Ultimate guide to boost company productivity

WITH A
STREAMLINED
CREATIVE REVIEW AND
APPROVAL PROCESS
ULTIMATE GUIDE TO
BOOST COMPANY
PRODUCTIVITY

TABLE OF
CONTENTS
Your Creative Review and Approval Process
is Broken
A Tale as Old as Time: The Inefficient
Review and Approval Process
Why the Creative Review and Approval Process
is a Business-Critical Process
Assessing Your Current Creative Review and
Approval Process
Building Your New Workflow for the Creative
Summary
1
2
10
17
21
24

A main component of effective marketing project management is the creative content review
and approval process. Without a proper process, a project can bounce ineffectively from version
to version, lose focus, and flounder with little progress. Companies must manage content in a
collaborative manner to create powerful marketing campaigns that reach and exceed objectives.
The bad news is that your current process is probably
broken. The good news is that with a small amount of
strategic planning and investment, your creative review
and approval process will be powerful and productive.
To help you leap into the next level of efficiency with
your content management process, we created the
Ultimate Guide to Boost Company Productivity with
A Streamlined Creative Review and Approval Process.
We created a step-by-step needs assessment guide that
will help you pinpoint areas of your review and approval
process that are inefficient or just plain broken and give
you a roadmap to improving it.
Goals of this guide are to give you the tools to:
� understand the importance of the creative review
and approval process
� assess your current review and approval process
� build your new review and approval workflow
Your Creative Review
and Approval Process
is Bro
ken
Let’s
get
started.
1

The best way to fully comprehend the common
inefficiencies found in the creative content review and
approval process is to take a look at a real-life example.
Meet Amy.
Amy is the Marketing Project Manager for ABC Company.
One of her primary assignments is ensuring that the pieces
of collateral required for an upcoming trade show are on
time and within budget.
A project brief is created that outlines the concept and
messaging and given to internal designers (or perhaps
an external agency partner) to produce. A few days later,
the initial draft of the artwork (first version) is emailed
to Amy as a 10MB PDF file.
AND THE CLOCK BEGINS TICKING TOWARD THE DEADLINE.
A Tale as Old as Time:
The Inefficient Review and
Approval Process
CHAPTER
1
2

Amy emails the PDF file of the first proof to the initial
stakeholders of the review and approval process. The
marketing director, the product manager, the trade show
coordinator and legal department are all asked to review
and comment. She gives them a 24-hour deadline to
respond. She prints out a copy for her job jacket.
And waits.
Day 1
Once upon a time, she waits.....
3

The VP of Marketing, who is keeping a close
eye on this project for brand compliance,
asks to see the first version of the proof at
Amy’s weekly one-on-one meeting. Amy
prints out hard copies for the VP's review,
and she finds significant issues with the
content. The VP marks up the hard copy
with her comments while Amy takes notes.
Amy scans the marked-up
first proof and attaches it
to an email that summarizes
the VP’s comments,
Amy sends this email
to the designer and the
stakeholders of the review
and approval process.
The attorney assigned to review this
marketing asset emails because he is unclear
about which version of the document he’s
supposed to look at (despite Amy’s detailed
notes) and states that he’ll review the
second version of the asset.
Amy rubs her temples because she now has
a headache.
Meanwhile, the marketing director and trade
show coordinator respond that they are fine
with these new changes.
Amy reads all the new emails and
updates all of the new comments in
her project management spreadsheet.
The next day, she receives feedback from the marketing director
and trade show coordinator via email. Amy reviews each comment.
Amy wants to be able to retrieve the comments from one place, so
she creates a project spreadsheet, and manually logs the comments
for future reference.
Day 2 ‒ Morning
Comment overload.....
4
Day 2 ‒ late Morning
Big Kahuna conversation.....

Later in the day, the product manager calls Amy to inform her
that he is having difficulty accessing his email from the ski
resort—where he is beginning his vacation—and requests that she
place all the files on an FTP server to download later.
Day 2 ‒ Afternoon
Deadline dilemma.....
5
Project totals
Day 2
Emails: 10
Phone calls: 2
Meetings: 1
Spreadsheet updates: 3 hours of Amy's time
Amy reminds him of the project deadline and agrees to the request.
She emails the designer to make the arrangements.
A few minutes later, Public Relations calls and asks for an
advance look at the collateral to get a jump on bylines and
other activities they have planned for the conference.
Amy forwards the email containing the marked-up
first proof and all relevant comments to the PR
manager, who in turn forwards it to his VP.
Amy goes home,
takes two aspirin,
and falls into bed.

