Creative Operations - Solving Production Pain Points with DAM Solutions

Table of Contents

for Creative Improvement

Headless

Introduction

Creative operations loosely referred to as ‘creative ops’, is a discipline surfacing across the various creative businesses, such as retail, e-commerce, marketing agencies and those alike.

Creative ops have become the stimulant for organized structure, processes, productivity, capacity, and costs among creative teams.

So, when you look at the creative process as a supply chain of sorts, automation tools magnify each layer of the asset content production cycle – that in turn creates a chain reaction to better scale your business’ creative ecosystem.

And with automation being the fourth most prioritized investment area for businesses - running an effective creative operation with the use of technology can create a productive engagement across an entire value chain.

Areas for Creative Improvement

Consumers want it all, and they want it now. However, the supply of the constant content demand has zoomed into the gaps in the production cycle that many creative businesses are struggling with.

When you research the challenges that creative businesses deal with, you’ll find that there is a handful of areas that stand out unanimously.

Pain point 1: Workflow and process inefficiencies

During the asset production cycle, there are a lot of moving parts that tend to complicate processes. From collaborators, stakeholders and client’s moving in and out as assets processes are finalized.

And with that, inefficiencies come to light and negatively affect the creative workflow.

These are:

Workflow and process inefficiencies

Blocked channels

Siloed collaboration

Maintaining brand credibility

Inaccurate data and insights

So, in this e-book, we’ll unpack these pain points and how you can leverage next-gen digital asset management solutions to help solve them.

But the need for creativity to keep up with tomorrow’s demands - without compromising quality output - means that creative operations need to become more swift and agile.

While these traits can be largely associated at a strategic level, in practice, the production of creative assets can be effectively scaled with organized and streamlined workflows.

Areas for Creative Improvement

To implement streamlined workflows

means that there needs to be structure and organization of digital assets, projects, and clearer lines of communication. The usage of creative management tools has been a turning point for many creative teams to work and collaborate on centralized platforms.

Pain point 2: Blocked channels

Based on research, it takes about 3 – 5 rounds of reviews to get final approval on projects for 64% of creative teams. And with each round, it doesn’t mean that stakeholders and collaborators will be immediately available to approve.

the production process. This ultimately creates bottlenecks and inefficiencies that result in delayed distribution times.

Solution: Creating a structured framework with established communication platforms and production phases, will give more visibility over the assets and cultivate transparency among team members.

Pain point 3: Siloed collaboration

During each stage of the digital asset production cycle, different teams work on different channels and platforms, which can create a layer of siloed creativity.

Why? Because they’re most likely trudging through their hundreds of emails only after you’ve followed up. With spread-out comms and inadequate tracking systems, there is no real visibility of where assets are in

The use of dispersed systems and platforms can become a barrier to clear communication and transparency among teams - and which also directly impacts the production of assets and their GTM times.

Areas for Creative Improvement

Solution: To remedy this, teams need to work cohesively on a system that allows multiple integrations. Connecting all systems, apps, and channels onto one platform encourages team collaboration and creativity sharing.

Pain point 4: Maintaining brand credibility

Inconsistencies and gaps in the creative production cycle can be harmful to a creative brand and its credibility. For instance, the sales department in the business has requested an asset to share with a client. The requested asset turns out to be an outdated version that was quickly shared by the creative department without properly checking if it was the latest version.

check it was accurate. So the effect? Once the client compares assets, it’ll reflect a lack of attention to the quality output and could compromise the trusting relationship between the brand and the client.

Understandably, creatives might assume it’s the latest version a colleague has worked on, and at stretched capacity, they neglected to

Solution: Enforcing asset taxonomy among creative teams and other teams in the business will create a sense of accountability to always create and store assets correctly. Thus, ensuring that the most up-to-date versions are always available upon request.

Pain point 5: Inaccurate data and insights

One of the beautiful things about systems is that they all, or at least most of them, should provide data and reporting functions. But unfortunately, these insights aren’t always being leveraged effectively - which can directly impact the creative operations in its entirety. Both positively and negatively.

Areas for Creative Improvement

Utilizing data and insights has tons of advantages for creative ops as you would be able to justify decisions and have more targeted approaches.

Additionally, analyzing the available data and insights is especially useful to scale customer market trends, content production cycles, and capacity management among team members.

