Mission are the production studio within the BBH advertising agency. Along with their sister company Departments inside the JWT advertising agency which also use Axiom, they carry out all trafficking, production and artwork services for the agency.
Challenge
Mission's previous system was a manual job management system based on hand-written job sheets and manual collation/job costing at the end of the month. They had no client access which meant lots of time spent on the phone/email informing the clients where in the production process their work was, or following up on their enquiries.
Processing a large number of jobs with quick turnaround times and a limited number of staff requires good job management and the maximum amount of automation possible to reduce the manual job management overhead. The new system needed to be able to cope with financial estimating, briefing, revisions, costing and invoicing, incorporating timesheets and multiple price lists for different types of clients. Making the information in the studios available to users in the agency and the clients directly is very important. A web-based agency/client branded solution with user based permissions was required for this.
Solution
Axiom is used by all users in the traffic and production studios, either via the browser interface or, for studio operators who only need to enter timesheets, via the downloadable Adobe Air timesheet application which simplifies and speeds up timesheet entry dramatically.
Mission use the job management functionality extensively, including the work in progress and historical job management pages, job brief, revisions, files and file approvals, costings and invoicing sections. Axiom is integrated with the Odystar production system thereby further automating the finished file creation process and importing low resolution preview files back into Axiom for client approval and visual reference.
Benefits
Using the client and agency extranet sites, Mission is able to make the information in their sites accessible in a controlled manner to their clients, incorporating approvals, therefore eliminating phone calls, emails and personal visits with routine enquiries about the progress of jobs.
Future
Mission plans to bring the artwork studio into Axiom in the very near future, at which point, every single person in the company will be using Axiom, tracking every job in the company.
"As we grow, we are totally confident Axiom can grow with us."