For Henry Schein, Inc., the world’s largest provider of health care solutions to office-based dental and medical practitioners, Creative efficiency is paramount. With more than 300 solutions offered to over 1 million customers worldwide, and growing, the creative team quickly realized that they needed to graduate from their manual processes. Luckily, they turned to inMotion.

Diane Tanko, Vice President of Creative Services, shared, “The Henry Schein Creative Group is made up of 45 creatives and works with over 350 marketing and communication professionals. Specifically, we support Henry Schein’s growing presence in the health care industry through five areas of expertise: Web Services, Multimedia, Print/Digital Design, Brand Management, and Client Services.”

The Henry Schein Creative Group stays busy, producing nearly 6,000 projects each year across all five areas. Deliverables range from multi-page catalogs and targeted mailers to websites, emails, and even large-scale multimedia presentations.

Manual Processes Slow the Creative

The best word to describe how the Henry Schein Creative Group used to manage their work was “manual.” Everything from request intake, to time tracking, to reporting had to be done by hand.

Lina Ullo, Director of Client Services, described the team’s process: “Prior to inMotion, project management was a tedious and manual process. Each project manager had their own individual method of ensuring projects stayed on task. This lack of uniformity made project management particularly difficult for projects that required cross-departmental collaboration.”

Request intake and review and approval were also a challenge, as Lina explained, “Our team did not have any centralized tool for project intake. Many of our team members worked independently and utilized individual project request methods, including various written, verbal, and electronic formats. Additionally, our review and approval process was entirely manual prior to inMotion. We got everything approved either through hard copy printouts or PDFs via email.”

The Henry Schein Creative Group functions like a true creative agency, in that they bill, or charge back, to their internal clients. Without a single, centralized system, the team lacked transparency and struggled with uniformity. They were often unable to properly evaluate the scope of projects, they couldn’t report on the work they were doing, and they didn’t have the numbers to prove their value. As the demand for creative work increased, the team knew they needed a more efficient workflow process.

inMotion: The Perfect Fit

Laurie Atanasio, Manager, Client Services, laid out exactly what they were looking for. “We required a repository to keep all of our projects organized, needed to replace our job numbering system, needed to reduce the use of multiple programs for job intake and management, reduce paper copies, replace our current time-tracking system, and implement a comprehensive reporting system that would enable us to better measure our work for enhanced efficiencies.”

Some of the features in inMotion that solved their top challenges were:

• Flexible intake forms
• Automated proof routing
• Intuitive online review environment
• Central place for all reviewers
• The capability to review multiple media types, including video, email, and web pages

Lina summed up their assessment of inMotion: “We needed a tool that was transformational and enabled us to stay at the forefront of contemporary creative service providers.”

A Partner to Lean On

With so many stakeholders, Diane, Lina, and Laurie knew that a careful roll-out of inMotion would be imperative to get everyone’s buy-in. Lina described their phased approach. “We re-evaluated all of the workflows based on each of our client’s needs. Since most of our projects have a high page count, separating these projects into manageable sections allowed for a smoother, more efficient workflow and fewer bottlenecks. Customizing workflows enabled us to work more effectively according to the team’s needs.

“We collaborated with our marketing partners and developed tiers and templates within inMotion and tested them with small jobs and specific marketers. Once we were comfortable with the results, we introduced other key stakeholders within the workflow. The end result was an effective digital workflow with less hours spent on each project.

The Henry Schein Creative Group onboarded their last team to inMotion in February of 2020. This timing was crucial, since as a supplier of health care products and services, they were immediately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As the needs of their customers and the health care community at large completely changed almost overnight, the creative team also had to respond in an agile way to keep supporting the Company and, most importantly, their customers.

“Suddenly, everything was shifting to digital, and we had a massive volume of requests coming in via inMotion – everyone wanted everything right away,” Lina explained. “We used reporting and request intake in inMotion to keep track of new projects and prioritize the work.”

Having our clients onboarded to a fully digital solution was a major factor in the ease of working remotely, as Laurie pointed out, “If it were not for inMotion we would not be up and running like we are right now. inMotion is critical to the success of the creative and marketing teams.”

Streamlined Creative and Marketing Workflow

For the Henry Schein Creative Group, the benefits that inMotion brought them fall into six major categories, as described by Lina and Laurie:

• Communication. “inMotion enables our team to communicate more effectively by providing a single platform where each team member can find all relevant information relating to a particular project and its status.”
• Transparency. “We no longer worry about the lack of uniformity in project management, because each project is now housed on the same platform, and our clients and team members can now expect the same general project management technique, regardless of the project for which they are engaged.”
• Accuracy. “The digital submission of projects has resulted in greater accuracy for project requests. Before inMotion, everything we did was a manual function, from filling out job requests to hand delivering all project folders from person-to-person. Now, the automation of projects has nearly eliminated the potential for human error in the project management realm.”
• Remote Effectiveness. “Because of inMotion, our team was able to seamlessly transition from full-time in-office schedules, to working entirely from home. Since inMotion has placed the entirety of our project management and approval process online, our team has been able to continue working efficiently and effectively from home. inMotion undoubtedly proved to be a true lifeline to the overall success of the Henry Schein Creative Group.”
• Happier Teams. “Our marketing teams have embraced this tool and have a true appreciation for the digital workflow and the value it provides. With inMotion, they can access and request a job at any time, review proofs electronically, and suggest any necessary edits quickly and easily. As a result, the life cycle of a project has been shortened and more work can be produced with the same resources.”
• Cost Savings. “Due to the streamlined process that we have implemented with the help of inMotion, total administrative hours have decreased, we have seen more efficient time-tracking, and decreased overall project time per project.”

By the Numbers

The team was also able to immediately leverage the inMotion reporting suite to prove time savings and efficiencies that would encourage their marketing teams to keep adopting the platform.

Additionally, the reporting features in inMotion allowed Lina to begin producing their first Creative Operations Dashboard. “Our dashboard is generated on a monthly basis and shared with management. It includes important information that enables us to accurately measure job intake and work produced. The details of the dashboard include total number of projects to date, new monthly projects by client group, total billable hours, our hourly rate, and our efficiency quotient for the month.”

Lina explained that this dashboard is especially valuable to them because they charge back to their stakeholders. The dashboard allows them to increase transparency with their clients and position themselves as a competitive option. “It is imperative that the creative team is competitive because the marketing teams can use outside resources. Of course, being an in-house team we’re more invested and knowledgeable about our brand, but we still want to be seen as a viable, competitive option.”

Workflow for the Modern Creative Team

Modern creative teams face more challenges than ever before. Their work is in high demand, and their work environments are changing dramatically. With inMotion, the Henry Schein Creative Group is ready to tackle any workflow challenges the future may hold. Lina summarized why inMotion is the key to keeping their creative workflow humming. “inMotion streamlined our creative and marketing workflow from beginning to end by enabling us to view projects in real-time. With offices all over the globe, this platform allows us to communicate day or night with everything accessible digitally and remotely.”

Elise Hauser is a product and content marketer with a passion for telling brand stories. She has produced inMotionNow’s annual In-House Creative Management Report for 3 years, webinars, content sessions for major industry events reaching audiences of 1,000+, and of course, countless blog posts. When Elise isn’t writing about the marketing and creative industry at inMotionNow she is teaching economics and hanging out with her cat, Tucker, at her home in Raleigh, NC.