• Measure the metrics of asset performance to repurpose methods to maximize other assets.

Leveraging clear and accurate data can help to:

• Ensure that you maximize marketing efforts to boost ROI.

• Minimize the risk of teams burning out due to high workload volumes.

Solution: To be able to really tap into the data that systems produce, you’ll need to identify the key objectives and takeaways you want to see and achieve when retrieving the data. If you’re not sure why and how you want to use the information, the data can become bulky, overwhelming, and eventually untouched.

• Identify holes in the creative workflow and make informed decisions on how to improve processes.

Leveraging headless DAM tech

Creative operations are primarily responsible to establish productive, efficient, and streamlined creative processes.

But they’re also responsible to develop and optimize talent, technology and workflow processes to deliver highquality creative production output.

Next-gen technology, such as headless digital asset management (DAM) systems, has greatly evolved from its dated versions that are primarily used for document storage.

Creatively manage projects with workflow automation recipes

DAM’s workflow automation recipes can help teams to remain agile and avoid repetitive tasks with automated rulesstreamlining each stage in the digital asset lifecycle.

• With workflow automation recipes you can:

• Instantly share and upload assets as they are created or captured

• Centralize and organize digital assets

• Preserve folder structure when assets are uploaded

And headless DAM has proven fundamental in filling the gaps in the asset production process of creative operations.

So, let’s see how exactly one can leverage next-gen DAM for efficient and streamlined operations:

• Securely share assets with usercontrol functions

DAM’s integrated project management function, you’ll get a holistic view of all the active creative projects and pending assets.

Leveraging headless DAM tech

API Integrations

Seamlessly connect all your existing systems, platforms, and apps you use every day onto the centralized DAM platform for enhanced productivity and communication.

Integrated creative collaboration

Creative work is collaborative work. And with DAM’s centralized collaboration platform, communication is driven and enhanced among all teams and stakeholders.

Custom API integrations allow pain-free migration of:

• Product Information Management Systems (Salsify or Akeneo)

• Digital Asset Management Systems (Dropbox, Box or Google Cloud)

• Client Management Systems (WordPress or Shopify)

• Project Management Systems (Asana or Trello)

• Email Management Systems (HubSpot or Salesforce)

• Internal Communication Platforms (Slack)

With real-time comms and notifications, team members are immediately alerted during the creative process when there have been any changes or comments made on an asset. This accelerates production timelines by pushing assets out to distribution quicker.

Editing and approval processes

We’ve established that approvals on assets can be extremely drawn out. But, with DAM’s integrated markup and editing tool, you can directly edit and make comments before sending it for approval – cancelling

Leveraging headless DAM tech

out any unnecessary back and forth communications.

DAM also has an attractive voting feature that allows all authorized members and stakeholders to approve content simultaneously.

No more waiting rounds-and-rounds before assets are approved. Asset version controls

Stop wasting time working through 100s of asset versions to find the right one to edit or approve.

companies to maintain their brand consistency by ensuring that the latest and approved versions are distributed to the market.

Enriched metadata

Simply store and locate assets as DAM software enriches the metadata of digital assets, making it easy to find and share assets with customizable search terms.

DAM’s versioning control keeps team members that are involved in the creative process in the loop. So, when a new version has been created, team members are alerted with the added authorization to approve or reject the new version. This feature helps

But DAM’s metadata is much more than a search tool. You can track your creative assets from start to finish and measure the performance metrics of assets against each other.

Conclusion

Technology and creative asset management tools have become cornerstones for effective and streamlined creative operations.

Adding headless digital asset management software into your tech stack, will not only boost creativity and productivity but will ensure that your digital transformation remains agile as market demands shift.

Get a demo to see exactly how digital asset management solutions can elevate your creative operations.

About globaledit

Since 2003, Globaledit has been a trusted partner to major brands in retail, fashion, health & beauty, entertainment and ecommerce. Our creative asset management platform creates efficiencies in photo production workflows and processes, making it an essential collaboration platform for creatives.

Globaledit is part of the CoCreativ. CoCreativ is a Creative Content Agency Studio Network dedicated to providing scalable creative solutions through Content Agency strategy, creativity, and execution. We serve the industry, along with their brands and agencies, by delivering end-to-end Content Agency solutions to create and run programs at scale, more efficiently.