ASUS Brazil: immediate time and cost savings

Collaborative review of online and offline creative work. Shorter review cycles and faster time-to-market

Background

ASUS is a multinational computer product manufacturer, headquartered in Taiwan

Its product range includes laptops, mobile phones, servers and mother boards as well as producing components for other manufacturers, including Apple Inc, Dell, Falcon Northwest and Hewlett-Packard. As of November 2009, 29.2% of PCs sold in the previous 12 months worldwide came with an ASUS motherboard.

The company is highly design focused and takes pride in achieving aesthetic perfection through continuous innovation. This approach is demonstrated in every aspect of its design work - from products themselves to marketing collateral, and even internal communications. Attention to detail is critical. Producing such work in-house means that it's essential for it to be done as efficiently as possible. Long review cycles have a direct impact on profitability.

The Problem

Rapid innovation was leading to high volumes of new product launches, requiring a huge amount of marketing collateral for sign off

With rapid innovation comes a high volume of new product launches. The ASUS Marketing Team produce a huge amount of creative work that needs review and approval. Generally there are around 15-20 proofs for approval each month. The work is both online and offline. Examples include web banners, e-newsletters, product catalogs, magazines, marketing collateral, point of sales material and presentations.

All creative work needs review and approval by people in multiple departments before release. This is to ensure that they are of the highest quality and accuracy, and properly reflect the brand identity.

The old process for getting approval of creative work was to send an email with a PDF attachment. As many of the reviewers didn't have Adobe Acrobat, they could not mark-up the document and had to describe their feedback in an email, which took time and was hard for the designers to interpret. Often emails would be sent back directly to the creative team without circulation to other reviewers which led to conflicting feedback and lengthy review cycles.

Edson Ogata, Head of Creative, adds "the former process was bad. Despite being a cutting edge technology company, we still had an archaic workflow process for design sign-off. This was one of the reasons for looking for a tool that would be easy to use with easy access and simple commenting, approval and documentation".

"ProofHQ has given us greater agility and productivity, allowing for better execution of our projects. The approval process is now in a very good place”, Edson Ogata, Head of Creative

ProofHQ Solution

ASUS Brazil now use ProofHQ for the review and approval of all of their creative work

ASUS were looking for a solution that would make review and approval easier and also keep a record of all of the decisions made, which could act as an audit trail for future reference.

ASUS selected ProofHQ as a simple and effective tool to help them achieve all of their goals. Combined with the personal support that they received to set up their workflow, this meant that implementation was incredibly fast.

The current process that the company has adopted is as follows:

The Marketing Manager briefs the graphic and/or web designers with an outline of the project
The designers complete the creative work and upload to ProofHQ
The proof is shared with reviewers. This normally consists of people from marketing and sales as well as the Product Manager
Feedback is given by all reviewers, who leave comments and mark-ups on the proof
The designer will be notified when all parties have submitted their comments or decision
The designer will take the feedback, revise the creative work and upload it as a new version of the existing proof
All reviewers from the original proof are notified that there's a new proof that needs their attention and this continues until everybody is happy with the finished design
Once the designer has received notification that all parties have approved the artwork, they share the proof with a director-level group for sign off. Once this has been given, the work is put live or goes to print

The Results

With less time spent on revisions, ASUS are now able to take on more projects

Edson Ogata confirms that the results of introducing ProofHQ to ASUS have been immense.

"Far less time is now spent on revisions, giving the creative teams more time to take on new projects"

The creative team's processes have become a lot slicker which has made them more efficient. This has generated real cost savings for the company, with much less of the creative team's time being spent on revisions.

They are able to refer to past proofs as a point of reference to ensure that they are improving quality with each piece of work that they do. This also means less time spent on revisions.

Marketing projects get to market much faster.

The sign off process introduced for all reviewers has also meant that there is now a level of quality control which ensures that each piece of creative produced both follows brand guidelines and is of the highest possible standard.

The main features that they've benefited from include:

Threaded Commenting: This allows all reviewers, regardless of location, the ability to discuss feedback and agree the amends to be made, shortening review cycles
Notifications: Designers are notified each time a reviewer gives feedback or makes a decision which means that they're able to keep track of the progress for each piece of creative work
Archive Facility: With the ability to access past proofs at any stage, this allows designers to reference previous feedback to ensure that future projects require fewer revisions
Markup Tools: Rather than using words to describe visual feedback, the reviewers are easily able to markup documents using the markup tools, meaning that there is no room for confusion