Internal Creative Agency Software for Universities and Colleges

I’ve spoken with several advertising, marketing and creative managers working within educational institutions over the last few months. It has become common for internal creative departments to look for a traffic and workflow management system to assist them with scheduling and time management. To be perfectly honest, the majority of people who work in internal creative agencies at universities and colleges have the same type of challenges as a traditional, full service or digital advertising agency. Hence, internal creative and marketing departments at universities also need a workflow management system to enhance productivity and add more value for their internal clients.

Today, I’d like to share the main challenges that universities and colleges have while looking for a software to help with project planning, scheduling, timelines, and resource allocation. Below is a list of items that I hear frequently and what can be done to minimize the risk associated with the implementation of a new traffic management system for your institution.

• What’s your internal business processes? – Although internal creative agencies have similar workflows to a traditional ad agency, it is important to note that an internal marketing department may not bill its internal clients and do not require the creation of invoices.
• Client portal – From my experience, internal agencies quite often use a client portal to receive work requests. This is usually done through creative briefs and form templates that can be completed by internal clients. Thus, it is crucial to ensure that your new tool offers a client portal for collaboration with different departments at your university or college. Having a simple user interface will make your job way easier when creating briefs and form templates. Always keep that in mind!
• Time tracking – Not all internal creative departments use timesheets to track their time, however, we have seen a trend lately that more and more internal agencies want to start tracking time to better understand the value of its work and how they can improve efficiency with the department.
• Resource Allocation – How can you measure the availability of your team if you don’t track hours and don’t assign tasks to your team? Without changing your mindset about time tracking and allocating tasks to your staff, it will be really hard to identify who on your team is available to receive new work. This is another reason why we highly recommend that internal agencies to track time and implement a culture of accountability. Accountability increases when all levels of staff feel personally responsible for the success of the department.

These are some of the challenges universities and colleges encounter during the search for a new workflow and traffic management system.  Obviously, there are many other challenges that can arise during the initial investigation of ad agency software and it is important for you to take the time to analyze the options available in the marketplace and choose the tool that is the best fit for you.

Stay tuned for our next blog and feel free to share your comments with our team.