You’ve got a team of talented content producers, and a business with design needs. But often communicating those needs effectively is a challenge. Without a clear job request form, your producers can have a difficult time collecting the information that they need to make the best content and to effectively prioritize their work.
If your job or work requests are often in the form of casual emails, action items discussed in meetings, and desk drop-bys, your team might benefit from determining a more transparent and standardized request form. How it looks is going to depend largely on your organization’s structure.
Define Your Job Request Components
To begin outlining a job request form that will work for your team’s unique workflows, you want to start by defining the necessary components of that form.
- What kind of content are you producing?
Different kinds of content may require specialized job request forms. A request for a brochure, for example, is going to ask different questions then a request for a video. Additionally, those requests may be placed by, approved by, and even assigned to different people. - What information do your producers need?
Beyond the obvious spec requirements (file type, size, etc.) your content producers will also need some creative direction. This can be communicated through a combination of written description, sketches, external examples, mood boards, etc. and the type and detail of creative direction may vary based on the content type being request. - Who are the production gatekeepers?
Which members of your team are responsible for approving job requests? Do requests get sent directly to your producers or is there a middleman who determines which jobs get done, who they get assigned to, and what their priority is?
With these questions answered you can determine who you need involved in the job request approval process and what kind of information you need to be collecting prior to kick-off.
Having an effective job request form is an important first step. The next step is getting an efficient way to manage the actual process of collecting, reviewing, approving, disseminating, and archiving job requests. If you’re struggling to pin down this process or have a process in place that you need a better way to manage, inMotion’s Job Launch module can help you streamline and ensure accountability for project approval.