How BDA gained transparency in fast-paced project work
Customer Story
BDA Creative is a full-service creative agency that manages multiple projects in parallel, often combining internal teams with freelancers. Operating in a fast-paced environment, the company needed a way to streamline planning, manage workloads, and maintain real-time visibility into team utilization.
Situation
In the project business, efficient resource planning quickly becomes a challenge. With numerous concurrent projects, departments must balance individual project demands with overall capacity. For BDA Creative, complex client requests often arise at very short notice, making it essential to know immediately where resources are available. Previously, employees were occasionally assigned to projects even while on vacation or traveling, highlighting the lack of reliable planning tools.
Challenge
The agency’s planning relied on Gantt charts, which were increasingly inflexible and outdated. Coordinating freelancers alongside internal staff added further complexity. What BDA needed was a solution that not only tracked real-time utilization but also included HR functions such as absence and vacation management. No other tool they evaluated offered this breadth of features combined with strong usability.
As Markus Eckl-Jordan, Director of Operations, explained: “We wanted a solution that would reliably show us where resources are available—or soon will be—so we can plan with confidence.”
Impact
With Aerion, BDA Creative can now manage up to 30 parallel projects while maintaining clarity on who is involved, for how long, and under what availability. Both employees and freelancers are integrated seamlessly, giving the agency a real-time view of capacity across its entire workforce.
Aerion has replaced outdated Gantt planning with intuitive, flexible tools that allow project managers to respond to short-notice requests with agility. As Markus puts it: “For me, Aerion is an absolutely harmonious tool, both in terms of functionality and usability. A real relief for daily planning.”
Favorite features include the keyword search in capacity planning, which allows Markus to filter departments or teams by topic within seconds, and the person detail view with integrated absence management, which ensures he always has a clear overview of future resource availability.
“Aerion allows spontaneity in its best form—based on sound data. If a request comes today at short notice, I can agree tomorrow and already have my team assembled.”
— Markus Eckl-Jordan, Director of Operations