Click on the image above and process a job through The Portal to see how easily briefing a job really should be.
Improving ‘Ways of Working’.
When I first joined the Philips Creative Studio team in 2014, the small studio team consisted of two designers and a manager who handled briefs from only a few of individuals from two departments in the business. The method of briefing the studio was simply a printed briefing document, which was filled in by hand, emails and an excel tracker. These were supported by weekly meetings for amends and approvals.
During the first year the studio traffic was increasing steadily, and requests were coming from other departments. The TSM department expanded from a single TSM to five, in addition to grad-students in aiding the delivery of briefs to the studio.
Due to the increase, I introduced an app called ‘Wunderlist’, which allowed the studio to track projects in realtime, by both the studio designers and the ‘requestors’. ‘Wunderlist’ allowed individuals to ask questions, send amends, or approve projects in realtime. This improvement radically improved performance of the studio. The weekly meetings were discontinued, all the necessary information was contained within projects on the app, eradicating the need for emails. These changes reduced the delivery time within the studio and allowed us to process more projects faster, without the need to increase the team headcount. Projects could now be dynamically swapped between designers, or worked on collaboratively due to all the communications being housed in one location.
Due to increased business need, further changes were required; ‘Wunderlist’ was only ever a ‘proof of concept’ and I knew we needed a automated way for ‘requestors’ to brief projects in to the studio. The studio was now supporting fifty percent of the UK business, which included many departments, and a huge number of individuals. The need to be able to gather data was imperative for the business.
The need for a solution became paramount when the studio was tasked in supporting the entire UK and I business on a multifaceted level. All departments and staff were now briefing projects into the studio daily. An artworker was recruited to support the designers, a long with external creative agencies which were processing projects alongside the studio team. We needed an online management system which was accessible to all creatives and requestors in real-time.
Using LEAN principles, and with the support of the rest of the team and aided by the IT department I created ‘The Portal’. This was a large undertaking and was created alongside studio project work over a two year period. This online solution allowed requestors to brief from anywhere at anytime. It captured all the necessary data, and improved brief accuracy further improving the studio performance. We also upgraded to Monday.com, a project management app, with incredible data logging. The combination of the two working symbiotically hugely increased the ‘Ways of Working’ performance and allowed the studio to work fully remotely without any impact to the business. Just in time for COVID19 and the lockdowns.
