When I was working for a high tech and B2B ad agency that was experiencing growing pains caused by the transformation from small to mid-sized to large, I developed a traffic and production management system using a Mac and FileMaker Pro. No, really. Seriously! Prior to that system, there were nothing more than memos and email to convey information from account management to creative to production to traffic and back. It was inefficient, and many times information was lost in transit.
The FileMaker Pro system introduced job tickets and a workflow that, to the best of FileMaker Pro’s limited capabilities, aided in making sure the right people saw the right information and that the process was properly documented. This included a listing of those responsible for various aspects of the job, due dates, production specs and, if lucky, the creative brief.
It was far from a perfect system and rife with the limitations of early-stage FileMaker Pro. At other agencies I worked for, trafficking jobs and managing workflow ranged in sophistication from a simple phone call to a handwritten note to typed, four-part forms to email to clunky dumb terminal antiquation.
Read the rest on the Central Desktop blog.
