Yes, You Can Measure Creative Workflow Output

written by

published

Man Using Phone And Woman Using A Tablet

Monitoring metrics like the estimated deadline in comparison with the actual one determines the pace at which your project moves and should move and the creative bottlenecks that should be solved, which ultimately helps in slashing down the time for future projects. This makes measuring the creative output with key performance indicators a significant part of your creative project.

When the actual budget is less than or in alignment with the estimated one, the value of creative output by your organization is also made clear. This enhances the ROI and helps secure future opportunities and profit while also gaining customer loyalty. This can only be done by enhancing your workflow process and continuously measuring creative workflow output.

But can you really measure the creative workflow output?

The answer is a definite yes. Let’s take a look at how you can do it.

Why Do You Need to Measure Creative Workflow Output?

An effective creative workflow includes these primary phases: Conception of the project, definition, execution, review and approval, and the final project distribution. Several processes are implemented for these particular phases based on the type of content you produce, which differs from company to company. 

Standardizing work intake is important to effectively measure your output. Here’s how having a standard work intake process and a measure of creative output help the entire process to flow smoothly:

Clarity Enhanced and Improved Efficiency

If your team members have a better understanding of how project proposals are brought forward, their participation will be higher and more effective. A standardized work intake enhances clarity, which in turn increases efficiency that helps speed up the process of creating and approving proposals.

Higher Quality

Standardizing work intake helps to clarify the exact information that is required in the proposal and also the clear reason behind it. This leads to higher quality work while also decreasing the approval time. 

Unsurpassable Consistency 

A standard work intake process includes a single source implemented by employees to forego chaos and confusion that follows if you use numerous tools and software for a specific purpose, breaking the chain of consistency. The utilization of common tools and templates will help maintain consistency in proposals.  

How to Measure Your Creative Workflow Output

Prioritization of projects and tasks is important in a creative workflow to determine whether something is a value-add. Let’s take a look at the basis on which the workflow output should be measured for maximum efficiency:

Identify Urgency

Urgency is the stipulated timeline within which clients want their deliverables. It is the timeline within which the tasks have to be completed for the next process to begin quickly and efficiently while also retaining the quality. Identifying urgency is important to work on the immediate important projects. 

The scales used to measure and define urgency are critical, major, medium, and minor, critical being the most urgent.

Calculate Priority

Priority is a term that is dependent upon the impact and urgency of a project. Anything with a high impact and high urgency gets a higher priority whereas a low impact and low urgency gets a lower priority. You can measure the impact based on the following aspects: 

  • Business impact
  • Customer experience impact
  • Brand awareness impact
  • New market impact
  • Deadline

A high business impact, customer experience impact, brand awareness impact, and new market impact have the highest priority with deadlines being rigid and urgent. 

A low business impact (less than targeted potential), customer experience impact (low value), brand awareness impact (rebrands), and new market impact (minimal) weigh the lowest and have a deadline that is made flexible.  

Assign Schedule 

For the workflow process to operate within the stipulated time and various tasks to be completed in the process, it calls for a fixed schedule. Adhering to this schedule can help deliver the project on time or even faster. With the help of assigning and monitoring the schedule, you can also determine creative processes that take longer to finish and why while working on the same. 

Communicate Schedule 

Once you have determined the schedule, communicating it to the team members who are responsible for delivering the work, is a necessity. Clear communication and cooperation make the process much more efficient leading to a high-quality output that has been envisioned by your team.  

How to Increase Your Creative Workflow Output to Get Better Results

There are certain steps that you should follow from the get-go to have a clear idea of the output at the end:

  • Clarification of project scope for a clear-cut vision about the client’s product statement and perception. Having a systematic approach often saves the team from missing out on important details.
  • Use a creative brief template to monitor each phase of growth and provide a better framework that eases the communication process.
  • Assign roles and responsibilities according to every team member’s skillset, thus facilitating healthy team management.
  • Chalk out your creative workflow for a better understanding of the end product. A blueprint streamlines the process making it a smoother ground for communication within the team and with the client as well.
  • Keeping track of creative workflow output right from updating metrics to reviewing creatives will ensure a step-by-step review and documentation of the entire creative workflow.

Measuring creative workflow output is a necessity in the digitally expanding world wherein the creative processes are getting much more refined and streamlined in accordance with the requirements. Consistency is key and in order to deliver consistently good work output, it is important to periodically assess, compare and work on areas to see how far you have and can go.