Kindly share your feedback on how GoodFirms has been doing so far in increasing your visibility among potential clients.
GoodFirms is a great reference for software: it provides clear insights to users regarding their needs, pointing them to the right tool. In this spirit, Magic Projects has got new clients.
Please introduce your product and give a brief about your role within the organization.
I’m Xavier Marot, founder of XM Tools and creator of Magic Projects. This software is designed to be a one-stop-shop solution for project management: you can handle projects, teams, tasks, budgets, planning… in one place, in a fluid and easy way.
What was the objective behind coming up with this software?
I designed and developed Magic Projects when I was working for a videogame company as a producer, and I needed a tool to distribute and organize the work on different projects while tracking the budgets spent on each. So the goal was to create a production management software dedicated to the needs of a videogame company, with various roles, dependencies, lots of iterations… It was difficult to find software that provides those features, so I tried to create my own.
How is your software beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other software alternatives available in the market?
First, this is free and open-source software. Then it provides unique features: It allows you to create tasks with a customizable stage tree where you can define the whole workflow (eg. design then modeling, then code, then integration and test...): tasks will naturally go from one person to another depending on the progress indicated by each member of the team. This generates many data that Magic Projects analyses in order to automatically produce a global view for each project: planning, project progress, feasibility studies to reach a milestone, team and budget distribution, workload... while sending at the same time notifications to users (from the website or by email) with useful information (new task available, the progress of a task you are watching and so on.).
What industries do you generally cater to? Which industries in general are highly benefiting by using your software?
Magic Projects was initially designed for the videogame industry. That being said, it is enough versatile to be used in many different industries (for instance, I have a client that works for a law firm).
What are the key features of your software that makes it stand apart from your competitor products in the market?
- Tree structure for tasks (nodal approach).
- Gantt planning built on the fly.
- Resource track (precise team assignation, changed on the fly depending on the task activities).
What is the customer satisfaction rate according to you? What steps do you take to cater to your customer’s needs and requirements?
So far users have been very satisfied. I’m always available to provide updates to fit their needs or answer their questions.
Does your software product provide any resource or knowledge section for its users? If yes, what kind of material is provided to your users to help them get acquainted with your product?
I have made videos to explain the different features of Magic Projects.
What kind of support system do you offer to your clients for catering to their queries and issues?
Email or any direct chat software (Teams, Discord, Skype, Slack…)
What has been the revenue for your product for 2020?
This is a completely free product.
Where do you see your product in the next 10 years?
First, I see Magic Projects being used in many other companies outside of the videogame industry.
Then, as of today, Magic Projects can be connected to Slack but I’ll be bringing updates to make it connected to other common tools, so it’s well integrated into the company ecosystem.
Finally, as free and open-source software, I expect other people to join the development and help me improve it, to publish a major update (including a full UI revamp).
