Replacing Excel and Email with Podio for a 20-Person Consulting Team
Kommunikationslotsen is a Cologne-based consultancy that guides teams, departments, and organisations through complex change processes and future projects. Their interdisciplinary team of consultants and visual facilitators is around 20 people strong — constantly on the move across Germany and abroad.
The Challenge: Managing Distributed Work with Spreadsheets
Kommunikationslotsen's headquarters are in Cologne, but the team is always in motion — working nationwide and internationally. They offer a wide range of training programmes at various locations and tailored in-house solutions, with dedicated teams assembled for each engagement.
Additional coordination overhead comes from managing a partner shop for their own products and onboarding new consultants. Who is working on what, with whom, when, and where? They were managing it all with Excel lists, paper, phone, and email — functional, but far too much effort for a team of professional communicators.
The Solution: Podio as the Operational Backbone
Kommunikationslotsen adopted Podio as their flexible IT and communication infrastructure — enabling steady, location-independent information flow and structured, context-based communication inside and across their interdisciplinary teams.
The rollout, guided throughout by Kollaborateure, started with client management and lead acquisition. This was followed by seminar management with participant lists and resource scheduling, and an integration with their partner shop.
Systems replaced:
Results
One system for everything
Communication and collaboration are now handled within a single platform in daily operations.
Full client visibility
At a glance: which team is handling which client, what services they've used, what's planned next.
Location-independent
Every team member can map their own processes and follow those of colleagues — from anywhere.
Built for facilitators
The system embodies the facilitation approach itself: participatory, dialogue-driven, and collectively intelligent.
"We needed straightforward, fast communication channels that match the way we work. We work across many different locations and projects — what we wanted was more transparency and clarity at the intersections of project work and within the organisation. With Podio, we've found a place where we can all come together, exchange, inform, and organise collectively — anytime, anywhere."
— Verena Hanke, Project Lead"From the initial vision to the finished applications in Podio, we went through an intensive development phase together with Kollaborateure. After our project lead had tested Podio, the actual design and rollout began with Kollaborateure involved. Their support focused on delivering exactly the features we actually need. All collaboration took place in online meetings — both regularly scheduled and spontaneously whenever we needed advice."
— Holger Scholz, Managing Director