With inMotion ignite, AgFirst was able to end the free-for-all and streamline project intake.
AgFirst Farm Credit Bank, part of the national Farm Credit System, is focused on serving rural communities and agriculture. AgFirst provides loans to farmers to run and upgrade their operations. They also work with 20 Associations across 18 eastern states and Puerto Rico. The 10-person creative team at AgFirst supports each of these Associations with over 4,000 projects a year.
In the past, the creative team at AgFirst was largely focused on print projects, along with web requests ranging from social media posts to complete website redesigns. Brittany Wilt, Web Developer and Designer at AgFirst said: “Similar to an agency, we provide a broad range of services for a large customer base.”
This framework made it very difficult to manage project intake, track key performance metrics – which the team is required to report to their Board of Directors – and collaborate with all 20 Association partners. As the team began shifting to more campaign and ROI-based projects, along with moving towards digital, they needed a solution to help solve these challenges.
That’s when AgFirst turned to inMotion ignite.
inMotion ignite is a creative workflow management platform that helps creative teams streamline their workflows to keep pace with increasing demand. ignite handles all 4 pillars of creative workflow, from collaborative request intake, through project management, to intuitive review and approval, and reporting and analytics.
Taming the Workflow Intake
Before inMotion ignite, request intake was a constant barrage, with up to 140 individuals requesting work. Brittany counted them out: “We have 50 requesters from the Associations, but then we have another 90 that are internal. That includes marketing, but we also get requests from every department; HR, IT, you name it”.
With ignite, AgFirst was able to re-evaluate who was requesting work to find ways to consolidate the number of internal requesters from each department. They further streamlined the request intake process by building custom intake forms and assigning which requesters had access to them. Overall, the AgFirst team was able to reduce the number of internal requesters by 70, reducing the total number of requesters the team works with by half.
Another big change to the creative intake process for the team at AgFirst was their ability to control the process once a request was submitted. Brittany described how the new process puts the control in the hands of the creative team. “Before, whenever a requester submitted a form, that was it, it went straight into the queue. Now, with inMotion ignite, we have more control over requests and can get more detail if the request isn’t clear. We can collaborate with our requesters to set timelines that work for everyone.”
Building Better Collaboration
Because the creative team at AgFirst works with associations all over the east coast and a wide variety of internal stakeholders, smooth collaboration is crucial. inMotion ignite helps the team streamline their communication by putting everything in one place, and in the right place. Comment threads on projects, tasks, proofs, and requests keep conversations and supporting files organized and associated with the relevant work. If someone on the team needs to reference a previous discussion about a certain project, they know exactly where to go to find the information they need.
Likewise, all those requesters can be kept in the loop as well. With a collaborative project intake dashboard, requesters know where to look for project updates, and can send messages using @mentioning in the request portal without cluttering the creative team’s inboxes or pulling them away from their work. “The ability for cross-discipline collaboration and communication is much better with ignite. This is hugely important for our team because things can easily become siloed, so having all our communication in one central location is extremely helpful” Brittany said.
KPI Reporting
Communication with AgFirst leadership has also improved with inMotion ignite. The creative team reports regularly to their Board, so leveraging the reporting capabilities in ignite is crucial for them to make those presentations and clearly communicate key information to the board.
The creative team at AgFirst also leveraged reporting in ignite to help with their day-to-day operations. With an easy-to-use reporting tool, individual team members can quickly pull their own reports to track their progress or identify bottlenecks.
Committed to Customer Success
One of the biggest reasons AgFirst chose inMotion ignite was the world-class customer service. “The support at inMotion is really great, they hear us, they understand us” Brittany said. Everything from onboarding to ongoing support and feedback collection was important to AgFirst, and the Customer Success team hit the ball out of the park every time. “Onboarding was so smooth, ignite is easy to learn and easy to use” Brittany said. Ongoing support has also helped the AgFirst team continue to optimize their workflow, according to Brittany: “The customer support is awesome! They really hear our feedback, and we see that reflected in the product enhancements and new features. It seems like every time we log in there is something new!”
igniting Creative Workflow
Before inMotion ignite, the AgFirst creative team was swamped with a huge number of requesters and struggled to build seamless collaboration and communication across geographies. With inMotion ignite they have streamlined their project intake process by cutting the number of requesters in half and have consolidated all their communication into one system to keep everyone organized and on the same page. “Our team is transitioning to becoming more agile and data driven, and inMotion ignite is going to get us there.”
Learn how inMotion ignite can help your team streamline your creative workflows: Schedule a demo.