Across industries and teams, a tremendous amount of creative requires proofing on a daily basis.
The challenges are fairly universal: produce quality content, keep campaigns on track, all while dealing with demanding clients. The list goes on. And the challenges become more complex when they are compounded by 360-degree content and longer project timelines.
With so many moving parts to a project, it doesn’t take much for the flow to descend into chaos. Missed feedback, miscommunication, and version control issues can all cause costly delays and frustration for your teams and clients alike.
That’s where client proofing software becomes vital. By streamlining the creative review process, you can inject clarity and control into your workflows.
What Is Client Proofing Software?
Client proofing software is designed to streamline the process of getting creative assets reviewed and approved, facilitating client collaboration.
It gives teams and their clients one centralized place to manage feedback and the more general review process. Reviewers and approvers, whether internal or external, can view, comment, and approve from one platform. Depending on the range of creative produced, it should ideally work well for a wide range of formats, including images, videos, PDFs, and websites.
With all stakeholders accessing an intuitive proofing software, information isn’t scattered across multiple platforms or channels. Clients know exactly how, when, and where to add their feedback. There’s always clarity on which is the most recent version of a file, and all client comments and revisions can be viewed in context. It results in faster client turnaround times, fewer revisions, and greater accountability for all involved.
Where Typical Review Workflows Fail
Far too many teams are still sharing files and gathering feedback from clients via email, slack or other communication platforms. It’s typical to use a variety of channels to work on assets, and communications, tasks, and approvals are scattered, causing confusion.
These review workflows are simply not suited to managing the volume of complex information generated during the creative review process. Nor does it offer an optimal client experience. Everyone has had to deal with confusion caused by convoluted email chains, multiple versions of a file floating around (often with near-identical or nonsensical names), and requests not being properly documented.
Additionally, when it comes to proofing visual assets like images and video, non-purpose-built methods aren’t ideal for the kinds of feedback clients may want to make. If comments on a design file like “Add the logo in the corner” or “Use the other green” are made in an email or a meeting, chances are you’ll have to spend extra time clarifying which corner or green.
All of this inefficiency and confusion adds up to a costly mess. Clients become unhappy, approvals are delayed, deadlines are missed, and teams have to spend time and energy compensating for the ineffective system.
Why Teams Thrive with Client Proofing Software
A Client proofing software keeps feedback and approvals in one intuitive place. Teams don’t have to spend time searching for the information or waste time chasing clarifications.
- Gather and manage far more precise feedback with markup tools that allow clients to reduce the need for constant back-and-forth conversations.
- With centralized and threaded comments, everyone benefits from straightforward collaboration as everyone’s input is taken in context.
- Workflow automation and project management features keep everyone on the same page, drastically reducing the amount of manual tracking and following up needed.
- Version control and discussion features enable you to clear up any confusion quickly and easily. It’s simple to check what was done/said by whom and when.
- It’s highly intuitive for clients, with intuitive features for leaving feedback, adding it directly to a file. Once clients are happy, approval only takes a click.
What to Look for in a Client Proofing Tool
The platform you choose to onboard will determine the strength of your team’s efficiency in the review and approval process. It’s important to ensure that you are set up with what you need to enhance your proofing process.
Here are some features to look out for when assessing potential client proofing software for your team.
User-Friendly Interface and Features
Your proofing solution needs to work for all of your stakeholders and clients, including, and perhaps especially, those from outside the company, and those who might not be as comfortable with technology.
Suitable File Support
Whether it’s video, PDF, web content, 3D, or audio, it needs to support the files you commonly work with. It’s also critical for external users that they don’t need any plugins or extensions, nor need to download anything, to eliminate friction.
Permission Management
You need to be able to add reviewers (including guests), at a review, project, and client level. You also would want to control flexibility on roles.
Task Management
Integrated task assignment and management features are a useful way to be able to turn particular pieces of feedback into tasks that you can then delegate to members of the team.
Versioning
You need a tool that has comprehensive version control and ideally one that allows you to compare versions visually. This makes keeping track of changes easier and not only enables you to demonstrate the impact of subtler changes to your clients, but allows you to show receipts.
Threaded Comments
When it comes to client proofing with comments, you need a tool that will organize and track them. This enables everyone to read through for additional context and to check that amend requests haven’t been overlooked.
Take Control of Creative Workflows with Client Proofing Software
Client proofing software massively streamlines the creative review process. It’s far more time and cost-effective than making do with other common methods that simply aren’t up to the task.
It enables your clients to leave precise feedback, consolidates the critical information your team needs, and encourages a greater level of accountability.
