There’s a deadline approaching and you haven’t gotten approval for your first draft yet?

This is a situation that nobody likes to land into. For a successful project, you must have a smooth feedback and approval process. In order to have harmony between the teams you need to set up a creative approval workflow in the first place. But there are chances that your client or any other stakeholder could miss a looming deadline or delay sharing their feedback. That is why we have come up with the best methods to speed up approvals in your organization using creative project management software.

What is a creative review and approval process?

It’s the process of collaborating with different teams and departments to share feedback and finalize creative content. The content can vary from images to product labels to social media content and more.

In this process, you will work with different versions of the creatives, add comments and feedback, respond to all the stakeholders, and make creative decisions. 

This is how the process works:

Benefits of speeding up approvals using creative management software

When you implement the best methods to automate creative approvals, you are certain to receive the best results for your organization in return. By streamlining the creative approval workflow, you can improve collaboration between various stakeholders involved in that particular project. On top of that, you can keep track of the due dates and make sure to get feedback and approval from the right users on time. 

Speeding up the approval process using creative management software can benefit you in the following ways:

• Streamline collaboration and communication between everyone involved in the task. From designers and clients to external agencies, everyone can work harmoniously with each other. 

• Real-time updates to every stakeholder so that you don’t have to return constantly to check the changes or approvals that have been made.

• It helps in task management which includes creating checklists, delegating tasks, tracking them, and making creatives error-free.

• You get easy access to the latest version and could go back to the previous version if there are any errors in the current one.

• Facilitates time management by setting deadlines and goals, and assigning tasks to the right people. This accelerates project delivery timelines.

• Improves the quality of the creatives and you can deliver them on time. For instance, Lisa Caras, the marketing manager of Jones Dairy said that a creative workflow management platform like Artwork Flow has reduced two months of her team’s work to just two weeks along with increasing their efficiency by 75%!

10 practices to speed up the creative approval process

1. Choose the right tool

In the current scenario, where not just images but videos are also being reviewed, it’s time to adopt a creative management solution that suits your business, including a comprehensive workflow system. There are so many solutions that can automate and improve your approval cycles. So, choose one that matches your company’s requirements and budget.

This is how Jones Dairy approached Artwork Flow to help them switch from a manual creative process to automate collaboration between the team members on packaging design, development, and asset management. 

2. Build the right team

Make sure to involve the right people for respective tasks from beginning to end. Delegating tasks to team members will help them prioritize goals and give them clarity about their share of the work. This can help you steer clear of delays in work and make the approval process easier.

3. Create a complete checklist

We know it’s satisfying to have your tasks ticked off from the checklist. Here, not only can you create a checklist that includes your daily tasks but also create a smart checklist. 

A smart checklist helps gather all the required information and helps you work in alignment with your brand goals. This ensures that all the details are accurate and your work is well-organized.

4. Set deadlines and automated reminders

Establish deadlines for each stage of the approval process to keep the process moving forward. Also, set up automated notifications to alert stakeholders when a new asset is uploaded, ready for review, or has been approved. To add to that, you can automate reminders that remind reviewers to check the creative as they approach the due date for reviews. This way, you can make sure they don’t miss out on your creatives and deliver a complete output on time. Isn’t that music to your ears?

5. Enable simultaneous reviews and real-time collaboration

Allow multiple stakeholders to review an asset parallelly, reducing the time to get feedback. Reviewing different sections of the project at the same time can help you collect feedback at once which will help you and your designer address all the comments at a better pace. 

Artwork Flow provides a creative workspace that enables real-time collaboration, allowing your teams from different parts of the world to work together on a project or creative, even for a complex approval review. It could be an image or video or even a design review.

6. Use annotations and comments

Add comments and annotations to assets to provide feedback, suggest changes, or ask questions, all within the software. By adding visual comments, you can quickly identify where you need to rework. Besides, this feature makes it easy for reviewers to provide feedback on the document rather than communicating it back and forth through emails. This also avoids the chances of repetitive feedback. 

Artwork Flow’s dynamic feedback will help maintain accuracy using smart annotations that will redefine your approval process. 

7. Provide easy access

This is one of the first simple steps you can take while elevating your creative approval process. Provide stakeholders of the project or task with easy access to the software, so they can review assets and approve them quickly, from anywhere. 

User-friendly tools like Artwork Flow provides an onboarding process for their first-time users to get accustomed to the features of the platform and handle them like a pro.

8. Track changes

Keep track of all changes made to an asset during the review process, so stakeholders can see what has been updated and why. Artwork Flow has a feature called version control that allows stakeholders to see what changes have been made and how your creative has evolved. This avoids feedback errors or confusion about who made the changes. A feature like this ensures transparency in creative iterations for all the stakeholders.

9. Use customizable approval forms 

Most times, a client’s review can be unspecific and confusing. So, using customizable approval forms ensures stakeholders provide all of the necessary information when approving an asset. You can create the form keeping in mind the required criteria for the client review process like contextual, specific, and actionable feedback.

10. Track stakeholder approvals

No matter how many reviews have been made, to make the entire process more efficient, you need to keep track of all the reviews. This will help you know which creative is ready to be published or which one still needs work.

This practice will also let you know which stakeholder is accountable for the creatives they approve. This way, you can keep track of their activities and learn who’s making progress or delaying the process. 

Final thoughts

Implementing the above methods can easily help speed up creative approvals and the feedback process in your organization. But you might wonder if these are going to make your work more complex. With powerful creative management software like Artwork Flow, you can get your work done in a simple way.

Artwork Flow is also a brand asset management and workflow automation tool that offers you excellent features in a single platform. From centralizing your creatives in a digital library to proofing them with the help of AI, you can reach your goals more quickly and efficiently. 

Start your free trial and learn how to alter your creative workflow with Artwork Flow!

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