Six months after launching Smart Team, Daniel Mallén found himself at a crossroads. His professional communications agency, based in Spain and Argentina, specialized in digital B2B marketing for industrial companies. Initially, Daniel relied on spreadsheets in SharePoint, improvised chats, and emails. It got the job done—until it couldn't.
About Smart Team
Smart Team is more than a traditional marketing agency. They specialize in helping industrial and B2B businesses manage marketing and sales more easily. Companies hire Smart Team to handle their digital marketing.
They help businesses get leads, improve SEO, manage email marketing, and improve outreach on social media. Smart Team uses automation and data to avoid disruptions, so clients can spend more time on core work.
Too Many Tools And Not Enough Organization
At the start, things were simple enough to handle without dedicated software. But as we got busier, it got messy fast. We had too many spreadsheets and no clear way to track what everyone was doing.
Daniel MallénDirector of Smart Team
Smart Team needed a simpler solution to manage client projects, keep track of tasks, and organize sales. Daniel Mallén wasn't new to business software. His previous experience with ERPs like Productive and Holded had left him skeptical of most project management solutions.
The tools I had used previously didn't quite convince me. They were either too complex for our needs or too expensive for our budget.
Daniel MallénDirector of Smart Team
Finding an Effective Solution
The breakthrough came from an unexpected source: a language model he regularly consulted for tech solutions. When Daniel explained his problems, it suggested Flowlu—a tool he hadn't heard of before. Flowlu had project management, CRM, and task tracking, all at a price Smart Team could afford.
What caught my attention immediately was the promise of usability and fair pricing. Those were exactly the two things that had been missing from every other solution we'd looked at.
Daniel MallénDirector of Smart Team
Instead of changing everything at once, Smart Team began by testing Flowlu’s CRM features. It turned out to be a good decision. They saw benefits right away. Flowlu’s CRM simplified client communication and tracking opportunities. It made interactions clear and helped Daniel and his team manage sales with less effort and more accuracy.
Daniel already knew project management software, so getting started with Flowlu was easy. He didn't expect his team to adapt so quickly. Usually, new tools slow things down at first, but with Flowlu, it went smoothly.
The pilot success gave them confidence to expand their implementation. In just a few weeks, the whole team was using Flowlu for projects, tasks, and managing their sales pipeline.
Clear Projects and Less Stress
Implementing Flowlu simplified how the Smart Team operates. Before, projects were stuck in emails and messy spreadsheets. Now, they have clear timelines, tasks, and everyone knows their responsibilities. Even the sales pipeline, which used to be confusing, became easy for Daniel to track and manage.
We've been able to organize our projects much better, and we've seen our productivity grow. As someone overseeing all projects, Flowlu has made my day-to-day much easier and has saved me a lot of time in meetings and emails.
Daniel MallénDirector of Smart Team
But the real transformation went deeper than just organization. The Smart Team began working with clear deadlines for the first time. Team members could now see their tasks clearly and understand how they fit into the larger project. Instead of messy communication, they started managing projects in a clear, professional way.
Smart Team now operates with clear deadlines, significantly boosting their efficiency. More importantly, Daniel can easily monitor all internal processes, including those for client projects. With tasks clearly assigned and visible, he's spending less time supervising and more time on business development.
Clients Notice the Difference
Smart Team's clients don’t see what happens behind the scenes, but they notice the results. Projects move faster, work gets delivered on time, and everything feels more reliable. In the industrial B2B space, that quiet consistency goes a long way.
Smart Team's clients—established industrial companies accustomed to working with larger agencies—now experience the nimbleness of a startup combined with the systematic approach of a mature organization.
Daniel Mallén shared that Flowlu is actually helping them gain visibility over key KPIs for the first time. He says that they're building from the ground up, and that's precisely where Flowlu is helping them most.
For many small agencies, the problem isn't optimizing existing systems—it's creating systems in the first place. The Smart Team wasn't looking to improve their project management; they were looking to actually have project management.
Smart Team are seeing improvements in commercial pipeline visibility and tracking, delegation of tasks and internal responsibilities, and onboarding of projects and recurring services.
Lessons for the Lean and Hungry
Smart Team's experience offers valuable insights for other small professional services agencies navigating similar difficulties. Daniel Mallén's advice is insightful and hard-won:
Train your team well to ensure a quick and smooth implementation. Flowlu's usability is a major asset, and onboarding should be very straightforward. Most tools create friction during onboarding—Flowlu gives you the chance to make that process much simpler.
Daniel MallénDirector of Smart Team
His recommendation for agencies considering Flowlu is straightforward: Small professional service teams looking to grow will find Flowlu helpful for structuring internal processes. It's flexible enough to meet different needs and easy enough for teams to use immediately, without complicated training. Its usability is especially valuable because teams can start benefiting from it right away.
FInal Words
Today, Smart Team runs on Flowlu's sales pipelines, project workflows, task tracking, and CRM modules. They’re not using every feature—things like invoicing, automation, and advanced reports can wait. And that’s the point. They picked what they needed, when they needed it, without adding tools or costs they weren’t ready for.
"Everyone uses it," Daniel Mallén says simply when asked about adoption across the team. "We all use it."
For a company that started with improvised communication and scattered spreadsheets, that simple statement represents a fundamental transformation. Smart Team found their rhythm, and with it, the foundation for the scalable growth they'd been chasing.
In the crowded B2B marketing industry, clients want reliability and professionalism. The Smart Team realized that their biggest advantage wasn't doing something groundbreaking. It was simply doing the basics extremely well. And often, the best tool is the one your team actually wants to use.