Amy finally receives the second version of
the proof from the designer via email and
promptly forwards to all involved, this
time including the VP of Marketing and all
relevant PR team members. Additionally,
she requests that the designer load up a
copy to the FTP server and Amy sends a
message to the vacationing product
manager.
Feedback flows into Amy—including from
the legal department—who immediately
collects it in her project spreadsheet.
Day 3 ‒ late Morning
Chugging Along.....
Day 3 ‒ Morning
The Waiting Game.....
Amy arrives early and checks her email for feedback from the
product manager. Nothing. She contacts the designer who has
questions about the hand-written comments made by the VP of
Marketing. She spends nearly an hour on the phone with the
designer to ensure they are meeting all requests and making all
the approved changes.@
FTP
version
#2
6

Project totals
Day 3
Emails: 30
Phone calls: 1,
over an hour long
Meetings: 0
Spreadsheet updates:
4 hours of Amy's
time
Late in the afternoon, Amy finally hears
back from the product manager, but there’s
a problem. Because only she has access
to everyone’s feedback, Amy notices a
potentially critical conflict between a change
that the product manager insists on making
and one the legal department already made
and effectively “closed.”
On top of that, Amy notices that the product
manager made the change to the first proof
and not the second proof.
She drafts an email, making each party aware
of all the feedback, attaches a marked-up
version of the second proof to illustrate the
conflict and the artwork and she copies all
involved stakeholders so they are aware of
the dispute. She remembers that reaching
the product manager via email is hit or miss,
but includes him on the email anyway.
Opinions immediately begin arriving in
everyone’s inbox, including from the VP of
Public Relations who “has some thoughts on
the issue.” Amy then has to explain to the VP
of Marketing how the public relations team
became part of the review process for this
asset.
send
emails to
reviewers
buy more
sticky
notes
print
all
comments
don’t
go
crazy!!!
reach outto productmanager
By the end of the day there have been over a dozen email
responses, with the entire review team cc’d each time. Amy sorts
through all the feedback and prints each email, time-stamping
each so she can keep track of the most current comments and
observations.
By the time Amy finally heads home, she has printed out over 30
emails and updated her spreadsheet throughout the afternoon
with the latest feedback.
Amy pours a really, really big glass of wine, and goes to bed.
Day 3 ‒ Afternoon
Drowning in Details..... R.I.P.
anotherwastedworkday
7

Day 4 ‒ Morning
IT Irritations.....
8
The IT manager appears at Amy’s desk and informs her
that yesterday’s flurry of emails, each containing the 10MB
artwork file attachment, came dangerously close to crashing
the company’s email servers. Amy drafts a quick email asking
all stakeholders to immediately delete unnecessary copies of
the file from their inbox, sent and deleted folders and refrain
from needlessly sending the artwork file.
An exasperated VP of Marketing schedules an urgent
meeting to resolve the disputed artwork and messaging. Amy
scrambles all morning in preparation, frantically emails the
designer to update the artwork with all the latest comments
and in the last hour before the meeting, rushes to print off
copies of the third proof.
At the same time, Amy summarizes the latest viewpoints into
a document that is emailed to the product manager, who will
attend the meeting by phone before he hits the slopes.
At the meeting, the dispute is resolved and
significant changes in messaging are agreed
upon. Amy informs the designer of the change
in direction, who creates the fourth proof, and
sends it to her via email.
Amy prints out a copy and inserts it into her
overflowing job jacket.
The process begins again.
19
18BONUSRoll again
20Move forward
3 spaces
21BAD LUCK
Lose a turn
and go back to
the beginning

