Case Study
How Second-Generation Business Stopped Running on Sticky Notes
Daniele, a second-generation pasta and balsamic vinegar business, ran for decades on paper, sticky notes, and whatever tool was newest. Every important task went through owner Marco. After months of sleepless nights, Marco worked with ProcessDriven to build a system his whole team uses. It now frees up about 15 hours a week, and the business no longer runs on his memory
15+ hrs
per week of time removed
~50 min
automated in content process
6
major projects completed
"From living in my head, and a lot of sleepless nights, to a team that gets stronger every single day.
We know what we're working on, we know why, and we know what's next."
— Marco Peruch, CEO
ABOUT THE COMPANY
Daniele is a family-run Italian specialty food shop and pasta and balsamic vinegar maker in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, that has been serving customers since 1985.
Daniele sells 850+ products, from fresh pasta to gift boxes for businesses, and is now run by the founders' son, Marco Peruch.
INDUSTRY
Food Manufacturing, Retail, & eCommerce
TEAM SIZE
15 employees
REVENUE
$1M - $5M
LOCATION
Schaffhausen, Switzerland
Marco Peruch
CEO
Ursula Tanner
Deputy Store Manager
THE CHALLENGE
Daniele opened in 1985 as a tiny sole-proprietorship shop in Schaffhausen's Unterstadt selling a small selection of premium Italian ingredients with fresh pasta made in front of customers. It later outgrew that space and moved to its current storefront at Fronwagplatz 7. Marco then took over the business, from his parents on July 1, 2020.
In 2023, the business posted the highest revenue in its history. Marco was ready to scale the business, but his operations weren't.
The business ran for years on what Marco called "The Bible": literal pen and paper. All work relied on someone walking the storage room with a handwritten list, crossing off items by hand as they went. Marco knew this wasn’t efficient, so in 2016 their team adopted Todoist, a digital task manager, meant to bring order. It didn’t help. They detoured through other softwares, where they found formulas kept breaking, before they finally landed on ClickUp.
At first, ClickUp didn’t seem to help at all!
Marco described trying to organize his operations as, "I have a puzzle right now with a thousand pieces... it's a bit difficult to set all these puzzle parts into the proper place." His attempts to organize tasks seemed to cause more disorder. “I lost my subtasks in the tasks, and it was very confusing. All the tasks were flying around,” he shared.
The breaking point finally came when six team members were out at once. This left Marco running the business alone, 3:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., for two months straight!
"I lost more procrastinating and messing around with things, rather than being in production. [....]
I don't want to be the bottleneck of our company, so I have to really be focused again to do our stuff."
— Marco Peruch, CEO
THE APPROACH
After seeing firsthand how DIY efforts didn’t make a difference, Marco signed up for ProcessDriven's Guided program. During the course of 90 days, he worked one-on-one with a coach to: audit his existing systems; properly setup ClickUp; roll the system out to his team; and set up time-saving automations.
During the audit, his coach spotted opportunities to consolidate tools he no longer needed. For example, he'd been using a separate whiteboard app for process mapping until he discovered ClickUp could do the same thing natively.
The plan also called for connecting ClickUp to Bexio, the business's accounting software, so a new order would automatically pull in and spin up the right subtasks for whichever department needed to act on it. Later, the approach expanded to layering in ClickUp's AI scheduling agent to handle his weekly planning. Marco already had the software. He just hadn't learned how much it could do! The program showed him how to use it to its full capacity. It also showed him and his team that all of this was doable.
By the end of the project, Marco’s team had embraced the ClickUp-based system. So much so, that the team started tagging Marco in task comments instead of walking over to talk to him as a joke! They’d tease that the more they mentioned his name, the more "touched" he seemed to feel. Jokes aside, Marco went from constant “quick questions” interrupting his day to an organized inbox where he can see everything that’s happening in his team.
