How to Fix Broken Review and Approval Workflows What is online proofing? For many teams and organizations, the creative workflow process is broken. Feedback is transmitted in silos. It is spread over emails, across tools, lost in meetings, or in phone conversations. These siloed systems make it impossible to stay on top of revisions, timelines, and responsibilities. The idea behind online proofing is to provide the best of physical or “offline” proofing, with the convenience and efficiency of being able to collaborate in a centralized and consolidated space. This results in better feedback, faster turnarounds, happier clients, and stronger creative output. The Tools in the Broken Creative Workflow A broken creative workflow will use some combination of tools not purposefully built. Email is the most common. Endless email threads, siloed conversations, and version confusion are only some of the symptoms. Project management tools are designed to keep projects organized, but not the micro-tasks at the creative level. Meetings will always have a place, but can also be inefficient and lead to miscommunication. And circulating hard copies for markup is another beast. Combined, the missteps only compound. Where the Creative Workflow Failures Show Up Most creative workflows are broken. And when this process is inefficient, it will show up in a variety of ways: Miscommunication Instructions that are not tied to pixels or frames tend to be less clear and precise, meaning feedback is easily lost in translation. Conflicting Feedback Siloed feedback will often be inconsistent or contradictory – and results in headaches for project managers and creatives. Lost Documentation Feedback might be buried in an email thread, a colleague’s desk, a poorly labeled folder or perhaps it doesn’t exist at all in writing. Lack of Transparency & Accountability Why was something done a certain way? It’s hard to know without a clear history of a project, with consolidated and sequential iterations. Inefficient Use of Resources In a broken workflow, everyone ends up spending too much time coordinating, deciphering, and retrieving feedback. Inconsistency and Inconvenience Downloading large files, navigating plugin requirements, working on the wrong version, are features of broken workflows. A Smarter Approach to Collaborative Feedback and Getting Approvals Online proofing is an easy win. It’s simple to implement. It delivers results without downloads, installations, or plugins. With a properly implemented online proofing solution, you can expect: Faster Workflows Faster Version Turnaround Avoid headaches over partial or miscommunicated feedback and streamline versioning. Everyone is on the same page. Accelerated Project Completion Create fewer versions, mitigate unnecessary delays, and have an easier time meeting deadlines. Get creative approved and delivered faster. Less Time Wasted Host fewer meetings, make fewer phone calls, and send fewer emails. It should be about the creative not email management. Better Bottom Line Lower Project Management Costs Reduce the unnecessary back-and-forth that comes with broken communications, while improving how you track deadlines and approvals. Less Aggravation Streamline revisions and communication while cutting down on scope creep with transparent feedback. Client Loyalty Create an altogether better mutual experience for your clients and teams – they might just thank you for it. ReviewStudio is a feature-rich collaboration platform that has sped our review process immensely. It allows us to communicate clearly while reviewing complex content such as VR and Video. ReviewStudio was key to helping us provide an easy, intuitive, yet robust solution for our clients. It helps our designers deliver more efficiently. We have the perfect tool to communicate effectively with our clients. ReviewStudio have been a fantastic partner for us. We have worked closely with their team to provide solutions for both our internal teams and our clients. The product is exceptional. ReviewStudio is a great way to streamline the communication not only within the team, but also with our partners involved in projects. They are constantly evolving new features to make the process even more efficient. ReviewStudio is a game-changer and leads to clients choosing us over other providers. It’s amazing how not every agency uses ReviewStudio. I don’t know how they work without it! If you have a very concise, streamlined platform for feedback, it helps people do their best work. The centralized view of creative history and feedback provides accountability for everyone. Key Considerations for Your Proofing Process When getting started, there are a few critical concepts that you’ll want to address to ensure you are getting the full benefits of your proofing process. Without a proofing solution, these considerations are often poorly addressed. The Files: What Requires Proofing? This could be a video, image, ad campaign, brochure, or any other media that you are working on with others. Every format can require different processes and resources. You ideally want a tool to handle all your proofing needs. How Precise Can You Be With Your Feedback? Precision reduces miscommunication and provides clarity. Pinpointing a markup or annotation to a specific frame, pixel, page, or perhaps word is critical – and should provide 100% accuracy. What’s to Be Done