9
Here is an update of the unfinished
project at this point.
� Close to 200 emails were sent,
forwarded, or cc’d — all of which
required some level of action from
each of the eight stakeholders ranging
from drafting a response, archiving, to
just scanning/deleting. Additionally,
the productivity was disrupted each
and every time a new email arrived.
� All stakeholders spent time dealing
with the issue of file deliverability and
size.
� Additional time and effort was
spent dealing with the VP of Public
Relations who was not part of the
original review team.
� A physical meeting for all eight
stakeholders of the review and
approval process took place, requiring
an hour out of everyone’s schedule
plus transit, prep time and one
long-distance call from the ski slopes.
All of these tasks—using email to
collaborate, printing copies, physical
meetings to resolve disputes,
collating feedback, and the repeated
organization required to keep versions
straight—represent real time, real
productivity drain and real expense to
an organization.
While the inefficiencies in this scenario
wasted a significant amount of
everyone's time and productivity, Amy’s
schedule and productivity was the most
significantly impacted. She spent the
equivalent of four complete workdays
organizing, communicating, connecting,
emailing, printing, scanning, collating
and managing the creative content,
stakeholder responses and preparing for
the meeting. Other work was pushed
aside, forcing her to work late and
causing a considerable amount of stress
and frustration.
Do you relate to Amy, or one of the
other characters in this scenario?
If any of this seemed familiar to you,
then it’s clear some or all of your creative
review and approval process is broken.
To learn how to improve it, read on.

A creative review and approval process that functions
like the one described above is hair-pullingly inefficient
and costly. The sum total of activities associated with and
energy spent on non-producing factors of the review and
approval process take up more resources than the actual
creation and completion of the project. Once examined and
clearly labeled, it’s astonishing to see exactly how little time
and effort is really spent completing the creative content!
Eventually, Amy will complete this project, only to start the
process all over. Perhaps it will be with a different cast of
characters depending on the project type, but for the most
part, she’ll relive these same scenarios over and over like
she’s stuck in her own version of the movie Groundhog Day.
Amy is fictional, but this story happens every day, in
companies large and small, in brands and agencies alike.
Amy is not alone in this struggle. Tackling and managing the
review and approval process is not exclusive to marketing
project managers or creative agency traffic coordinators.
Let’s look at different functions within a marketing
department or creative agency and how the review and
approval process affects them.
Why the Creative Review
and Approval Process is a
Business-Critical Process
CHAPTER
2
10

Brand Management
Brand management encompasses more functions than just marketing, including market
research, communications, and design. The brand management organization develops
an accountability structure for stakeholders during the content creation process and
marketing campaign execution. They also assist in the development and refinement
of graphic and digital compliance standards. Brand control and accountability are
extremely important within brand management. With varying levels of edicts, audit
trails are essential for providing transparency into all account activity.
If you look back at Amy’s story, can you imagine trying to sort out an audit trail from that
chaos?
11
Examples of Roles
Responsible for
this Function:
Digital Marketing Manager
Brand Manager
Marketing Director
Public Relations
Communications Manager
Content Strategist
How the review and approval
process affects them:
With an optimized and streamlined review
and approval process, Brand Management
teams can deliver marketing campaigns that
are on brand and on message, and can better
manage proofs through multiple versions.
This creates better audit trails with a greater
degree of transparency.

Operations
The marketing operations function assists the C-suite in the development of the
organization’s policies and goals, manages and optimizes the marketing technology,
and decides on in-house or outsourced resources to help streamline processes that
will positively impact the company’s bottom line.
Examples of Roles
Responsible for
this Function:
Operations Manager
Marketing Operations Manager
Systems Analyst
Technical Director
Creative Applications Manager
This function is responsible for managing the
marketing technology of the organization and
is often the first person IT calls when multiple
email messages with large file attachments are
clogging up the corporate email servers during
the creative review and approval process. In
general, operations is the function to find
solutions to inefficiencies that plague the team,
including the review and approval process.
12

Creative Professionals
Creative professionals work in an organization’s marketing department or ad/marketing
agency. They are responsible for the production of creative design and advertising
projects while balancing time and cost restraints.
Often, creative professionals are on the receiving end of a pile of reviewer comments,
both physical and digital.
13
Examples of Roles
Responsible for
this Function:
Creative Director
Lead Print Specialist
Graphic Designer
Graphics Manager
Web Designer
Without an organized review and approval
process, creative professionals must work
with the project manager (if there is one)
or they are often left to decipher which
comments and changes are used when
multiple ones are made on each creative
asset.

Project Management
The project management person is charged with balancing large volumes of work to
meet the boss or client’s expectations. He or she is responsible for organizing and
managing the production of creative design and advertising projects and demands less
hand-holding and more accountability from team members.
Examples of Roles
Responsible for
this Function:
Traffic Coordinator
Project Manager
Product Manager
Process Manager
Program Manager
Campaign Manager
The last thing these professionals need is
an unorganized and mismanaged review
and approval process to slow them down.
Without the appropriate balance of authority,
diligence, and agility to manage varying
levels of work, the day-to-day management
of creative content becomes cumbersome,
sluggish, and problematic.
14

Account Management
The account management function is responsible for managing and maintaining client
relationships, both internal and external. Communicating and managing expectations
is a key success factor for this function, as well as developing accountability structures
for project stakeholders.
15
Examples of Roles
Responsible for
this Function:
Account Manager
Production Manager
Account Planner
Account Coordinator
Account Executive
An inefficient review and approval process
throws a serious wrench into project
timelines. Maintaining the peace between
clients and creative during the creative
project life cycle is hard enough without
being burdened with monitoring or fielding
complaints about something as seemingly
as simple as getting an approval.

