Most CMOs of large retail organizations will confide that while they think their groups’ marketing strategies are on point, their teams struggle to execute on these strategies, due to the high volume of projects. Unless you unexpectedly got the budget increase that you were asking for, most likely your marketing team will be asked to deliver more next year, with the same resources.  This gives your Creative three choices – either work longer hours, reduce quality, or find ways to be more efficient.

Here’s why Creative Workflow Management software should be an essential piece of your marketing tech stack:

Reason 1.  It gives your creative team a quick win to deliver more, and at a higher quality.

Trying to drive high volumes of creative work through Excel spreadsheets or other homegrown shared apps just doesn’t work well.  It’s a recipe for departmental frustration and inordinately slow project fulfillment.  There’s a reason why SaaS applications have taken over most workflow processes- laser-focused use cases, with years’ worth of development funding.  Creative Workflow management software is designed to shorten project lifecycles up to 85%.  It’s the lowest hanging fruit to help creative teams increase quantity, while maintaining quality.

Reason 2.  It creates sanity in your department, increases employee engagement, and reduces tension (and turnover!). 

Creative is frustrated that they are over-worked and can’t deliver quality work.  The words, “it’s always a fire drill” and “we’re just order-takers” have probably been used. They’re frustrated that people don’t follow the processes they’ve set up, and just email them directly with rush requests. Perhaps some team members have left over the past year or two. At the same time, the rest of the marketing department complains that creative workflow processes are too complicated, “clunky” to use, and too time-consuming. Everyone wants to know why projects are taking so long, and where the hold-up is! When you don’t have a Creative Workflow Management tool, there is almost always noticeable underlying tension in the department.

So, what’s the solution?

Give your Creative team a tool that forces alignment, accountability, and transparency in the creative workflow process. Creative workflow management software gives the Creative team an opportunity to create clarity and alignment with their stakeholders.  It helps them implement a clear creative workflow, that is supported by intuitive software- not custom Excel worksheets hidden on internal share drives.

Benefits:

• Reduce the number of fire drills
• Make the rest of your marketing team happier with a clearer, and easier to use, workflow process
• Improve employee engagement scores
• Reduce the risk of turnover
• Create sanity and transparency in the creative process

Reason 3.  It helps you personally, as the CMO/marketing leader, “win” within the organization. 

As the CMO or head of marketing, you have a few KPIs that drive your success within the organization: driving sales and revenue, capturing marketing share, building brand awareness, etc. At the heart of all of these objectives are creative work product. If your team cannot deliver high quality creative on time, the machine falls apart.  This is particularly true with larger creative projects, which can be complex in the time and manner in which various stakeholders across departments need to engage.

Implementing a tool to drive the creative workflow process will help your team quickly manage the production of high quality creative assets to drive your essential Marketing campaigns. Other stakeholders will notice when your team implements Creative Workflow Management software. It will ensure smooth alignment between departments, and increase cross-departmental confidence in your team’s ability to manage the process well. It will help your team avoid missing deadlines. The creative process will appear more organized, and more transparent.  Ultimately, your department will produce both more work, and higher quality work.

Creative Workflow Management software is affordable, low-hanging fruit to help your team drive KPIs and create sanity in the process.