Challenge

Budget Cuts and Cost Savings

With content studios being asked to output more in less time (and at a lower price), budgeting is more important than ever. Using Creative Force is one more tool to ensure that every project stays on budget. Creative Force can be used to get more done, without increasing the size of the team.

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Common Obstacles

What's the problem (and our solution)?

Manual sample management slows production

The process of manually checking in and out samples is not only time-intensive but also prone to user error. Keeping track of the physical location of a multitude of samples and ensuring they reach their intended destination for photography can be a cumbersome task. These inefficiencies can lead to unnecessary delays, resulting in budget overruns.

Our Solution: Integrated sample management

In Creative Force, we've integrated sample management into every workflow to optimize budget use. By leveraging barcodes, teams can track each sample throughout the entire production process, from check-in to on-set to storage, and more.

This robust tracking provides stakeholders with full visibility into the production status of individual samples, complete with real-time updates. These samples can be organized into an unlimited number of locations, sublocations, and containers, making tracking manageable, regardless of the sample volume.

Post-production is inefficient

Using internal and external retouching teams during post-production, can lead to unexpected costs. Inefficiencies such as tasks being manually updated, errors, or completely overlooked pieces can strain budgets. Additionally, the need to ensure tasks are proceeding to the right next step adds further financial implications.

Our Solution: Automated and customized workflows

By utilizing automation and customization, studios can establish a post-production workflow that not only suits their team structures and preferred processes and vendors but also respects their budget.

Creative Force allows teams to construct cost-effective internal, external, or hybrid post-production procedures and define them as repeatable workflows that can be associated with specific production types. This approach ensures that tasks are efficiently handled, reducing the risk of budgetary overruns.

Data entry and manual file naming leads to errors

Mistakes in file naming, such as incorrect numbers or letters, can lead not only to lost files but also to severe consequences such as complete reshoots. These mishaps have direct budgetary implications. Additionally, the time-consuming nature of data entry consumes resources and staff hours, further straining the budget.

Our Solution: Automated file-handling

Creative Force's automated file-handling feature tackles these issues, reducing the financial impact of errors. The platform efficiently manages file naming, metadata enrichment, asset distribution, and outfit creation through automation instead of manual spreadsheet entries.

This streamlined process not only mitigates the risks of costly mistakes but also allows your team to focus on their core tasks, saving time and hence, the budget.

Outdated and static style guides cost reshoots

Diverse modes of style guide communication, such as via emails, prints, or wall postings, can lead to confusion and misinterpretation. If style guides exist in multiple locations, are frequently updated, or worst of all, are lost, the team might fail to follow the correct instructions. This can result in unnecessary redoing of tasks, wasting both time and financial resources.

Our Solution: Single source of truth

Dynamic style guides in Creative Force serve as a budget-friendly solution to this problem. By centrally and intelligently managing all image requirements in one place, they eliminate the need for redundant work due to miscommunications or outdated guides.

These style guides appear automatically wherever relevant in the workflow, without demanding resource-intensive development or complicated setups. Say goodbye to budget-wasting time spent hunting down the most recent style guide.

Waste due to inefficient communication

Inefficient communication regarding content edits can sometimes lead to missed or incorrect edits, causing delays or the need multiple drafts. This can significantly inflate the budget due to the extra time and resources spent on unnecessary reworks.

Our Solution: Retouching notes

The implementation of retouching notes offers a budget-friendly solution by ensuring clear communication about markups and editing instructions. Users can comment directly on images in the system, which are then displayed to the retoucher/editor within Photoshop.

Additionally, image versions are saved at each production stage, making it convenient to revert to a previous version if needed, saving costs that might otherwise be spent on redoing the shoot. This streamlined process significantly reduces the chances of costly misunderstandings or reworks.

Onboarding of new team members is slow

The need for new hires and freelancers to grasp all the detailed aspects and subtleties of your studio’s unique workflows can lead to significant ramp-up times, which in turn puts pressure on the budget.

Our Solution: Creative Force Academy

The Creative Force Academy, equips new users with the necessary knowledge to start working quickly, reducing the budget spent on long-term onboarding. The highlight is that users only need to familiarize themselves with the platform sections that pertain to their roles, ensuring a swift and cost-effective onboarding process.

Limited studio space impedes optimization

Lack of clear visibility often leads to studios having a limited understanding of their capacity. When uncertain about the availability of time, space, and staff to execute projects, resource utilization becomes ineffective. This uncertainty can hamper future scalability and result in inefficient budget utilization.

