Eric Wilson | April 08, 2008
case study | Q Brand Agency
ADVERTISING and creative consultancy Q Brand Agency added $250,000 a year to its bottom line by moving away from spreadsheets and manual job ticketing to a Streamline Filemaker system.
Philip Sunderland, managing director of the Christchurch-based agency, which services clients such as Skope Refrigeration in Australia, says the purpose-built software paid for itself in two months.
This was mainly because hours of work not previously captured in spreadsheets and paper job tickets became chargeable to clients under Streamline.
The system cost QBrand Agency $22,000 to install plus a maintenance contract worth $500 monthly.
"The biggest thing with spreadsheets versus databases is that databases operate in real-time," Sunderland says.
"With a spreadsheet no one else can add to it, but with a database you can track jobs by status as they progress without re-entering the information. Cutting and pasting into another person's spreadsheet is not the same thing."
There has also been a productivity boost.
Streamline's formal job tracking ended the messy reconciliation of spreadsheets with job tickets at the end of each month. Not every package he evaluated was up to this task, Sunderland says.
Of particular importance to a design and advertising business is the ability to redesign the system's statements, invoices and other automated correspondence for 20 creative staff.
So, as well as its job tracking and accounting functions, the ability to heavily customise output is what clinched the deal for Streamline.
As with any new system, it took a while for people to embrace the more disciplined approach the software inevitably imposed.