AT&T 

Global telecommunications provider improves complex brand and regulatory review process; cuts proof management time by 50%

"On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say a 10. Our review and approval process has been greatly improved, plus it keeps an audit of activity so you really minimize the room for error." Tabitha Mapes, Senior Marketing Manager, AT&T

AT&T is the largest provider of telecommunications services in the US. It works with agencies to deliver high volumes of direct  marketing projects targeting new and existing customers throughout the country. Each project requires brand, partner and legal approval before it is released for production. Feedback and approval must be accurately recorded  for audit purposes.  Each marketing project can have multiple variations based on customer segment and region, which massively increases the complexity of the approval process.

AT&T traditionally used email to manage its review process. Inboxes were often crammed with large PDF attachments. Each reviewer would either mark-up their individual PDF, which meant no visibility into comments from others, or they would try to provide comments in email, which led to convoluted email threads. A huge amount of time was wasted collating and recirculating proofs with hard copies. Email threads did not provide an easy, practical audit trail if there were any legal and regulatory questions that had to be answered.		AT&T needed a more streamlined solution for proofing, but management did not want to dedicate a large amount of staff time to learning a new system. They found that ProofHQ was not only quick to deploy, but also incredibly easy to use. Reviewers needed minimal training to use the simple mark-up and commenting tools effectively.

The amount of time AT&T spends distributing, collecting and consolidating proofs has been reduced by 50%. Collaboration is much easier as reviewers see each other’s comments in the same proof rather than having managers gather comments from separate PDFs and circulating new PDFs. Also, because each comment is name- and time-stamped, accountability is greatly improved, making reporting and auditing much simpler.