We All Deserve a Better Creative
16
Key Takeaway:
The creative review and approval process must be optimized
and managed to increase efficiency and decrease time to
completion and cost.
Amy’s story shows that your review and approval process
should be regarded as a business-critical process, and must be
optimized to bring the highest level of value for you, your team,
clients and organization. It is part of the project management
process that requires more strategic follow through than simply
checking off a box on the project timeline.

Most companies don’t document their review and approval process. In order to get
clarity on the time and cost that is wasted on your current process, and learn where the
productivity leaks are occurring, take a good, hard look at your current approval process.
GOAL:
� to create a baseline for comparison
when you build your optimized
workflows
� think about all the pain points,
obstacles, frustrations and headaches
caused by your current process.
We recommend:
� talking to everybody in the
organization and your department
who participates in your current
review and approval process
� documenting the issues you and your
team are facing.
Getting their input will help you justify
the implementation of a new review
and approval process (and possibly new
online proofing system) and ensure
high levels of user adoption, increased
team efficiency, and accelerated project
delivery.
So let’s start the assessment process.
Grab a pen and paper or your favorite
note-taking application and answer these
five important questions.
CHAPTER
3Assessing Your Current
Creative Review and
Approval Process
17

18
Question 1
How do you currently route creative
content in your organization for review
and approval?
Think of the amount of content that
must be reviewed in your company, and
think of all the ways you distribute it for
review. It can be as simple as putting
an asset in a folder and passing it from
one person to the next or something
more complex, for example what Amy
encountered using a variety of methods
for routing assets, including print, email,
and FTP. Is there any visual mapping of
the workflow? What are the current tools
the project management participants
use? Amy used a spreadsheet, for
example.
Question 2
Which groups, departments and
individuals participate in the process?
Gaining visibility into the number of
people and departments who actively
review creative content is an important
step to gaining control of your process.
You’ll most likely discover several people
who have no need to review certain
projects, which mires the process. If
applicable, list any outside, off-site or
freelancers, like proofreaders or copy
editors. Build a comprehensive list of
everybody.

19
Question 3
Are reviews sequential or parallel?
If sequential, what is the order?
A sequential review process means the draft of a creative asset
cannot move forward in the review process unless a person or
group has reviewed it first. For example, a proof must first be
reviewed by the creative director before it can be reviewed by
the vice president of marketing before it can be reviewed by
the EVP, etc.
A parallel review has two or more separate groups or people
reviewing a proof at the same time. For example, the product
group and proofreaders review a proof concurrently and
implement those changes before creating the next draft, then
pass it along to the next step of the approval workflow.
Or perhaps some of your workflows are a combination of both:
Understanding the path a creative asset
takes during review and approval helps
you identify bottlenecks and potential
roadblocks.
Cre
ative Direc
tor
Cre
ative Mana
ger
Creative
Br
and Revie
w
Pr
oduct Revi
ew
P
roofreadin
g
Cl
ient Review

20
Question 4
How many review cycles do materials
typically undergo in your current
process?
You might not be able to answer this
question if you’re not currently following
or tracking your review and approval
process. A way you might track this is by
number of versions. This may not be a
true measure, as a single version might
be reviewed multiple times before it is
updated, which is what happened to
Amy in our example scenario.
Question 5
What kinds of creative content are you
reviewing and approving—marketing
collateral, web pages, videos, podcasts,
packaging, newsletters, advertising,
press materials?
Most organizations produce a variety of
creative content. It’s essential to consider
the types of collateral and media you will
be reviewing to ensure the appropriate
workflow is in place, as well as assigning
the appropriate reviewers to a project.
Once you’ve answered these questions
in detail, you’re ready to design your
new and improved review and approval
process.
ASAP

