In our recent ebook, Building the Business Case for Online Proofing, we outlined several ways to build an internal business case to demonstrate the value that creative collaboration can bring to a creative marketing organization. Among the many benefits, there are three that are worthy of a closer look.
Three Core Benefits of Using an Creative Collaboration System
Deliver projects faster, Immediately
Most project specs assume that work will flow in a linear fashion--but that’s rarely the case in the real world, with multiple reviewers working on their own timelines and varying levels of detail of feedback that can quick affect project timelines.
By offering a centralized way to submit, view and comment on creative projects, creative collaboration tools promote faster project delivery, especially with non-linear project timelines. You’ll gain:
- A more effective feedback loop: Centrally shared proofs (for all content formats) helps you sidestep using disconnected comment sources like email, chats, and paper markups - significantly reducing delays in feedback.
- Easier version management: Real-time feedback also means your team members can see and implement changes in an organized manner, leading to fewer versions required for a completed project.
- Non-linear project management: Without online proofing, assets often are reviewed
serially, slowing down project timelines, while team members 'take their turn' providing feedback. With an online proofing system, teams can review assets simultaneously and collectively in real time.
Cut cost$ throughout the project lifecycle
A streamlined review and approval process that ushers in non-linear timelines also leads to:
- Reduced reliance on freelancers: By expanding your team’s capacity to get more work done faster, you’ll likely reduce the amount of work you need to outsource to freelancers to make your deadlines.
- Reduced revision costs: With easier revision management, you’ll reduce the amount of rework required on each project. The impact on an overall project budget is immense, from saving on overtime costs, reducing additional spend on creative, fewer rush order to vendors, etc.
- Reducing production costs: Streamlined online markups means your team will need to use fewer printing resources to circulate for review on paper and require fewer print-outs or reworked printing jobs to get projects finished.
Reduced compliance risks
The effort that goes into documenting when and how design and approval decisions were made can exceed the effort in the creative process itself. Demonstrating the process controls that go into finalizing creative content being produced in regulated industries can require a costly auditing effort that takes time away from your team’s actual creative work.
This solves these challenges with:
- More visibility into the collaborative review process: Creative collaboration systems track what is being reviewed, the feedback provided, and the decisions being made in real-time across your entire creative process.
- More organized version control: Versions for all proofs and content types--and comments on them--are saved in one place. You can immediately see a list of project versions and versions in a glance on each proof.
- Directly compliant approvals: Review groups can be created and modified for each project or proof, ensuring only the right eyes see and comment on content where needed.
- Full-scale process auditing: By saving all comments, change requests and versions to each proof, approval decisions, and updates are recorded at each step. No more time-consuming after-the-fact analysis about the compliance of internal project management.
These systems themselves should be simple to use, but powerful when it comes to capabilities to help organizations do more, with smarter cost and compliance controls. Moving away from antiquated review and approval processes can create efficiencies across the organization. It’s ultimately a conduit for creative teams to break free from the status quo by reducing delivery timelines, cutting production costs, and improving the costs, time and compliance gaps associated with complex marketing project management.
