Women’s Fashion App HALFZ Cuts Project Time by 70% with Taskworld
In our fast-paced world, nothing is perhaps more dynamic than the fashion industry, where what is in vogue today can go out of style tomorrow. In order to keep up with the trends, one has to keep an eye on what is being produced, distributed and consumed at all times. The focus of our success story today is startup HALFZ, an innovative and dynamic platform based in Korea that enables users to make direct purchases of luxury goods.
‘HALFZ’ is a mobile application that helps users find goods from 27000 overseas fashion brands, for the cheapest possible price. Partnering with 164 fashion commerce companies worldwide including Yoox, Shopbop, Farfetch, Matches fashion, and ASOS, ‘HALFZ’ provides users with a platform to find luxury goods quickly and at the lowest cost. By channeling the passion of the ‘HALFZ’ team through Taskworld, we were able to reduce project completion time from 3 months to just one month.
Q. Please give us a short introduction to the HALFZ company and your team.
A. The fashion distribution sector accounts for 40% of all e-commerce. We focused on the demand for an application that could provide quick and accurate information on ongoing sales that were happening around the world. Thus, we developed ‘HALFZ’, which uses image analysis technology to search for scattered information about products and their prices across the world, and allows users to purchase those products.
Initially, we targeted the domestic (Korean) market, but received much better feedback than we had expected from the US during the beta testing period. Moving forward, we plan to upgrade our product and provide services with an emphasis on the US market. ‘HALFZ’ is currently available on all Android phones and we are preparing to launch the application for the iPhone by this summer.
Q. Before using Taskworld, what tools did you use to carry out your work and how did you use them?
A. We made use of a mixture of tools before we started using Taskworld. We used e-mail, Messenger and Slack but those tools left much to be desired. They did not allow us to separate private and business conversations and it was also not possible for us to specify the participants of a conversation based on our needs. The development team needed to store and share their work history of the issues faced but they would each use their own tools in their sharing, which made accurate and efficient tracking difficult.
Q. Was there any particular reason for your switch to Taskworld?
A. On 1 January 2017, we launched the beta version of our application and received feedback, which made us realize, once again, the need for effective project management tools in our upgrading process. In reviewing various project management tools, we found that Taskworld provides the most intuitive UI, the best UX and the most effective features, which led us to our decision.
In application development and management, we require a tool that allows us to track tasks, see the work schedule for each task, see the overall management schedule and et cetera at a glance. Our comparison showed that Taskworld provided the features that were most optimized for these purposes.
Q. What are some of the things that have changed since you started using Taskworld?
A. We were able to organize communication within the team, which had been a mess, into three tracks: one for the overall project, one for real-time communication and one for intra-departmental collaboration. We divided our work into tasks and set up a list of followers for each of them, while the CEO would check the overall project while receiving feedback and conducting fine-tuning.
As everyone was using the same tool, communication became more efficient and we were able to shorten the estimated three-month upgrade of our beta version to one month! Taskworld is definitely a great tool for those in the fashion app business, where speed is everything.
Q. What are some of your favorite features of Taskworld?
A. I like the deadline setting function best, although my team members did find it rather burdensome at first. Instead of setting the deadline for them, however, my team members usually decided on a deadline for themselves. The deadline setting function helped us manage our schedule by informing us once a deadline was past, and helped us work actively towards our goal by allowing us to check our overall progress. (CEO Jang Jae-yong)
I also liked the deadline setting function. By allowing us to check our progress in real-time, we were able to get things done more efficiently. Being able to compare our progress also served as a form of motivation. (Employee Shin Da-mi)
As a developer, I found the checklist function to be of great help. Bugs in the software can be caused by a variety of reasons, and being able to check them off one by one (as I solved them) was very useful. I also created tags to label my tasks with keywords. (Employee Shin Chan-bo)
Q. What type of industries or businesses would you recommend Taskworld to?
A. I think that Taskworld can be an effective tool for any type of business. Large businesses can use Taskworld to help their staff manage projects with greater initiative and proactivity, while start-ups can use Taskworld to increase the flexibility and speed of project completion.
Q. Your company has been using Taskworld for some time now, so what suggestions do you have for new users of our product?
A. I think the tutorial Taskworld provides for its new users is really good. The fact that there is a Korean version of the product makes things even simpler. I think it would be a good idea to try to prioritize the overall project in which all team members participate and then to create separate personal projects to work on at the same time.