21
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all workflow for the review and approval process. Documenting
approval workflows is especially helpful for brands or agencies with multiple stages and
multiple groups of approvals. When there are many people involved or large volumes of
work, the project needs loads of effort to manage the process.
Designing an adaptable workflow with defined stages allows you to route reviews and
approvals based on the type of content and the type of people involved instead of taking
a static approach. This allows team members and reviewers in each stage to have an
immediate understanding of their respective roles in the review and approval process.
By taking the time in advance to determine the routing of reviews and
approvals based on the type of content and the type of people
involved and documenting the steps in advance, you can save
time and money.
In this section, you’re going to learn how to
create a new and improved review and
approval process for your next
creative project.
CHAPTER
4
Building Your New
Workflow for the
Creative Review And
Approval Process
21

22
Step One
Identify the Project/Asset Type
Knowing all the asset types you are dealing with will help you
create your workflow. Perhaps a new product tutorial video
needs multiple rounds and levels of review while an update to a
product feature sales sheet needs only one or two sets of eyes.
Go back to your list of asset types and select one of your more
common project types. Sales brochure, Point-of-sale artwork,
etc.
In Amy’s case, she needs to approve a printed piece of trade
show collateral.
Step Two
Identify all the Reviewers and Approvers
There may be different teams or individuals who need to review
a piece of content in a specific order. You may not want one
team to see the content until another team has approved it.
You may not want people on one team to see comments from
another team. And so on.
The list of stakeholders for Amy’s project are as follows:
� Designer
� VP of Marketing
� Product Manager
� Trade Show Coordinator
� Legal Department
� Marketing Director
Did you notice who is not on the list? The VP of Public Relations.
If you recall, the PR team requested an early draft of the asset,
which allowed the VP of Public Relations to insert himself into
the process. This information’s importance will become clear in
step four.

23
Step Three
Define the Review Stages
In the previous section we asked you about the number of review
cycles creative content typically undergo in your current process.
Establish this number to gain greater control over the process.
When we left Amy, her project was on its fourth proof, and was
not close to being completed.
Step Four
Define Who has Final Approval for Each Stage and Job
Once you’ve defined the type of feedback required for each
stage, someone must be made accountable for the final approval
of those stages. Make sure that your workflow offers sufficient
flexibility to allow you to support different roles in the process
such as reviewer only, reviewer and approver, primary decision
maker or final decision maker. Without that accountability, a
review stage could be held up by indecision or bogged down by
endless rounds of discussion.
Step Five
Design Workflow
Now it’s time to take the information from the first four steps
and create a workflow. We recommend creating a flowchart.
If you don’t wish to draw one by hand, you can use apps
like Microsoft PowerPoint or use an online program such as
Lucidchart.com and create a free account. Or you can list out
each stage and the steps involved with each.
Once you create a workflow, reevaluate it. For example, let’s
say you create a 10-stage workflow to complete a project. Are
ten stages the optimum number? Can you possibly improve the
process by removing a stage or two and tweaking the routing?
Yes, the goal is to get project approval but you want to get it as
efficiently as possible.
3
4

Summary
CHAPTER
5
24
Congratulations on finishing this guide! The creative review and approval process should
never consist of sending a proof to every conceivable stakeholder in a project at once,
and there simply isn’t a one-size-fits-all workflow for the review and approval process.
Instead, by taking the time in advance to determine the routing of reviews and approvals
based on the type of content and the type of people involved and documenting the steps
in advance, you can save time and money.
Go from good to great.
Still feel like your creative review and approval process could be better? It may be time
to review an online proofing tool. Reduce the effort spent managing proofs by 59%
and increase the speed to market by 56% when you automate the review and approval
process with an online proofing application.
At ProofHQ, we have a singular focus on solving the review and approval process
problem faced by every marketing team in brands and agencies alike. We invite you to
visit www.proofhq.com where you can learn more about our online proofing solution
and sign up for a demo.
Whether you use flowcharts, online proofing or a project management system, one thing
is clear: by taking a little extra time to lay out the workflow with clearly defined stages
and reviewer expectations, you can expect the review and approval process to flow more
smoothly and take less time to complete.

ProofHQ, a Workfront company is the global leader in online
proofing used by nearly 3,000 of the top brands and agencies
worldwide.
Easy-to-use collaborative review tools streamline the review
and approval of creative content, while powerful workflow
tools keep projects on track. ProofHQ can be used across
all media including print, digital and video. With ProofHQ,
marketing teams deliver projects faster, with less effort and
greater accuracy.
www.proofhq.com

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