"I honestly can say that there wasn't any interruption, at least as I can remember, like a firefighter issue where I have to run and rush.
I'm sure I mentioned that I have a good team, but it is really incredible. I don't want to overdo it, but this is really huge!
And I have to say it also to myself, because once in a while, we think we are drowning, but in reality, we are getting better."
— Marco Peruch, CEO
OUTCOMES
With the team now having one centralized management system for the business, the real test was whether it would hold up under pressure, not just in a calm week. And it did!
Marco worked through an employee off-boarding, a new hire onboarding, and a full weekend spent manually cleaning up decades of product data... all while the system kept the rest of the business moving instead of stalling out around him!
Key results during the project timeline included:
Retired SmartSuite for good — The full migration to ClickUp as a single system was complete by the end of Month 1 of Guided.
Cut weekly planning from 3 hours to 1 —by scheduling AI to follow Marco’s proven planning process.
Turned a 4–6 hour planning session into about 50 minutes — AI handled a full content and social media planning session that used to eat half a workday.
Built the business's first-ever complete product list — After 40 years running the company, Marco cataloged all 850-plus products they sell into one place, something he pointed out, half-jokingly, that "everybody has, except us."
Streamlined hiring and onboarding — A new process, built the same way as the order-tracking system, made bringing on a new hire go smoothly mid-engagement.
Started tracking real key metrics — Average basket size (online vs. in-store) and repeat-purchase rate within 75 days now get watched as trends, not just gut-checked.
No fires to put out since launch — Marco says nothing has been forgotten or fallen through the cracks since the system went live. He also described the whole staff keeping their own data up "meticulously."
Completed six major projects — Alongside normal day-to-day operations without any fires!
As Marco put it, "That mental clarity alone changed the game for us."
"The many zombies that used to shout from the sidelines, 'Hey, you still have to do this and that!' have fallen silent.
That's very liberating and makes me personally very happy."
— Marco Peruch, CEO
LASTING IMPACT
The clearest shift wasn't a tool. It was Marco starting to trust a system other than his own memory.
Mid-engagement, he described occasionally still waking up at night remembering something he'd forgotten to log! He'd jot it down, and go back to sleep. He was no longer in a months-long crisis mode that had brought him to coaching in the first place. By his own account, the business went on to complete six major projects in parallel alongside normal day-to-day operations, something he says would have been unthinkable a year earlier.
The real test came after the engagement ended. An unusually hot summer cut demand for a weather-sensitive product hard for months, right as two more staff members were out at the same time. It was, by any measure, a harder stretch than the one that first brought him to coaching! This time, everything still got paid — on time — and Marco says he feels stronger even as the work itself had gotten more demanding.
That's the difference a real system makes: it's not that hard stretches stop happening, or that the nights get instantly easier, but a guarantee that they stop being emergencies.
Marco feels this as well, in his own role. Asked directly, he'll say the sleepless nights aren't entirely gone. What's changed is what keeps him up. It's no longer "What did I forget?" It's "How do I make the business better?" He’s shifted from firefighting chaos to the CEO of a self-improving machine. That new identity will stay long after any software fades away.
"The best part? The fog is gone.
No more little devils whispering, 'hey, you forgot something important' or 'there's still that thing you meant to do.'
Everything is captured, categorized, and moving. That mental clarity alone changed the game for us.
We're a small family business and the systemization journey with ProcessDriven gave us the structure to complete (successfully) six major projects in parallel, something that would have been unthinkable a year ago alongside normal day-to-day business!"
— Marco Peruch, CEO
To wrap our discussion, we asked the team what advice they'd give to other small businesses in their former position.
"Ask yourself: would you keep doing the same thing over and over, and let the stress just keep building? Investing in yourself is worth it, the same way you'd invest in personal training.
My learning curve was short but steep, and looking back, I feel genuinely empowered now that the stress is gone. Don't be afraid! You just have to want it."
— Marco Peruch, CEO
