Scosche uses Smartsheet to streamline project management, save time, and double the number of products launched

Step into any big box retail store and you’re likely to see Scosche products on the shelves. Founded in 1980, Scosche Industries is a consumer technology and electronics innovator with more than 400 patents and trademarks with products sold in more than 50 countries. The company’s products include the MagicMount™ family of magnetic phone mounts, BaseLynx™ Modular Charging System, BoomBottle™ portable Bluetooth® speakers, and Rhythm armband heart rate monitors. 

The Scosche product development team uses Smartsheet software to manage product development schedules and projects, track product costs, and communicate with leadership. “Smartsheet is our main tool for all product development and running all our projects,” says Steve Sawyer, Program Manager, Product Development, Scosche Industries. “I’m also the company’s Smartsheet champion, so I’m the go-to person for everything Smartsheet.”

Previously, Scosche used various spreadsheet and presentation software solutions to manage the product development lifecycle. The whole process was manual, and none of the information was shared in real-time. Staff emailed spreadsheets around, so there were version control issues all the time. Scosche holds weekly meetings with its executives to go over new product development plans. To prepare for each meeting, the development team updated hundreds of slides. The team would then make additional updates when the meeting was over. “We spent our entire Monday prepping for the weekly Tuesday meeting,” says Sawyer. “One of our team members worked full time managing the presentation every week. It was very inefficient. My goal was to find a solution to automate as many of our processes as possible.”

Scosche first discovered Smartsheet when Chris McSweyn, Engineering Manager, was looking for a more flexible solution for creating timelines and Gantt charts. “It seemed like a great tool for streamlining our team’s project management process, too, so I was excited to try it,” says McSweyn.

Scosche started by importing product development data into Smartsheet and taking advantage of automated workflows to tag project managers and send them task notifications. Each time a new project or product is added to Smartsheet, the product development team and individual project managers are automatically notified by the system. “We no longer have to contact each team member to do a certain project task – it reminds them automatically,” Sawyer says.

Whenever a new product is created, the development team enters the data into Smartsheet the day the product is conceived. It might be an iteration of an existing item or a brand-new concept someone drew on a napkin. Whatever the case, it’s assigned a part number and SKU number in Smartsheet, and is tracked from its design, to delivery to the Scosche warehouse, until it ships to a customer. The data for each product includes images, status, bill of materials, Gantt chart timeline, and detailed costing and market pricing. Each product is also assigned to a specific manager for tracking against project milestones.

Scosche eventually adopted Smartsheet Control Center, a feature that automates project creation and tracking, to build dashboards in Smartsheet. “Control Center was a game changer for us, because it gives us the ability to spin up all the necessary project file templates for each new product and automatically update dashboards when product information gets updated,” says Sawyer. The team uses dashboards that list all Scosche products by category, and team members can click each product to see a more detailed dashboard for that product. There is a hierarchy of dashboards, from high-level summaries for executives with charts and graphs to detailed project statuses.

Additionally, the development team uses Smartsheet Calendar App, an interactive calendar view, to show new product schedules by day, week, or month.

A more detailed view of product development processes

Scosche now relies on Smartsheet to gain a more comprehensive picture of project status for all the company’s products. As a result, the company can more easily track each product’s lifecycle, from design to shipping. “Using Smartsheet and features like Control Center, the team has visibility into product development like never before. At any given time, they know exactly what each person is working on, when the product is being assembled, when it’s leaving the factory, and when it is arriving,” says Sawyer.

Time savings of 40 hours weekly and meetings completed in half the time

By getting real-time project data from Smartsheet dashboards, Scosche has quick, easy access to the latest information on each product and its development status. Now, executives simply need to view a Smartsheet dashboard to find this data instantly. Kasidy Alves, Co-President, Scosche, sees this as a primary benefit from an executive management perspective. “When we want to find out how many SKUs launched last year, or we want a list of every wireless charger project, for example, we have access to that information. The questions we used to regularly ask, have already been answered in Smartsheet.” Alves says.

Because of the efficiency enabled by the dashboards, the team member who previously spent 40 hours per week managing slide presentations has a different job description and no longer needs to create presentations. In addition, the weekly product development meetings now only take place every other week, lasting just two hours instead of four.

Double the number of products launched

With the increased visibility and efficiency, it has from Smartsheet, Scosche is accelerating the development of new products. “Using Smartsheet, we can manage more products and develop new products more rapidly,” says Mark Larson, Director of Product Management at Scosche. “We are launching twice as many products now, compared with five years ago, so we’re able to innovate faster.”

Scosche is also using Smartsheet to better track costs. “We’ve seen a five-fold increase in freight costs over the past couple of years, and Smartsheet gives us better visibility into those costs, by product, so we can identify opportunities for savings.” says Steve Klinger, CFO.

Smartsheet is also helping Scosche reduce new product development costs. “We spin up a lot of projects, and we might kill them if the retail buyer loses interest. Over time, the visibility we’ve gained by using Smartsheet has enabled us to kill fewer projects,” says Larson. “We can more easily manage all our projects, so we’re wasting fewer resources in development.”

Scosche is now growing its adoption of Smartsheet throughout the company, with departments such as sales, marketing, and human resources starting to use the software to manage their projects. Smartsheet adoption is growing organically, and the company plans to continue to expand it. The level of detail and what they’ve been able to achieve has exceeded the expectations of Scosche executives. Smartsheet is really a powerful tool for the business.

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