With the Feedback? You need the option to deliver action-oriented feedback. Whether the task is to cut a frame, edit copy, address a bug, or adjust an image, assigning tasks ensures feedback is implemented and with accountability. Who Needs to Act? General feedback removes responsibility from any particular party. It’s critical to ensure feedback is connected to the user responsible to take action. It also helps if they can see all the other feedback and in context. How is Feedback Related to the Deadline? Clarity is essential for meeting expectations regarding deliveries, whether for individual tasks or approvals. Accountability requires clear expectations and transparency. Online Proofing Can Be Easy Online proofing adds tremendous value to your creative workflows. It can be integrated seamlessly to your workflows and is intuitive to adopt. The results of simplifying your creative workflows will be felt immediately. You’ll produce stronger work in a shorter time period, put less of a communications burden on your teams… and collaborate better. How ReviewStudio Works in Six Simple Steps Upload a Review Share for feedback Markup and annotate Get clarity with tasks, @mentions, and threaded conversations Upload a new version Get approvals Trusted by 1000s of Teams Worldwide Start a Free Trial Today Discover how your team can centralize feedback, streamline approvals, and keep creative flowing. Start a 30 day, no commitment trial today. FAQ What problems does ReviewStudio solve that project management tools don’t? Project management tools are great at managing project tasks. But when it comes to proofing, managing revisions and versioning, and approvals, things can become fragmented and inefficient. ReviewStudio solves this by centralizing and consolidating creative feedback, versions, and approvals. It keeps the review and approval of creative in one place with the creative work (not the project) as the focal point. How does ReviewStudio improve agency-client collaborations? ReviewStudio is built to streamline agency-client collaborations, syncing and coordinating feedback and approvals between all stakeholders, whether accounts, creative, project managers, external, and everyone in between. It helps teams of all sizes accelerate workflows by improving communication and eliminating the delays caused by poor, confusing, or slow feedback and approvals. The ability to review all media formats in one place, set up internal comment privacy, easy sharing, version control, and synced feedback are a few of the features agencies love. Can ReviewStudio replace email-based feedback workflows? Absolutely…and it should! Gathering feedback by email is less than ideal. It is often fragmented, difficult to track, and causes miscommunication. Important tasks and comments are easily overlooked. Stakeholders can be left out (or even worse, you CC the wrong person!). The result is redundant work and delayed approvals. ReviewStudio eliminates those headaches by keeping feedback and approvals consolidated and synchronized with accountability. What size teams typically use ReviewStudio? ReviewStudio is used by teams of all sizes. From the freelance designer to the 100-person agency to 10,000-user enterprise customers. The platform is designed to scale with your needs, whether you are managing 1 or 100s of projects a month. Can ReviewStudio be used across multiple departments or teams? Yes, ReviewStudio is designed for cross-functional collaboration, whether internal or external. It offers teams of all sizes a standardized approach to gather and manage feedback, versioning and approvals. This helps reduce errors and maintain accountability across workflows with multiple departments or teams involved. How many stages can approval workflows have? There is no limit on the stages in a creative workflow (but we do hope you don’t have too many!). What are some of the use cases ReviewStudio’s solutions work best for? From design to manufacturing, fintech to creative agencies, teams from many industries have shared how they benefit from ReviewStudio. Check out our case studies here to learn more about how teams like yours are improving their productivity and collaboration with ReviewStudio.
ReviewStudio is a feature-rich collaboration platform that has sped our review process immensely. It allows us to communicate clearly while reviewing complex content such as VR and Video.
ReviewStudio was key to helping us provide an easy, intuitive, yet robust solution for our clients. It helps our designers deliver more efficiently. We have the perfect tool to communicate effectively with our clients.
ReviewStudio have been a fantastic partner for us. We have worked closely with their team to provide solutions for both our internal teams and our clients. The product is exceptional.
ReviewStudio is a great way to streamline the communication not only within the team, but also with our partners involved in projects. They are constantly evolving new features to make the process even more efficient.
ReviewStudio is a game-changer and leads to clients choosing us over other providers. It’s amazing how not every agency uses ReviewStudio. I don’t know how they work without it!
If you have a very concise, streamlined platform for feedback, it helps people do their best work. The centralized view of creative history and feedback provides accountability for everyone.