and understood correctly.

“We are right in the middle of building out our standard of operating procedures. We are a small business, and that's how we are going to get to the next place. The quicker we can do that and ensure everybody knows, ‘Hey, we use Lucidchart for this and here's why,’ building processes and documenting them for the next people will be that much easier and faster,” Tony explains.

Perfecting client interactions

Just as the Fannit team turns to Lucidchart to clarify communication with each other, they also rely on Lucidchart to improve client interactions. Fannit provides services such as inbound marketing, strategy, website design, SEO, and content to a broad range of clients. Lucidchart helps them communicate as they cater their services to each client’s specific needs, leading Tony to agree with the age-old saying that a picture really is worth a thousand words.  

For example, the team uses Lucidchart to visualize the current state of a client’s process, analyze what needs to change, and outline the optimized version. The visuals are very easy for the team to share—they can present the diagram to the client and provide a link to it in Teamwork, the software Fannit uses to manage client’s accounts, or send it in an email. The visual makes it easy for the client to understand Fannit’s proposed improvements and have something to refer back to as changes are implemented.

The Fannit team often helps clients implement the “choose your own adventure” strategy they learned from Hubspot, sending out an email to prospects with a question and various answer choices. Depending on a prospect’s answer, they receive a specific set of communication from that point on. Tony and his team use Lucidchart to map out these different workflows, which can be very difficult to keep track of if they aren’t clearly outlined. Clients understand which of their prospects are receiving what when and have a clear picture of the prospect’s experience.

Lucidchart is especially helpful when the Fannit team works on more complicated strategies with clients, helping to break down complex ideas and reach understanding faster. Tony explains, “SEO can be a very complicated thing for some people to understand. When we explain our strategy, including how we architect it and how it fits into the buyer’s journey, we use Lucidchart to educate them and explain how we’ll go about that.”

And clients love the difference these diagrams make. “We have clients who are like, ‘Oh man, where did you get this? I love this stuff!’” Tony says.

As Tony and his team work to provide these different visuals for clients, they are building their very own template library. Once a process is nailed down and documented for a client, that visual can then be duplicated and used as a starting point for a new client. This template repository is helping the company scale and become more efficient at providing solutions.

Reaping the benefits of working visually

Tony loves how easy Lucidchart is for anyone to use.

“When I saw Lucidchart, I thought it was perfect because our team has a good mix of millennials, generation X, and generation Z. Lucidchart cuts right to the chase and lets you communicate across generations—it’s not really hard to figure out,” he describes. “It’s a major piece of software, but it feels like an app that I just implemented on my iPhone. It integrated with my work process pretty seamlessly.”

Lucidchart’s ease of use means everyone at Fannit can work visually, which keeps the company connected to each other and to their clients—providing the communication necessary to make Fannit’s world go ’round.