Video Production Management Tools

Every time I open YouTube, I’m bombarded with targeted ads for new tools to manage sales and projects—it’s overwhelming! At Lava Media, we’ve created hundreds of video projects (check out the amazing ones we’ve done here). We rely on a specific set of tools for management, and today, I’d like to share how we use them!

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Sales Tools

CRM
Our main tool is Bitrix. We've been "married" to it for 5+ years. We've set up a Kanban board tailored to our needs, a sales funnel, and some automation—working happily ever since.

Killer Feature: CoPilot. It transcribes our phone conversations and provides quick summaries, which is incredibly convenient.

Each client card has its own chat, fields with key links to materials (briefs, proposals, etc.), synced emails, manager notes, and team tasks (e.g., budgeting or creative writing).

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Proposal Preparation

Our presentations are custom-made for each client, with unique structures, examples, and ideas, all formatted using a consistent design template. We create and store them in Google Docs.

For estimates, we use PandaDoc. We love its catalog system for equipment, personnel, and pricing. Plus, it exports beautifully into a PDF, avoiding issues like misaligned cells and broken formulas in Excel.

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Project Management

Internal Instructions: These are written in Google Docs with interlinking for easy navigation. We didn't see the point in building a massive knowledge base, as each project involves highly specialized teams with unique workflows.

Gantt Charts for Clients: We provide clients with a Gantt chart that updates daily and can be accessed via a shared link.

If you're curious about how we organize production, check out our cases:

TechnoNIKOL (we shot a cool short film).

Les Art Resort (we produced over 400 content pieces).

File Storage: We use Yandex Cloud for materials, but its 3TB limit per account forces us to use multiple accounts. Large-scale projects with tens of terabytes from a single shoot day are stored on physical drives.

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Personal Time Management

For task lists, I love ToDoist, especially with its new calendar mode (finally!).

I also use Hubstaff for time tracking. With an inconsistent work schedule, it’s interesting to monitor daily hours and analyze monthly shifts in workload focus (operations, sales, marketing).

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Creative Tools

I enjoy Apple’s Freeform for brainstorming, mood boards, and block diagrams. It’s perfect for personal use, though I’m not sure how well it works for collaboration.

For notes—anything from client references to drafting motivational content—I use Apple Notes. I never fully understood the "second brain" concept with Notion/Obsidian. For now, a simple folder structure works fine for me.

There are also various apps for very specific tasks, which I’ll cover in my next post.