Huddle was selected by digital marketing agency AKQA as its project management platform. The technology enables 900 employees across seven global offices to work together on worldwide campaigns and pitches.

Huddle empowers teams at AKQA to brainstorm project ideas, collaborate on pitch material and share content with clients in a secure, branded environment. Clients, including Nike, Gap and Volkswagen, have full visibility of project timelines, how a campaign is progressing and what documents, artwork and images require their approval.

With offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai and Washington D.C., AKQA’s employees often collaborate with their colleagues across multiple territories. In addition to email traffic between members of AKQA staff, suppliers and clients, a significant amount of time is spent travelling to and from face-to-face meetings. Multiple tools, such as Basecamp and an extranet, were being used to share information across offices and with external organizations. However, recognizing the need for a standard global collaboration platform that could be used by people within and outside of the organization, AKQA deployed Huddle across the company.

Using Huddle, all material relating to client campaigns can be stored in a central workspace that can be easily accessed by the planning, creative, technology, media and analytics teams, regardless of their physical location. With Huddle, these teams can also manage their relationships with key suppliers, to ensure the efficient delivery of the end product, and present work to their clients. To accommodate the needs of AKQA’s growing business, the technology is also scalable and easy to both manage and roll out so that it does not place extra pressure on the company’s IT resources.

“As a global creative agency, we assign multiple teams on a project regardless of which office they are based in,” said Robert Burns, Executive Director of Information Technology, AKQA. “We treat our employees as a global talent pool. For example, in one campaign, the creative team could be based in Washington D.C. and the technology team in London. Huddle enables us to keep track of projects in real-time, view client feedback and clearly identify final proofs. We also appreciate the ease and speed of Huddle’s intuitive interface, ensuring that new members of staff and clients understand it immediately.”