Rise Media is a high-quality video production company that specializes in the real estate sector. Rise Media was founded by Gerard and Melissa Lynch in 2017 and today caters to an elite clientele of luxury real estate firms including Sotheby’s and Corcoran Group.
Rise Media's challenge was to maintain and streamline complex operations while ensuring the delivery of premium content. Chief Operating Officer Anthony DeGrotta joined Rise Media in 2021 to leverage his real estate experience and enhance the visual appeal and marketability of their clientele’s properties.
Focusing on creating premium video and photo content, Anthony works with an internal team of project coordinators and external team of designers, copywriters, and video and photography specialists, across approximately 30 projects at any time. Under his leadership, Rise Media has become a trusted name for elite clientele seeking top-tier real estate marketing solutions.
Despite its success, Rise Media faced significant operational challenges that impacted its efficiency and scalability:
The absence of a unified system led to inefficiencies and miscommunications, causing project delays and errors. The manual management of tasks via Excel and the need for a centralised document repository caused misunderstandings and time allocation errors for the company, ultimately leading to project delays. This setup was ineffective in supporting a collaborative workflow and caused scheduling to be frequently overlooked.
“There was no single system to consolidate all our information. We were using an Excel spreadsheet, which was a very cumbersome way to manage things. It relied heavily on manual input, making it prone to errors and easy for someone to update incorrectly”
Manual management of budget and project costs was prone to errors. This resulted in allocation challenges and wasted opportunities and time, which translated to revenue losses.
Rise Media were unable to determine in real-time whether they were staying on track or exceeding their project budget. This gap in their financial management process hindered their ability to make timely adjustments. Implementing a more integrated system became crucial for achieving better financial control and project management efficiency.
“Our systems were reactive, only allowing us to see the costs and margins after the job was done. We couldn't compare the budgeted amount to the actual expenses in real-time to determine if we were on track or going over budget”
Managing external or third-party vendors, including freelancers, posed significant operational difficulties for Rise Media. The company faced challenges in efficiently outsourcing work, tracking the progress of external contributors and monitoring their costs and expenses.
Side conversations with external vendors on chat and email often led to team misalignment and slowed down production and delivery. This, combined with the company’s vendor needs regularly fluctuating, led to the team investing excessive time manually generating workload reports and planning timelines.
“There was a lack of time management. Now tracking how long [vendors] spend on a job, how much we pay them, the budget allocated for the job, and the actual amount paid is completely simplified with trigr”
“We were looking for a simple project management software… And then we understood what the capacity of trigr is”
Adopting trigr provided Rise Media with a comprehensive solution designed to meet the dynamic needs of media production, particularly enhancing coordination and budget management.
Rise Media had considered other work management tools but opted for Trigr because the platform is specifically designed for the workflows and structures of media production, and because of the personalised customer support offered by the Trigr team.
“We looked into Asana and Monday, but you’re not dealing with programmers or owners who understand your specific needs. What I liked about Trigr is that it put us on the same level as the big players and they genuinely listened to our goals”
Implementing trigr redefined how the Rise Media team managed their projects -
“By reviewing our quarterly, biannual, and annual trends, we can identify when we need to switch staffing strategies... Using Trigr, we can monitor this closely by comparing the cost of freelancers to salaried employees and making adjustments to maintain a tight budget”
As Rise Media’s projects grew in complexity and scale, they realised that the optimal scenario was a unified platform that enabled the simultaneous management of team workflows and project budgets.
“Beyond the budget management of individual projects, we also lacked an overview of revenue and budget across all projects. We needed easy access to our consolidated project margins per month, per quarter… which our previous set-up did not easily allow for”
“I have been charged to scale Rise Media. Using Trigr enables us to achieve this goal, shifting focus from cumbersome book-keeping to revenue generation"
By transitioning to a comprehensive platform that combined workflow and budget management, Rise Media significantly improved their operational efficiency. This change enabled better communication, more precise budget tracking, and a cohesive approach to project management. It allowed the company to maintain its high standards of quality while scaling up operations and adapting to the demands of their elite clientele:
The adoption of trigr transformed Rise Media’s project management processes. By streamlining workflows, the platform enabled better decision-making and reduced the time required to complete projects. This was particularly evident in how quickly resources could be reallocated in response to changing project requirements and unforeseen challenges. The enhanced coordination facilitated by trigr’s comprehensive features reduced the frequency and impact of scheduling conflicts, ensuring that projects moved from concept to completion faster and more smoothly than ever before.
With trigr, Rise Media gained a more robust oversight of project budgets and expenditures. The platform's real-time budget tracking capabilities allowed for immediate identification and correction of budget discrepancies, significantly reducing the occurrence of costly errors.Additionally, the improved project tracking and resource allocation helped avoid unnecessary spending and optimise the use of available resources. This not only cut down on direct costs but also minimised the opportunity costs associated with project delays and mismanagement, leading to more predictable budgeting and financial planning.
For Rise Media, Trigr has been more than just a software solution; it has been a transformative force. By enabling a 30% increase in margins and a 22% annual cost savings, trigr empowered Rise Media to scale operations, manage finances with precision, and deliver exceptional quality to its clients. The integration of trigr into Rise Media’s workflow underscores the platform’s effectiveness in turning operational challenges into opportunities for growth and innovation in the competitive media production industry.
