In the good old days (and I’m really dating myself here), a full-color one-page print ad required a minimum of two weeks just for production – from typesetting to trimming with an X-acto™ knife to mounting and pasting onto a board to 4/c film separation with real film! This took much, much longer for a multi-page brochure. And God help us if we needed to make a change. 

In today’s digital era, this length of turnaround is unheard of. Production and changes to banner ads, Web pages, HTML emails and even good old fashioned print materials can be accomplished in a few hours and sometimes even minutes when a deadline is looming. This means that agencies are more than ever reliant on well-built internal operations and workflow systems.

To have a fast, smooth agency workflow, agencies need a specific system to open jobs, build creative briefs, create estimates and timelines, organize daily efforts, issue purchase orders to vendors and track project status. In the past, this system was a manual process that required a physical paper trail and job jacket for every project. This time-consuming paperwork created inefficiency in today’s world where minutes, not hours or days, can make the difference in delivering a completed project on time and delivering superior client service.

Today there is a proliferation of digital agency management workflow systems available. According to an annual survey conducted by Second Wind Networks, an advertising industry consulting firm, 10 percent of respondents still rely on a manual traffic system, and 23 percent use some amalgam of software and a custom system. Overall, 81 percent have some level of digital traffic management.

Domus was founded on the belief that an agency must be able to constantly adapt to industry changes and client needs. We are a lean, nimble structure that responds seamlessly to the challenging dynamics of our industry. That is why we constantly tweak our workflow management system to become faster, more agile and the most efficient agency possible.

Joanne Michael is an Executive Vice President at Domus, Inc., a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit http://www.domusinc.com/. For new business inquiries, please contact CEO and founder of Domus, Inc. Betty Tuppeny at betty.tuppeny@domusinc.com or 215-772-2805.