So where are we headed next?

We’ll continue to develop tools, including our new inMotion Review App for iPad, that redefine how creative teams get work from kick-off to completion. We’ll follow our commitment to streamlining and automating workflows so that our customers can do what they do best – create compelling print, web, packaging, and video content. And we will continue to innovate ways to accelerate the creative production process, so businesses can get their marketing and promotional materials to market faster, with less effort and at lower cost.

Let’s keep moving forward!

Ben Hartmere
CEO, inMotionNow

But inMotion isn’t stopping there!

Now there’s a whole new way for your reviewers to markup and approve your creative work, with the inMotion Review App for iPad.

inMotion Review App takes all the tactile simplicity that the iPad offers – page swipe, pinch to zoom, easy and intuitive menus – and adds the ability to mark-up design work with just a touch. Draw right on your print ads, packaging, and web pages. Watch videos in full-screen and stop to mark comments frame-by-frame.

This is the next evolution of online proofing.

Join the evolution. Share the inMotion Review App for iPad with your clients and colleagues today.

Rob Munz
Chief Product Officer

Clicking on the calendar from your Reports tab brings up all of your team’s deadlines. Interact with the calendar using filtering options to view only selected projects, or choose to see only completed or pending tasks.

Additional details are presented on the calendar. Projects are displayed with their status and assigned team members. Tasks display with their associated project, status (complete or incomplete) and assignees. And proof deadlines appear with the project they relate to and their status.

You can even access Project Dashboards, task lists, and Proof Info Pages directly from the calendar with just a click, so you can make updates and get more info on the fly.

Deadline Calendar makes it easier than ever to stay on top of your creative workflows with inMotion!

You already know how easy it is to markup and approve content with inMotion. Our new app takes that intuitive review experience even further, with the easy-to-use environment that you’ve come to expect from inMotion reimagined for the iPad’s beautiful and simple touch interface.

Navigate through proof pages, add markups, and zoom with all the actions native to the iPad like swipe, pinch, and tap. Experience print, web, and video content with the iPad’s HD and retina displays. Reviewing has never been so easy.

Take a look!

So what does a smart creative leader need to do to draft a business case for workflow automation and get that buy-in? We’ve got you covered:

1. Identify the challenges
   Example: Our department is being asked to produce more content with fewer personnel and are finding that the biggest challenge in meeting deadlines is the amount of administrative effort needed to manage projects.

   Providing detail around the challenges that your department is facing will give decision makers context for understanding why you are proposing a solution.

2. Estimate the business cost
   Example: Amount that projects go over budget when approval due dates are missed and printing or production has to be expedited.

   Showing that there are quantifiable losses that are routinely incurred because of the above challenges will get decision makers invested in exploring potential resolutions.

3. Propose the solution
   Example: This solution makes it easy for us to keep track of our active projects and their tasks and proofs. It also automates the review process so that routing and proof status updates don’t require manual effort.

   Describing the solution that you’ve selected and explaining why it’s the preferred solution will allow decision makers to understand how the solution will resolve your challenges.

4. Show ROI
   Example: If we had been using this solution for the past year, we would have saved $2,000 per month in expedited printing costs, make-goods, and wasted employee time. Since the solution costs less than $1,500 per month we can expect to see a net gain of $6,000 annually.

   Ultimately, for your decision makers it all comes down to the bottom-line. Demonstrating how a solution will be a boon for the company makes advocating the purchase a no-brainer. Keep in mind that some “soft” benefits – like improved creative energy and happier clients – while difficult to quantify are also important.

5. Be transparent about risks
   Example: There may be some lag time while users get accustomed to new processes but we’ve mitigated that risk by finding a solution with a simple interface and ensured that training and support are available.

   Showing that you understand any risks associated with implementing a solution and have a plan in mind for mitigating those risks will make your decision makers far more confident in moving forward.

Laying this out for your leadership team will help them understand the importance of the challenges that you’re trying to address and how the business can benefit from solving those challenges.

When projects get stuck in perpetual review, it does more than just waste time. It wastes momentum. The creative energy that the designer put into that work gets redirected into other projects. So that when the review is finally returned, it’s harder for them to get back into gear.

So how can inMotion help you keep your projects moving forward?

Message to Reviewers
The most common reason for reviewers to delay completing a review isn’t just that they’re busy – it’s because they’re not sure how to react to the creative. This is where you can help! With the message to reviewers box, you can provide the reviewers context for the piece (this is the banner ad for the winter sale campaign) and let them know what you need feedback on (here are some stock photo options, let me know which you prefer).

