The business world is highly competitive, and every creative production operation must work hard to stand out and be recognized. A business has to know how to gain customers’ interest and identify gaps in technology that are holding workers back from being as creative as they should be.
All the while, businesses also have to clamp down on costs. So, efficiency will mean not automatically developing new products or services but improving on what already exists. Efficiency heats your creative production operation, which can have a major impact on business.
Creative operations are important because the idea is to improve the way work is done with creative teams simply. As a creative production manager, you have to know what your team is working on and define key goals. You have to clarify roles and tasks and communicate expectations.
Efficiency is about staying on budget.
The manager will need to understand the priority tasks with video production as an example. The manager has to think about the logistics around how the video will be produced.
Other important aspects include how to stay within budget and how the content will be used to maximize its return on investment. Therefore the production manager’s team must understand exactly what is trying to be achieved.
Is your creative production operation team capable of executing the key goals you have in mind? It’s important to have processes in place and to track the progress of a video production project. Of course, the goals must be attainable.
Assigning a vast project can be intimidating and overwhelming. It might be better to break large products down into smaller operations. Creative production operations are all about the tools and processes that create a creative workflow delivering content. Operational efficiency is all about excellence in the creative process. Data is used to identify areas where even small optimizations can increase efficiency for a business.
We look at ways efficiency heats a creative production operation –
1. Efficiency brings structure – eliminates unnecessary resources
Efficiency heats up your creative and productive operation as it brings structure to a company, optimizing costs and capacity. It looks at the creative process as a supply chain, looking at ways things can be done with fewer resources and less time.
It’s important to plan ahead because when you have an idea of what needs to be done, it becomes easier to prepare, and you don’t do things on a whim.
The good idea is to get calendars up and running for all your creative production operations and initiatives. When looking to save time, teams often need help with the same old project management processes, leading to burnout, communication misunderstandings, and disorganization.
Good communication critical to efficiency
Communication and a unified communication system are critical to working more efficiently and heating your creative production operation. Of course, team communication and collaboration should be open and professional. Proper communication ensures that projects are completed on time.
All team members would be fully informed of what is expected of them. Many creative production operations don’t operate smoothly because of misunderstandings that result in missed deadlines.
Teamwork can become chaotic without a centralized project management space, so collaboration software can make things more efficient. It maximizes teamwork effectiveness by providing a central platform where employees can share data which can solve business problems or complete creative projects together.
This is important when a team works remotely in different offices. It can confuse where project data is located and who is working on the task. On the other hand, having a planning tool available to everyone means your team won’t have to put up with unproductive meetings.
Project management software can help one coordinate all activities on one web-based tool. Improving communication is about long-term returns. As a manager, you need to try every tactic to improve team communication, which is key to the efficiency of operations.
Evaluate processes
Creative teams must always evaluate their processes to identify opportunities to improve procedures. If they don’t assess processes regularly and adapt them, companies will battle with outdated production operations that hamper operations.
Many businesses make do with their current systems, even if they are time-consuming, expensive, and provide no solutions. Regarding creative, productive operations, teams must be mindful of how they use their time and technology to produce more assets while using the same or fewer resources.
Also, as a time saving endeavor, what about automating all those repeatable jobs? The creative production industry has plenty of administrative duties that are repeated over and over again instead of being automated.
Too many administrative chores take up a lot of time and introduce much human error. It’s time to think about how to use modern technology to automate those processes that take time and cut into your budget.
2. Efficiency with KPIs
Creative agencies include digital marketing agencies, advertising agencies, and marketing agencies. Creative agencies are highly competitive and have to track their KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, to ensure they can succeed.
Setting up KPIs is important for creating a successful relationship with clients, and whether you call it a KPI or metric, you want to know how your team performs to improve processes.
When it comes to creative production operations, what are the KPIs that can ensure efficiency? For a KPI to be effective, it needs to be smart, contextual, and measurable.
There are several KPIs that are needed for a creative production operation – quality, utilization, cycle time, SLA, retail sales, safety, reshoot rate, and image coverage, among others.
How long will a task take?
For example, cycle time and SLA are similar, with the cycle time being how long the process takes up to image delivery. SLA, or service level agreement, is getting the creative production operation completed in a particular amount of time. This is always what clients want answers on – how long will it be before I receive my images?
Cycle time is a key metric that can help you ensure efficiency in your process. Measuring cycle time and implementing process changes is just the start of being efficient with creative production operations. Quality is another KPI. Quality isn’t just about what an image looks like; it’s about being efficient with technical specs and complying with a style guide.
Lead time measure efficiency
Lead time is about the time a project takes from request to final delivery, so this KPI measures the efficiency. Tracking lead time means a production manager can see how efficiently everyone works.
3. Workflow efficiency
Improving the creative production workflow is a top priority. When brands improve their workflow efficiency, they can benefit from cost savings and a faster turnaround. Effective workflow management is important for completing projects on time, and many industries are using it.
In fact, any industry where sales and marketing are required can benefit from the implementation of creative workflow management. Creative workflow management, also known as “creative operations,” attempts to help creative teams complete their tasks on time.
Several steps towards the success of a project
There are several steps to managing a project from start to finish, which are important to any project’s success. After procuring information from the client, the project’s size is defined and presented to the creative team.
Before starting on any project, roles have to be defined and it has to be determined what direction the team will take to produce quality output. Deadlines for each task is given, and the project commences.
Workflows shouldn’t be complicated, yet more functions are being added to the process. Once key resources are identified, the workflow can be visually mapped out and simplified once you have your workflows mapped out. Workflow management for creatives can always benefit from creative workflow automation.
An all-in-one creative platform helps in many ways, apart from workflow management. Features such as multi-level access and review systems eliminate the need for a host of tools. This speeds up workflow efficiency.
How can you be more efficient? By refining your processes and technology. You can be more efficient by connecting your team with a quick and easy way to communicate and also by using maintenance technology built on the cloud.
With a better maintenance process and technology to help you be more efficient and stay organized, your creative production operation will be able to take on more and automatically know which project is the next most important. Is your company producing high-quality videos.
Efficiency that ensures you’re ahead of the competition
Speed and efficiency are top priorities in the marketplace, so if it’s taking you too long to produce videos, why not be in contact with a skilled video production company such as Dillie? Only then will your company be able to efficiently create fantastic media content that will ensure you are always ahead of the competition.
Check out the other benefits that Dillie offers, as the team efficiently follows all your creative visions to bring your ideas to life and to delight customers with creative storytelling, aerial shots, and interactive video. Remember that there may be too many tools or strategies these days, which can impede rather than improve efficiency.