Automating workflow—it’s a game changer for creative organizations. When you can facilitate rich creative collaboration, manage resources, streamline process, and get clear visibility into all of marketing’s moving parts you have a huge advantage.
While workflow solutions have been around for 10 or 15 years, realizing their full benefit requires an updated mindset. Whether you’re just now contemplating implementation or are already down the path, it’s important to understand where enterprise software is trending, and how to make sure you achieve real, substantive business benefits.
Vendor Capabilities
Since the advent of workflow automation, vendors have evolved to support specific needs. Years ago creative services was talking about how capabilities needed to manage the creative team, with time tracking, review and annotations, etc., while other systems and tools were used to manage marketing teams and other areas. Today, the landscape of vendors is made of systems that manage creative services, but can also manage the broader marketing organization. These broader capabilities afford marketing and creative leaders benefits such as fast timelines, end-to-end view of process, better planning, and more.
Enterprise Software Trends
Corresponding with the changes in vendor capabilities are enterprise software trends. We’ve shifted from point solutions to an ecosystem approach, where systems address creative services issues, certainly, but do so in a more encompassing context. For example, modern solutions integrate broadly with the marketing organization, with distribution channels, and with the CRM system to help align sales and marketing. Digital asset management solutions are no longer just for creative access, but for the marketing and the enterprise as a whole. These ecosystem-oriented solutions are by necessity no longer on-premise, but cloud-based for access and lower cost.
Big Benefits
To achieve all advantage possible through workflow automation, it’s important to view your organization not as an island, but an integral part of the enterprise. At Coffee + Dunn, our consultants encourage clients like US Bank, T. Rowe Price and Stage Stores to think beyond the boundaries of their four walls and understand that operational improvements alone won’t move the meter. Connecting the organization with external partners and vendors, as well as the company’s sales, customer service, product management and c-suite, is essential to adding value and driving revenue. Only with this contextual view can you achieve the significant benefits that impact the business as a whole.
Join the conversation: How have workflow automation trends impacted your implementation plans?
Coffee + Dunn is an industry leading connected experience partner uniquely focused on building effective customer engagements through the strong alignment of technology, operations, and strategy. Our award-winning services enable customers to drive growth and optimize value across various industries, including financial services, professional + collegiate sports, manufacturing, healthcare and education.