Deadlines consistently loom overhead, thrown on top of that, you’re juggling dozens of internal and external stakeholders with their own opinions, to add even more, you’re combatting massive amounts of data. These are issues we deal with in our jobs every day. What do we do when these issues arise? We look for new ways to manage them, to make processes more efficient and run more smoothly to make our lives just a little bit easier.
In 2021, we won a large project that would be a massive undertaking: an 80-page catalog that would require internal review and approval from numerous external stakeholders and dealers. We were so excited for this work, but in doing projects of this magnitude in the past and knowing the back and forth it would require, we quickly realized that we were going to need a tool to help us level up this project.
The Problem
When working on a project of this size, there are a couple of problems that may arise.
It’s a Cumbersome Process
When the project was ready for review, we would send a PDF file to the client and stakeholders for numerous edits and reviews. When those edits would come back to us, we would have multiple edited files to look through, sometimes with contradicting changes, and would have to decipher which edits made the most sense to incorporate.
There’s Lack of Transparency
With many hands in the cookie jar, we would be waiting on feedback from a good number of stakeholders and could sometimes wait for weeks without knowing what the status of the document was. A lack of transparency could hold up our project and cause us to miss valuable deadlines to keep the project on schedule and the client happy.
When it came down to it, we knew we needed to put a more efficient and effective process in place to keep the project moving in an organized fashion. Without it, valuable time would be wasted, and this large project would not be able to stay on schedule. When you lose time, you lose money. Our account team quickly got to work on finding a tool that could change the game for our creatives and the client’s stakeholders.
The Solution
Enter, Ziflow. After looking at various tools that would be capable of hosting a project of this size, our team landed on Ziflow. It is a tool that automates every step of the creative workflow process, eliminating manual work and allowing you to produce exceptional creative. It supports over 1,200 media types and allows you to quickly capture and review feedback on multiple file types. This allows creatives, decision-makers and external reviewers to come together and collaborate more efficiently.
About Ziflow
Ziflow allowed our team to execute this project with great success and efficiency. It allowed the catalog to become this living document that our team was able to access internally and allowed the client and stakeholders access as well. This helped us reduce the number of files that were floating around giving us one centralized location to review, tag, markup, comment, compare versions and execute edits of the document.
It helped our project managers stay on top of deadlines and maintain the integrity of the project timeline for the client. Ziflow allows to you see the status of all active proofs, set due dates and lock proofs when they are past due, choose the frequency of reminder messages, customize the message sent with the proof and allow you to see who has opened and commented on the proof. These features make for better conversations with the client and help move project progress along.
The marketing industry and agency life is fast-paced and ever-changing, and we need to keep up. With Ziflow, it takes 56% less time to get creative projects completed and allows you to create exceptional work with 30% fewer versions before final approval. We’ve experienced firsthand the successes of using this program and are excited to bring it to other projects going forward.
Do you have a large project that needs top-quality work with an efficient process? We’ve got a team and a tool for that! Learn more about how Flint Group can level up your next project at www.flint-group.com.