How Brainlabs Uses Clockify to Encourage High-Performance

Operating a successful business on a large scale requires top-notch management and near-perfect organizational skills. 

One such thriving company is Brainlabs —and today, we’ve had the pleasure of chatting with David Maundrell, a senior manager for their Global operations team. He’s been with the agency for 8 years and is on a mission to make people’s lives more productive and easier.

Brainlabs offers a plethora of services, such as: 

• Identifying target audiences,
• Creating personalized ads, and
• Crafting content for all social networks. 

They’re committed to one goal — to propel their clients to the very top. 

Let’s step into Brainlabs’ shoes and explore their journey to success with David, discovering how Clockify played a key role in their achievements.

Brainlabs: the origin story

At the very beginning of our chat, we wanted to know how Brainlabs came to be, and David Maundrell was happy to tell us: 

“Brainlabs was founded in 2012 by Daniel Gilbert when the former Googler spotted an opportunity to build an agency made up of engineers, statisticians, and data scientists.”

Being unique was their goal from the start, as David told us: 

“From day one we didn’t just want to copy what we had seen in other marketing agencies. We have a tried and tested approach built around 3 key pillars: 1) people, 2) methodology, 3) technology.”

When asked how he would describe Brainlabs to someone who hadn’t heard of them, David explained they’re an innovative media agency: 

“Brainlabs is a new breed of media agency. We are independent, global, full-service, and obsessed with high performance. High performance in media delivers revenue and profit, whilst balancing the short-term and long-term impact.”

Of course, we wanted to know more about the high-performance part, and David told us that it’s the backbone of their achievements:

“Our success has been entirely built on delivering high performance for some of the world’s most sophisticated advertisers.”

Who are Brainlabs’ customers, and what do they need?

Brainlabs serves thousands of customers, and some of them are known worldwide, such as Microsoft and Estée Lauder, David explained: 

“It’s a privilege that brands like Walmart choose us as their partner in media off the back of our high-performance results. For the likes of Estée Lauder and Capital One, we deliver their full-service media, for other clients like our SEO partnership with Microsoft, we deliver channel-specific expertise.”

Which work model does Brainlabs use?

First, we wanted to know how many employees are working at Brainlabs, and David proudly told us their progress story: 

“Over the last 12 years, Brainlabs has supercharged its growth from 1 to over 1000 Brainlabbers, acquired and integrated 9 agencies, and expanded its international footprint beyond its London HQ.”

We were also enthusiastic to learn what working model they apply — remote or hybrid. Brainlabs captures the best of both worlds, as David told us: 

“We have an adaptive approach to working. This means that many of our employees are based out of offices but are able to adapt where they work based on their own, their teams’, and client’s needs. This means that everyone can deliver high performance for our clients, adapt work to suit their needs and we can also maintain a strong office culture.”

Brainlabs’ history with Clockify

During our chat, we discovered that Brainlabs used Clockify years ago:

“Funnily enough, we had used Clockify many years ago to track effort against clients.”

David revealed that the the sole reason they stopped using it was because they tried to do everything on their own at the time:

“At some point, we attempted a large reinvention of time management so we could have sophisticated models of client profitability, team resourcing, plus planned and contracted hours versus actuals.” 

However, David said they realized using Clockify was more beneficial for the company than their previous model: 

“There were a few reasons why this never took off, and we found moving back to Clockify made things much easier for us to get a view of how to better serve our clients.”

We were curious to learn how they discovered Clockify in the first place, and David gave an honest response:

“I can’t say how we originally found it, although I remember it had a very compelling price compared to its competitors.”

For the second time around, it was a whole other reason they began using Clockify:

“It was your fantastic reputation within Brainlabs’ previous users who loved the product that brought us back.”

What challenges did Brainlabs want to overcome with Clockify?

David shared with us that tracking time without Clockify demanded a whole new level of adherence:

“It required too much configuration and maintenance, with our organization not quite being at a level that demanded that much complexity.”

He concluded by saying that Clockify simplifies the whole process, meaning that the overall user experience is superb.

What makes Clockify stand out from competitors?

Next, we were eager to find out what, in David’s opinion, makes Clockify different from other similar software companies. 

Without skipping a beat, he shared that it was the employees at Clockify that made all the difference: 

“If I had to choose personally, it would be all of the people at Clockify that I’ve had the privilege of interacting with.”

He specifically recalled cooperating with our dear colleagues, Helen Medvedev and Gordana Veljkovic: 

“Our account rep Helen is incredibly competent and a pleasure to work with. Gordana makes our life very easy and is also delightful.”

David went on to explain how he felt Clockify was an ally rather than a company selling services:

“The procurement process was not pushy but consultative, it really felt like a partnership, unlike other SAAS vendors.”

David concluded that a part of Clockify’s greatness stems from the people who work there:

“In a competitive B2B field like time management, there is often a lot of overlap with features and functionality, but ultimately you cannot replicate the people who represent the platform. It’s these lovely people that make Clockify unique and great.”

Indeed, Clockify prides itself on having 24/7 customer support, where you can get assistance regardless of your pricing plan. 

