If you are a member or a manager of a creative team, we have question for you: how do you compare to other creative teams? It’s a simple question but one that’s tough to answer and requires a lot of work and research. Lucky for you, we’ve done all of the leg work!
For the past two years, we have made a Workflow Checkup available on our website, where creative professionals can diagnose the health of 4 key areas of their teams’ workflow:
- Job Requests & Kickoff
- Project Management
- Review & Approval
- Metrics & Reporting
In two years, we have received workflow health data from 231 creative teams. An analysis of this data led us to some expected and some unexpected findings. Here are some of our main takeaways:
- As expected, a majority (70%) of creative teams are small. In other words, they have 10 members or less. What may be surprising to you is that a small number of them (5%) have 50 members or more. Think of all that creative power!
- Despite the wide-spread belief that creatives are not data-driven professionals, most creative teams do track productivity metrics. Check out the infographic to see which metrics they track.
- As we suspected, many creative teams struggled with getting information during the project request phase of their workflow. What surprised us, however, was that only 2% of creative teams get all the information they need with the initial job request. A possible explanation for this is: 77% of teams don’t use a formal process to accept work, at least not always. Using a formal process can be as simple as using a standard sample creative that asks the right questions. If your team struggles with getting all the info you need, try using our sample creative brief for job requests.
- Project management is another area where many creative teams face challenges. 57% of creative team members spend more than 4 hours every week on admin tasks, such as updating status reports and chasing approvals. That’s a lot of wasted hours if you ask us! Adopting an online proofing or a project management tool is one way to solve this problem. Or even better, why not adopt a tool that combines both (and more) into one? Watch our short video and see how in Motion combines project management with online proofing and creative briefs for an all-in-one creative work management solution.
Check out our infographic for additional insights. And if you’d like to diagnose your team’s workflow health, take our 3-minute Workflow Checkup and share your discoveries in the comments!