When you’re managing a consumer or retail brand, it can be difficult to find the right tools to manage your marketing and creative teams. Fortunately, there are many tools available that can help to streamline and automate your creative workflow. 

Today, we will explore the best creative workflow management tools designed with consumer and retail brands in mind. We will go over the features of each tool and provide a thorough comparison to help you make an informed choice. But before we get into the nitty-gritty of it all, let us look at the need for creative workflow management in consumer and retail branding teams. 

Why creative collaboration tools are needed for consumer brands & retail companies?

Consumer brands and retail companies need Creative Operations software, a creative collaboration tool, to help streamline their creative operations and ensure that all stakeholders are in agreement when it comes to creative decisions. These tools allow branding and marketing teams to share ideas, brainstorm, provide feedback, and track progress in real-time.

This helps ensure that the creative process runs smoothly and efficiently and that the final creatives meet the expectations of all parties involved. Creative collaboration tools also allow for better communication between teams, making it easier to collaborate on projects and ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Best Creative Workflow Management Tools For Consumer Brands & The Retail Industry

1. Artwork Flow

If you’re looking for an all-round creative collaboration tool that goes beyond streamlining workflow management for consumer and retail brands, here’s one that offers a robust brand asset management system, powerful proofing tools, and AI-powered capabilities that help you organize your assets with efficiency.

Key features

• Workflow visualizer with templates
• Task management
• Online proofing tools
• Brand and regulatory compliance
• Brand asset management
• Smart tags
• Version control
• Role-based access control

Pros

• Build complex workflows that suit your operations with ease and save templates for future use.
• An AI-powered brand asset library helps you organize your files and automatically generates smart tags and extracts colors from every asset in your library.
• Automate brand and regulatory compliance with checklists during the proofing process.
• Leave accurate annotations and comments during reviews with smart proofing.
• Easy-to-use interface with minimal onboarding effort allows your team to make the most of its features right away.

Cons

• Does not offer a free plan, but users can get a free 7-day trial with the Pro Plan.

The verdict

Artwork Flow is a good option for consumer and retail brands to consider if your team needs one solution to integrate the entire creative operations workflow management software and help remote or global teams coordinate better on a daily basis.

2. Bynder

Bynder is a brand asset management and creative collaboration solution that has established itself as a key solution for larger organizations looking to streamline their creative process.

Key features

• Creative workflows
• Digital asset management
• Dynamic asset transformation
• Automatic tagging
• Version control
• Robust metadata records

Pros

• Bynder offers a clean user interface that helps teams collaborate with internal and external stakeholders effortlessly.
• The platform eliminates complex file structures and makes it easy to find the assets you’re looking for.
• Bynder’s creative collaboration features are designed to simplify and accelerate content creation.

Cons

• Users find the process of creating and managing collections to be relatively complicated.
• The platform options limited options in terms of customization.
• Users need to download all versions of the asset instead of just the version they need.

The verdict

Bynder is a good option for organizations that need to maintain more data on their assets and manage a huge volume of creatives on a regular basis. The inclusion of workflow automation within Bynder streamlines the creative process, providing efficient task management and enhancing collaboration, ultimately optimizing the management of assets and creative projects.

3. Ziflow

Ziflow is a creative collaboration and digital asset management tool that serves as a good solution when you’re working with external collaborators.

Key features

• Creative workflows
• Project management
• Compliance management
• Version management
• Version compare

Pros

• Eases collaboration by allowing users to include external collaborators in the review and approval process.
• Annotation tools allow multiple users to share accurate feedback on creatives.
• The platform is designed with flexibility in mind, allowing users to customize their use of the various features.

Cons

• Users have noted that plugins are often buggy, with glitches affecting the user experience.
• Some users also wish the folder structures were more intuitive.

The verdict

Ziflow’s strength lies in collaboration with multiple stakeholders and is a good fit for consumer and retail brands working with external agencies and other teams involved in the creative process.

4. Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a creative collaboration and project management tool that helps brands organize their creative reviews and approvals with greater efficiency.

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Key features

• Task management
• Activity logs
• Custom dashboards and reports
• Calendar
• Control center

Pros

• The platform allows you to easily collate information from all your projects and track their progress.
• Multiple users can work on documents at the same time.
• It’s easy to identify tasks with more dependencies during any project.

Cons

• Some users feel the interface is short on fluidity and the platform tends to slow down when switching between features.
• Complexities in the workflow feature make it challenging to use efficiently.

The verdict

Smartsheet is recommended for consumer and retail brands that need to streamline project management and log more data on their operations.

5. Filestage

Filestage is a review and approval platform that helps organizations streamline their creative collaboration with efficient online proofing and project management capabilities. 

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Key features

• Automated workflows
• File sharing
• Online proofing
• Version comparison
• Access management
• Project templates

Pros

• Feedback is more accurate as comments can be added to any part of the files.
• Reviewers can add comments without signing up for the software.
• Easier to prioritize files as they are sorted based on their due dates.

Cons

• The solution offers limited folders and folder templates for individual projects.
• Users have found the software to lag when working on multiple projects.
• Some users also note the issues faced when uploading larger files.

The verdict

Filestage is an option to consider if your consumer or retail brand needs a solution mainly for managing reviews and approvals efficiently on a smaller scale.

Wrapping up

There are a lot of solutions that work well for brands in the consumer and retail space when it comes to streamlining creative workflow management, but to make the right choice, you will need to be clear on your team’s requirements. If you’re looking for a solution that helps your team with sleeker workflows and comprehensive brand asset management, while also providing a powerful proofing experience, then find out how Artwork Flow would work for you with a free 7-day trial today!