Trimming Down
As the oldest advertising agency in the world, J, Walter Thompson (JWT) knew well the hassles of a manual production cycle. For years, staffers mailed or hand-delivered artwork around the country for review and approval. Once e-mail became a standard tool, they discovered its limitations when sending high-resolution images to clients. They found that clients did not like the network congestion caused by a steady stream of large e-mails. And possibly even worse, sending e-mail attachments introduced the challenge of tracking document versions.
JWT’s Detroit office moved toward solving those problems by implementing an electronic sign-off solution for Ford Motor Co. The process moved the review and approval stages of the production cycle to the Web, using ITM Associates’ PDF InFusion platform. Review times dropped from weeks to hours, with an average turnaround time of just a day.
Electronic content review technology has saved time and lowered costs by reducing the need for paper and related supplies, travel and even conference calls.
Perhaps the best benefit is client satisfaction. A JWT client for more than 50 years, Ford did not have to purchase new equipment or invest in extensive training to use the system. Unlike e-mail, the Web-based review process does not increase traffic within Ford’s infrastructure.
Initially, electronic reviewing was feasible only for big and wealthy companies, but these days smaller shops have access to the technology at a very affordable price. For many businesses, parts of the production cycle remain essentially manual.
From Draft to Approval
Throughout the production process, content review generally takes much longer than draft creation. The review and sign-off phases often lead to slowdowns and missed deadlines, especially when it’s necessary to get feedback from several reviewers who are located in different places.
How do you coordinate people in offices across the country or connect organizations running different computer systems? Getting everyone to use the same hardware and software is not a realistic option. Conference calls and travel costs can quickly consume a budget.
For these reasons, many organizations still rely on fax machines and couriers to deliver proofs and drafts. Though it takes just a few minutes to send and receive a fax, document quality suffers. The fax may reduce an oversized page, and subtle or small elements may simply not show up. Sending a fax of a fax compounds these problems.
The best workstations, the latest software, the biggest bandwidth
