Case Study – Achieving Peak Team Health With Workgroups DaVinci

• The challenge
• The process
• The decision
• The results

The challenge

An inefficient, chaotic creative production process that hampered team performance.

The Marketing Operations department at this Fortune 200 medical device manufacturer needed to streamline and simplify their creative production process to more effectively manage stakeholder expectations and align their workflow with the needs and priorities of their organization.

They turned to Workgroups DaVinci to help them do just that.

Historically, management of the creative design workflow lacked structure, with no standardized process for initiating and updating the over 3,000 projects the department tackled each year. The process was also primarily focused on print design and did not include other jobs such as video, photography, broadcasts, web, mobile applications, digital communications, translations or asset requests that the department also handled.

Compounding the situation, there was little consistency around project requests or intake. Some stakeholders would contact the traffic manager to schedule their work while others would go directly to the designers, which often resulted in confusion and competing priorities.

Things needed to change.

Workgroups has eliminated dozens of emails back and forth with the designer when working on a new creative project. It is an extremely effective way to manage version control, ensuring that everyone is working with the correct file.

Marketing Quality Manager

The process

Doing due diligence with stakeholders and sourcing industry feedback

In an effort to assess the existing creative production process as thoroughly as possible, a survey was conducted with internal stakeholders. The goal of the survey was to gain a well-rounded perspective on the department’s existing creative workflow and identify opportunities for enhancing it. To validate the information they received from the survey, team members conducted a series of meetings with stakeholders across the business to get a broader assessment of their overall experiences in working with the Marketing Operations department in the development and execution of their projects. The feedback was clear; the department was performing below the expectations of the business.

To supplement their findings, the Marketing Operations department then benchmarked three comparable companies to identify their best practices for managing workflows and to understand their processes for successfully addressing many of gaps found in the manufacturer’s own processes. All of the feedback and research led to several conclusions–they needed to streamline and simplify their processes, these processes needed to be scalable across all communications channels, their workflows needed to be aligned with business needs and new project requests needed to be standardized and automated.

The level of metrics we are able to capture will help us to keep a pulse on the workflow, identify business trends and allow us to make informed process decisions based on actual data derived from each job ticket.

Senior Manager
Marketing Operations

The decision

Workgroups DaVinci was the right choice for the workflow collaboration and automation this busy team needed

The Marketing Operations department determined that meeting these improvement priorities required implementing a world-class workflow collaboration solution.

The team consulted with suppliers and peers from industry associations to establish a shortlist of five vendors. Prior to contacting these vendors, they developed a requirements document to establish a baseline for assessing each vendor’s solution. Each of the five vendors were then invited to present their solution.

When the process was completed, the clear winner was Workgroups DaVinci. Our system was the best match for the organization’s needs and offered a platform that included the functions and features the Marketing Operations department needed with little customization required.

Our solution’s features aligned with the requirements identified by the department and allowed them to optimize their team’s performance to meet the needs of the business and the expectations of their stakeholders.

After selecting Workgroups, the team invited each of the stakeholders they had previously met with during their due diligence process to see a demo of the system to create excitement and get the needed buy-in to move forward. At the time of launch, the Marketing Operations team then conducted meetings with each functional group that would be using Workgroups and provided a detailed user guide with tips and tricks for leveraging our solution to its fullest potential.

My team’s learning curve was very short as Workgroups is very intuitive, easy to access and use.

Group Manager
Brand Development

How Workgroups DaVinci delivered

• Visibility to all projects flowing into department
  Single location for initiating all communications projects – design, web, video, broadcasts, photography, translations, digital, etc.
• Better Communications
  Project alerts when information is missing or input is required
  Ability to monitor projects from PC, smartphone or tablet
  Visibility to clients to see the status of each of their jobs
• Asset Management
  Ability to store completed assets by job number in the system to allow admin to quickly and easily retrieve them as needed
• Quality Control
  Ability to visually verify if edits have been made
• Ease of providing & receiving edits
  Ability to annotate edits/feedback on all media types
•  Priority of workflow
  Ability to select from three turn-around options (standard, priority and rush)
• Reporting and feedback
  Quantifiable metrics
  Post-project surveys triggered from system

The results

Process efficiencies, better planning and satisfied stakeholders

Virtually all new communications projects across the business are now being initiated through Workgroups. During the implementation of the platform, a significant amount of time was devoted to ensuring the customer experience would be as smooth as possible. The department’s focus in the short-term will be to partner with us to ensure that their traffic team is as confident with the back-end functionality behind the curtain as their clients are with the front-end of the system.

Everyone Benefits

• Client
  Simplified process, better communication, expectations met
• Designers
  Streamlined workflow, time and focus
• Traffic Managers
  Focused priorities aligned with business needs and visibility to all open jobs
• Business
  Marketing collaterals and communications aligned with the overall timing, expectations and requirements of the businesses

I finally have visibility to all of the projects that are in play.

Global Traffic Manager