Twelve months ago, the Marketing division of the Bendigo and Adelaide Bank went in search for project management software to help them manage their creative workflow – admation was selected as their preferred solution. We chatted to Dan Holland, the Creative Hub Manager, to see what challenges led to the implementation of admation and how its features have been beneficial to their business.

Prior to implementing admation

Before admation, Dan’s department used paper-based job bags to manage their marketing projects and approval workflow. This manual process didn’t provide his team with much visibility over their work. This led to the introduction of an internal shared workbook that was hosted on an internal server. This spreadsheet-based workflow system enabled marketing to brief jobs into the workbook as well as record the status of approvals.

While the tool provided more visibility than the paper-based job bags it still had a number of issues including:

• No collaborative features so approvals were still managed through email

• Quite a bit of time was spent going back and forth to collate feedback and approvals

• Staff working remotely found access unreliable

Dan recalls, “Some of our marketing staff are spread across the country and they often didn’t have the connectivity. As we got bigger, it became more of an issue and it got harder to manage. We had to do work rounds where people started emailing details to be added to the workbook. Things were taking longer in the system than they needed to.”

Selecting the right marketing project management software

After a couple of years of using the workbook, the business decided it was time to seek out a more efficient solution. A small working group from marketing was formed who started the process of researching project management tools. The group wanted to find a system that could:

• Streamline their approval workflow

• Offer resource management and digital asset management (DAM) features

Dan says that while there was a vast range of systems available in the marketplace, they were either standalone solutions (such as DAM only) or had features that weren’t relevant to their requirements.

“We went out on a quest to see what was out there. That’s where having a website and testimonials plays a part in the selection process. It got to the point where we short listed and met with a few companies and went through the presentations.”

To the marketing team’s credit, they also brought in stakeholders from other departments who would be using system to help in the selection process – a decision bound to encourage higher adoption rates. Dan says that they eventually chose admation because it matched their requirements as well as offered a simple, user friendly interface.

“I think when you’re looking at implementing change, simplicity and user experience are key. Of the presentations, the admation team did a brilliant job and made us feel at ease with it all. Another key factor, which was offered by admation, was to visit another business that was using the system. When it came to making a final decision, this was really important for us.”

Implementing admation

Admation presented a range of onsite workshops and training to give the Creative Hub and wider marketing teams a strong overview of admation. According to feedback, the real benefit was that everyone got to use admation in a test environment where any questions were answered.

At first there was some reluctance about changing processes and systems. As a result, Dan became one of admation’s champions along with Kylie Tan who was brought in as Creative Hub Workflow Manager to oversee the implementation of admation.

“With that, we just needed to champion the system and talk about the benefits it brings. If you just reminded people of that, that brought people along and through that initial barrier to change.”

Benefits of admation

Since the implementation, the Creative Hub team has seen a number of improvements:

• Less artwork revisions due to the collaborative feedback features

• Marketing resources have been freed up as other departments can now brief jobs into admation

• The resource management tool has given production managers more visibility over marketing resources

• Marketing has greater transparency over their approval workflow so no more having to trawl through emails to find each touchpoint

With the implementation, Dan says they also took the opportunity to adjust their own workflow to match admation. “At the end of the day, admation has been built to be a best practice workflow so it enabled us to manage our work differently.”

Best features of admation

Dan cited a range of features that have streamlined his team’s work:

• Admation’s asset management now enables marketing to save and track their assets in a secure, central location with all their other project work

• The search features of the system – any approved stakeholder can just login and locate working files or project documents

• The re-run campaigns feature which fast tracks the briefing process when you want to make a few changes before a campaign goes live again

• The automatic audit trail of work which enables anyone to log in and track jobs

• Reporting tools such as the revision report which enables the Creative Director to monitor branding and performance

• Online proofing tools

“The ability to proof and mark up videos is handy for us. That’s not something we had in the past. We’d have to upload it to Youtube and send it across to someone. Even then, they had to document time codes for alterations. In admation, we can mark up on timelines.”

Last words

Our only real challenge has been people’s reluctance to embrace change. But we’ve certainly overcome that now.