After over seven years of using ReviewStudio, the team at Cadpeople is well-versed in the many ways that online proofing can improve workflows for their creative projects.
From streamlining the revision process to bringing context to scope and budget discussions, the team at Capeople estimates that ReviewStudio has helped cut back their time spent on review and approval by nearly a third.
And with over 100 happy clients collaborating on ReviewStudio, it’s safe to say their implementation of online proofing has benefited everyone involved.
We spoke with Jonas Somerville Andersen, CEO of Cadpeople UK, about how the team has benefited from implementing ReviewStudio as their online proofing solution.
Daniela: How would you describe the work you do at Cadpeople?
Jonas: At Cadpeople we create Visual Communication solutions. We specialize in bringing complex information to life using highly visual digital tools and platforms such as 3D visualization and animation, XR, interactive presentations, touch screen solutions, digital simulators and much more.
You describe yourselves as Visual Storytellers – how would you differentiate Visual Storytelling from your typical “Content Marketing”?
We believe there is a holy grail to creating engaging content and that lies in the refinement and quality of the visual output. We always seek to simplify and visualize outcomes to get the purest and most engaging visual storytelling. Coupled with our passion for working with CGI, our solutions stick out from the crowd and differentiate themselves quite a bit from typical marketing content.
What did your proofing process look like before ReviewStudio? What problems were you looking to solve?
As most studios in the visualization industry know, the better you control the review process the better your business performs. In 2017 we were finding our review process was far from streamlined and was a mix of pdf markups and long email threads particularly when projects had multiple stakeholders. On top of this we were struggling to get accurate feedback on motion productions. So, we spent some time testing online review platform and ReviewStudio emerged as a great balance of functionality and cost-effectiveness.
You specialize in “Making the Complex Simple” – we love that. It’s at the core of what we strive to be. Would you say ReviewStudio has contributed to simplifying the complicated process of keeping creative flowing?
Absolutely! Tools like ReviewStudio need to be quick to adopt and intuitive to use, otherwise our clients would quickly revert to manual markups. Most of our clients can use the tool with no introduction.
Internally ReviewStudio has contributed to improving our own organization of reviews and – importantly – given us a great tool for logging feedback and in some cases allowed us to argue scope and budget increases instead of a runaway review process.
Your creative teams are dealing with clients and teams spread across the world. How has ReviewStudio changed or enabled the way your team exchanges feedback?
We use ReviewStudio to work closely with our sister company in Denmark as well as our clients in EU, US and Asia. ReviewStudio’s capabilities to add reference images and draw directly on reviews means that things are not as easily lost in translation. The option of adding guest users also means we can easily invite casual SME’s around the world to contribute quickly and easily.
How have your clients responded to the process of using ReviewStudio?
Practically all our clients have responded well to using ReviewStudio and in some cases, we believe this has contributed to them choosing us as a production studio over less organized competition.
As you’ve grown, how has ReviewStudio enabled you to scale up your feedback and approval process?
By introducing more organizational tools on the platform such as Clients, projects and so on, we have been able to maintain a good system for tracking our growing number of reviews.
This is probably where we urge ReviewStudio to keep developing as we can see potential for further organization features such as separating finalized output from reviews, maybe using integration to 3rd party cloud storage. Client-focused access for admins would also be a fantastic addition.
What ReviewStudio feature(s) has had the biggest impact on your creative workflows?
Initially, it was the ability to add comments and markup directly on video footage
Lately, the 3D space commenting on GLB files has given us a rare opportunity to get 3D model signoff from clients before starting visuals production.
How does ReviewStudio contribute to your team’s productivity?
We believe we have optimized the review process and saved countless hours by using this platform. But more importantly, we also believe we have saved our clients time and effort by providing a simple and quick feedback tool.
We should also point out that it is not just the number of reviews that has improved, the efficiency and accuracy of reviews are also much improved.
What’s your best piece of advice for someone starting to implement ReviewStudio or online proofing in general?
Our advice would be to start by looking at the entire production process and determine at what points reviews are required, then start making tailored guides for clients as to what is up for review at what stages.
We have managed to implement ReviewStudio as our main review platform at all review stages from model/concept sign-off to drafts to final reviews. Each stage has a different focus and should feedback relate to earlier stages, outside the agreed upon process, it allows us to classify comments as ‘out-of-scope’ and potentially outside agreed budget.
This approach has meant we get more sensible and prioritized feedback leading to much better control over the review process as a whole.