Our Solution: Live Studio Coordination

Creative Force consolidates all production tasks on one platform, allowing coordination across multiple studios and locations. This centralization provides teams with a thorough understanding of their studio's capabilities, enabling them to plan and allocate resources effectively and in line with the budget.

A closer look

Better File Handling = Less Budget

Teams working in creative studios are often slowed down when files are named wrong or images have been lost or misplaced. This often happens because there's so much going on and we're only human. When teams make mistakes, fixing them can take time and cost money.

Adjustable Workflows And Style Guides

All the workflows and settings can be changed by your team at any time. You can set up as many style guides or workflows as you need, so even if a studio shoots very different products for different clients, you can fully use this automatic system in Creative Force. This can save a lot of time and pre-emptively avoid mistakes that could cost money.

Linking Physical Samples To Workflows And Style Guides Using Barcodes

Creative Force has a system that helps you link a physical sample to the product in the system and create a barcode for it. This makes it easier to keep track of the product. Whenever work is done on a sample, the information gets added to its product record with no team input needed. If you scan a sample on set, the system pulls up the product and the style guide tells you how many images you need.

Naming Files The Way You Want

In Creative Force, you can trust that the system knows which images belong to which products. You only need to think about file naming when the final assets are approved and need to be created, and you can customize this when setting up the system. By automating this process, your team is saved time and energy to focus on other tasks.

Easily Review and Quality Check Images

Finally, during image review and quality checking, you can look at images and make notes in the system, working directly with the product record. If an image needs to be sent back to the person who retouched it, the image is sent back with notes and markings that are part of the product record. You don't need to deal with images or feedback out of context, like in separate emails or other project management platforms. Everything is completed within Creative Force solidifying what needs to be done saving your team time and budget.

Feature Focus

More Automation for More Savings

One of the important backbones of Creative Force is the ability to remove a studio’s need for file handling. Removing the need to name files, move files, add metadata to files will save your studio hours of work, every day, and allow your teams to focus on creating incredible imagery and video.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is Creative Force, and how does it work?

Creative Force is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that helps brands and retailers accelerate their eCommerce creative content production. It simplifies the process of planning and producing eCommerce content, improves cross-team collaboration, and ensures more transparency across every stage of production. With Creative Force, companies always deliver the highest-quality content on time and on budget.

Built on “flow production” principles, our platform utilizes intelligent automation to streamline workflows, resulting in consistent and repeatable processes. Creative Force also integrates seamlessly with existing systems, like Capture One and Adobe Creative Cloud, and features an intuitive interface.

How does flow production work?

In traditional batch production, all assets go through a single production stage before moving to the next step. This approach can lead to bottlenecks and delays.

Creative Force simplifies content production through a continuous process called "flow production." This process involves moving individual assets through various production stages as soon as they are ready, resulting in an efficient and scalable content production workflow.

Who can use Creative Force?

Creative Force is for brands, retailers, and commercial studios with in-house or external teams that produce and manage eCommerce content, such as photography, video, and copywriting.

Creative Force provides intelligent workflow automation, enhanced production visibility, and a range of collaboration tools that benefit all teams, including studio intake, styling, capture, post-production, marketing, and more. By choosing Creative Force, you can scale your content production, gain better operational visibility, and speed up time-to-market.

Does Creative Force integrate with my existing systems?

Yes, Creative Force is designed to seamlessly integrate with your existing tech stack. We have industry-leading integrations with Capture One, Adobe Creative Cloud, and more.

The platform’s API-first architecture enables our customers to seamlessly connect with Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems, Product Information Management (PIM) systems, cloud storage platforms, and any other required destinations.

Creative Force also makes it simple to work with external post-production vendors via FTP or API integrations.

Finally, our VPI Management extension makes it simple to work with product vendors to request, receive, and manage vendor-provided images (VPI).

What kind of support can I expect?

We understand that implementing a new system can be challenging, but our team is here to make the process as seamless and stress-free as possible. Our onboarding team will work closely with your team to set up Creative Force and empower your future success.

After onboarding, your Customer Success Manager will check in regularly. Our customer support team is also available 24/7 to help you with any product questions or concerns. In addition, we offer self-paced learning resources such as academy courses, support center documentation, and other materials to help you along your Creative Force journey.

On top of best-in-class customer support, we continuously update our platform with new features and improvements. Our biweekly releases can be easily installed without interrupting your work.