Art & Process: Gallery Owner uses Pie

NOTE: Today, we have a guest blogger. His name is Ken Signorello. Ken is the owner of Darkroom Gallery and a Pie customer.

By Ken Signorello

Hi, my name is Ken Signorello, the owner of Darkroom Gallery. I understand the power of process management. My company is a  photography gallery that hosts international juried exhibitions.

It's a great opportunity for photographers around the world to share their creative photography and compete for exhibit selection juried by famous photographers like Chris Buck, Peter Turnley and Cig Harvey. The photographers gain professional recognition and get their work in front of more photography lovers and consumers.

Our process is to run a new exhibit every four weeks with four overlapping at the same time. This is a repeatable process even though each exhibit has a new theme, new exhibitors, and new jurors.

I had a challenge knowing what was going and when with all the balls in the air. Another challenge was with employee turn-over where special knowledge about tasks left with the person, making it difficult to transition someone new. There are many time-sensitive tasks, that if not done on time, can increase cost and cause disappointment.

I found Pie, which has become my most important tool for exhibition efficiencies and effectiveness. With Pie’s process features, I have been able to establish a visual process with details on getting each initiative done right and on time.

We're using the project and task management features and I can instantly manage the portfolio with the visual program management features. I trained my new gallery manager with Pie and exhibition processes within a an hour.

If an employee does leave, I'm all covered since the knowledge stays with the business.

Before Pie we just winged it. I had no idea how many tasks were required for each exhibition.  I was shocked to discover that more than 100 individual tasks were performed for each exhibition.

Now they are identified, scheduled, responsibility assigned and visible. We all can now collaborate together and streamline the process to make each event a little better than the last one.