Detailed Project Status Info
Knowing exactly where your proofs are – and who they’re waiting on – is beneficial for two reasons. The first is that it’s easy to know exactly who you need to renotify. The other, less obvious reason is that if you can see who’s shirking their review responsibilities then so can other team members. That level of transparency helps to make reviewers feel more accountable for providing quick feedback.

Do you have other tactics for combatting the “hurry up and wait”? Share them in the comments!

At inMotionNow, we’ve been designing solutions for creative teams for over a decade. Here’s what we’ve learned about the wrong way to do online proofing:

If your reviewers don’t love it, it won’t work.
You may think your new software is great, but if your reviewers revert back to sending feedback over email, calling you on the phone, or stopping by your desk then your new software becomes obsolete.

So what stops reviewers from using an online proofing tool? Two things:

It’s not easy for them to access content. If your reviewer has to log into software, drill down to the right project, and find an asset before they can start their review, guess what? They’re not going to bother. It’s faster and easier for them to just shoot you an email.

It’s not easy for them to provide feedback. Designers, intimately familiar with Photoshop and InDesign, are software savvy people. But your reviewers are likely to be business types and might not be so software savvy. If your online proofing tool is full of hidden menus and mysterious icons, your reviewers won’t know how to make the mark-ups they want and will just pick up the phone.

Either one of these scenarios can sink an online proofing tool. That’s why when we designed inMotion our first priority was to make sure it was easy for reviewers to use. They get an email, click a link, and they’re at the asset – where intuitive review tools make it easy to markup content just like a print out.

But don’t take our word for it, try a sample review and see for yourself.

We see this sometimes when we’re talking to customers about their experience looking for a solution to improve their workflow management challenges. Creative teams need tools to make their everyday life easier – tools that manage the common, routine tasks that are the “often.” These customers may occasionally have large, complex projects that, while important are also infrequent. These are the “ever-so-often”. Creative teams get hung up on worrying about how they’ll manage these complex projects and end up implementing solutions that are a better fit for the “ever-so-often” project than the “often” projects.

For example, a large book publisher contacted us about how we could help them get control of dozens of projects in various stages of completion. Most of the projects were routine, quick turnaround projects. The creative department would get an email asking them to put together an ad or a book tour flyer. These kinds of “often” projects made up the bulk of their workload. But occasionally, they would have an “ever-so-often” big release with a carefully choreographed promotional strategy planned months in advance, involving many people, with lots of moving parts and big budgets.

The looming presence of these big releases pushed the publisher into errantly trying to adopt a big project management application, one with multiple fields and inputs to complete, and Gantt charts to populate and manage. While this was helpful for the “ever-so-often” project, for the everyday, quick-turnaround projects that made up 90% of their workload this kind of application often required more time to set up a project than the project would take to complete!

Rolling the solution out took up a lot of resources, their team members were frustrated with how hard it was to use, and ultimately the “ever-so-often” solution failed to get widespread adoption for “often” projects.

At inMotionNow, we’re firm believers that technology shouldn’t get in the way and that technology should serve the “often” with ease and not the “ever-so-often.”

Keep this in mind when you are assessing what tools will deliver the highest ROI to your creative team – they’ll often tell you it’s the one that’s helping them with the “often”.

-Rob Munz
CEO, inMotionNow

Our flagship Workflow Automation Solution, inMotion, also had a big year! Our development team released Job Launch, a creative brief management module. Job Launch helps creative teams collect and manage requests for new content and convert approved requests into active projects within inMotion with the click of a button.

2012 also saw the addition of several other features to inMotion, all designed to make the everyday work life of creatives and their clients more simple. We added a streamlined Time Tracking tool, so that teams can easily calculate how much time that team members are allocating to a project to help calculate profitability. We also created some features to help reviewers. inMotion’s Web Page Review tool lets reviewers check on-page navigation, links, and browser compatibility while Side-by-Side Versions allows reviewers to easily compare versions of a proof to ensure change requests have been made correctly.

We’re also excited to welcome all of our new inMotionNow customers that have joined us in 2012.

Happy holidays to all of our clients and partners! Here’s to 2013.

-Rob Munz
CEO, inMotionNow

From a logistical standpoint, this can create some challenges. How can your designers see which projects need to be started or revised, and how do they communicate to their team members, “I got it!” After all, having two team members unknowingly working on the same job is certainly not going to help any team be more efficient.

That’s why inMotion released a new feature, Check Out. With Check Out, designers can check a box next to any proof in inMotion. Team members can see which jobs are available and which are already checked out and being worked on by another designer.  When the revisions are completed, the designer simply checks the proof back in and uploads their revised version.

Proof Check Out also allows managers to know which designer is currently working on any given project, making it a cinch to provide visibility and accountability across the entire creative department.