Optimize Your In-House Studio

This post was originally published in ANA’s Marketing Knowledge Center

Contributed by Andrea Ruskin, production advisor and partner at Blum Consulting Partners

A good foundation of any successful in-house agency is the ability to drive continuous operational improvements while being able to measure efficiency. But how do you know if the model you created is set-up for success? Do you have the appropriate resources to support the business needs? Is the organization staffed with the appropriate skill sets and are they being leveraged correctly? Are the project management and workflow tools optimized?

If your organization is experiencing any of the following 4 symptoms, it may be a sign you need to create operational efficiencies.

1. Marketers are spending money on outside resources to produce assets and bypassing the in-house team
   Most in-house agencies are not set-up to be the sole source of creative asset production for a brand. But if marketers are working with outside resources to execute creative needs that are within the scope of the in-house agency, that is a sign the agency is not delivering on expectations.

2. Projects are taking too long to complete and marketers are missing in-market dates or creating work-arounds to get projects completed
   Asset production is a fluid process and there are many nuanced factors that drive the execution. If your creative team is not meeting deadlines or if marketers are creating work arounds to get their final assets completed, that is a sign the internal team is not working efficiently and able to meet the demands of the organization.

3. There is a high volume of freelancers brought in to work on internal projects
   Assigning project work to freelancers can lead to a host of issues for an internal team. Depending on which software platforms and workflow tools the team uses, freelancers may have trouble accessing current project work or historical project work for reference. If the freelancers are not based in the same location as the internal agency that opens the door to miscommunication and wasted time. Getting the right balance of in-house versus external resource remains a big challenge for most internal studios.

4. Marketers are experiencing multiple revisions to original content
   There are many reasons why this could occur. Poor quality briefing, which results in mistakes, lack of good internal process for reviews and approvals, or some form of miscommunication between marketers and the internal team, is often at the root of these issues.

People, process and culture are what drives the success of creative companies. If you are responsible for a creative process, make sure you are looking into the gaps in the production process to see where you can optimize your organization. And remember, better process drives better creative.

Original article published in ANA

"Optimize Your In-House Studio." Blum Consulting Partners, 2018.