Clockify features that the Brainlabs team enjoys the most

We were pleased to hear that David is thrilled by Clockify’s simplicity:

“It’s clean and quick to use.”

So, let’s see what Clockify features the Brainlabs team loves the most.

Feature #1: Reports 

David praised the effortless use of reporting in their company: 

“From an Operations/Management perspective, reporting is very easy to use.”

He also emphasized the importance of accessible customized reports: 

“It’s super easy to connect an API, get the data out, and set up custom reporting.”

To create a customized report, you need to:

• Export the file in CSV or Excel,
• Insert the Pivot table, and 
• Change the values that you want in rows and columns. 

Of course, this is just an additional option — you can use reports as they are. 

Feature #2: Time tracking 

According to David, time tracking via timesheets is the most used Clockify feature in Brainlabs. 

Employees often use a timesheet to record their work hours, filling out the table at the end of the day. 

Here are some additional ways you can choose to track your time in Clockify:

• Kiosk — track time from a shared device (ideal for out-of-office positions),
• Auto tracker — track time you’ve spent in different apps or websites, and
• Timer — start the timer at the beginning of the shift and stop it once you’re done.    

Each feature is carefully crafted to fit specific needs so that you can pick the best option for you.

Brainlabs’ process of analyzing tracked hours

Let’s see how tracking hours functions in a real-life example, according to David: 

“People are asked to track their hours against a client or a non-client activity. Within those 2 categories, there are a few simple subcategories, like which product you’re serving or what non-client task you’re doing.”

He explained that by tracking hours, they get to see possible shortcomings in terms of clients, products, and recorded time:

“By taking this simple measure of where someone’s time is spent and then comparing that against other numbers, we are able to paint a picture of which clients need attention, what products are more or less effective, who’s tracking too little or too much time, where our teams under or over resourced, are there any areas of concern across the business, and so on and so forth.”

Tracking time internally or for a client 

Finally, we were interested to learn whether it’s more convenient for Brainlabs to track time internally or for specific clients. 

David replied that they actually do both:

“Our use case comes from needing to track activity against clients, however, it’s important to get a full picture of effort. For example, if someone spends half their day with a client and half their time on team management and product development, it’s important to get that picture and have a full view of cost.”

Brainlabs has offices across the globe, so we were curious about how using a single time tracking tool across different teams and time zones looks. David explained that start and end times don’t matter to them: 

“We really care about where time is allocated, against which client or product. Because we’ve tried to make a point of establishing consistent global ways of working, someone’s time zone doesn’t really make a difference for us as an agency.”

David’s tips on using Clockify in a digital agency

We were also curious to learn what piece of advice David has for using Clockify in his industry — and he offered several tips.

Tip #1: Don’t hurry 

David mentioned that Clockify gives amazing results when you structure it well in the very beginning: 

“Give a lot of thought to your data structure, think about your naming conventions, think about how you want multiple tasks to function at scale and how they sit within projects, then how projects roll up into clients.”

Tip #2: Think about future projects when customizing reports

David noticed that it’s essential to take into account all future projects and plans of the company:

“Think about the number of projects you could be creating in 1 year, in 2 years. How does it scale into the future? What custom fields do you want captured and reported on? 

He further emphasized the importance of feedback in this step:

“Test your hypothesis thoroughly, get feedback from the people who will use it and the people who will view the dashboards, because after going live won’t want to change it drastically.”

Tip #3: Don’t be afraid of syncing

David also suggests that syncing is vital for the best use of reports:

“​​Consider syncing user custom fields to your staff records or HR platform of choice. This way, your reporting will match one-to-one compared to how teams are structured.”

Tip #4: Write down your exact expectations for the team  

David stressed how important it is to make a written record of the purpose of your time tracking:

“Take time to document your processes, even if it’s simple bullet points. Write down your organization’s timekeeping philosophy, what’s expected of your teams, how things are defined, and your utilization targets and other goals. Commit all of this to writing because you’ll refer back to it again and again.”

Tip #5: Deliver your own Clockify training to the team

Finally, in David’s opinion, having customized training on using Clockify is ideal:

“Take the time to create training materials that capture the idiosyncrasies of your ways of using Clockify and what you require from users.”

He also praises Clockify’s default training, which is free and available to all users. 

What the future holds for Brainlabs

David is proud of Brainlabs’ accomplishments so far: 

“Growing from 1 to 1000 people across 11 offices globally in 12 years, our high-performance approach proved to be a huge success.”

This approach was the key element to building authority in their field, as David told us: 

“We quickly gained recognition in the industry and won bundles of awards across the globe.”

Clockify makes it possible to deliver amazing results in continuity, as allocating time and organizing projects are vital in this aspect. 

Hence, the future seems more than bright for Brainlabs digital agency, David attests:

“Most recently we were listed by Adweek as one of the fastest-growing agencies globally. We’re looking forward to continuing this growth!”

With hundreds of employees, Brainlabs needed a reliable partner to define projects, allocate tasks, and track time. 

Since Clockify is designed to meet the highest demands — offering unlimited users and projects — it has become their first choice. 

Finally, we, too, are looking forward to witnessing the even greater growth of this amazing company and are happy to be a part of it.

Let’s reach the digital sky together.