We are proud to welcome School Specialty Science as the latest publishing organization to start using the Appingo system to manage their publishing projects.
School Specialty Science is a smaller, creative, crafty division of the larger, School Specialty organization. SS Science is based in Nashua, NH and produces a bunch of fun science curriculum packages for a wide range of grades.
We really like the folks at SS Science. They are passionate about science, they are passionate about teaching and they are passionate about making books. And they are very excited about how Appingo will help them run better projects.
Some other interesting things about the School Specialty story:
- They were one of the few companies to quickly realize the power of SaaS software. They said very early, “You mean I won’t have to talk to anyone in IT to use this software?” No. No you won’t
- They built their first project and first schedule in the Appingo system WITHOUT ANY HELP FROM US. Once they got their account set up, they watched some of our training videos and were off and running! And here is what part of that first schedule looked like — pretty impressive stuff!
- When going through their workflow in thinking about their first schedule, they were able to realize that it was best to run their projects by chapters. This chapter-based workflow best eliminates bottlenecks, keeps their team members constantly working (as opposed to waiting for someone else to finish their task) and will result in them FINISHING THEIR PROJECTS AHEAD OF SCHEDULE. We wrote more on an earlier post.
- They realized that paying their freelancers only when the freelancer completed their task(s) might actually work better than the way there were doing it before. It will incent the freelancers to work faster and it will definitely help management organize and manage invoices.
- They put a smiley face after their Ship to Printer task (see below). Thanks to them, this has become a new rule for Appingo users. Celebrate the Ship to Printer task with a Smiley Face in your schedule. Cheers!! (we should say that for digital publishers, this step doesn’t exist, but Render Final HTML or something like that does. use a smiley face!)
- They saw very quickly that Appingo, as a web-based solution, will allow them to WORK FROM HOME more often. Saving gas, saving time, saving rent….Working from home used to be less productive than working from the office. Now it can be MORE productive.
Most of all, what we liked about the folks at School Specialty was that they have always understood that 
their project management process could and should be better. Now they have the tool for making that a reality. We are excited to watch and help this organization grow with the Appingo system.
Welcome to School Specialty Science!
