Reduce Revision Rounds on Creative Assets by Filtering Feedback

Revisions are a critical part of the creative process. But without a limit on the number of revision rounds a client can request, the review and approval (R&A) process can quickly get out of hand. According to SoDA’s 2020 Agency Tracking Study, the third most common reason when a project was delayed or went over budget was due to too many rounds of revisions. The more revisions that are needed to complete a project, the more your agency gets hit with a variety of tangible and intangible costs. Costs that multiply with every round and wreak havoc on margins, revenue and even your agency’s reputation.

These kinds of costs may include:

Labor Costs
The cost of multiple rounds of revisions for a design project can vary depending on the hourly rate of the design firm and the amount of time required to complete the changes. For example, a small revision that takes a designer an hour to complete may cost less than a major revision that requires several hours of work. These costs show up on your project budget, contribute to over-servicing, and quickly eat away at margins.

Penalties/Late Fees
Depending on the contract, you could incur a costly penalty for delivering work that is late or doesn’t meet expectations.

Opportunity Cost
If you deliver work late, you’ve jeopardized any future work you could have had with that client. Your reputation as an agency takes a hit, and you can bet that client will definitely tell their friends. Additionally, in the amount of time it took to complete multiple rounds and deliver the finished product, you could have taken on an additional project to bolster your cash flow.

Considering the impact revision rounds can have on the bottom line, it is crucial for agencies to do two things - limit the number of revision rounds in the scope of work and find efficiencies within the R&A process to accelerate rounds regardless of how many there may be.

The first step of course, is implementing and online proofing tool like Deltek ConceptShare, that brings the R&A process online to eliminate manual markups, prevent version confusion and reduce unnecessary rework. Another area of opportunity is to make sure your creative teams have concise, actionable feedback so that they can execute revisions quickly, without worrying about if the changes are in-scope, still need to be discussed, or verified and ready to be made. The Feedback Flags feature in ConceptShare makes it easy for Creatives to filter out the noise and apply only the verified actionable feedback for the round. Before a new asset version gets sent to the client, you can also use those flags to ensure that all in-scope changes have been made correctly.

Feedback Flags

The Feedback Flags feature enables you to categorize the feedback submitted in the Proofing Workspace. They allow you to communicate direction and provide additional context to the person making the changes. With a simple color-coded flag, you can categorize a comment as out of scope, which filters out the noise and helps your creative team determine the critical actions needed.

Flag values and colors can be customized depending on your process so it is important to consider your ideal workflow and the team members that will be using it. Once you’ve established flag values and colors and flagged something, if you then go and modify that flag's color or meaning (text label), that change will retroactively be made everywhere that flag was used.

Feedback Flag Resolutions

Flag resolutions allow you to add a status state to each flag. By selecting “Resolve Flag” you can show the team what the status is of the original action. For example, you can verify that the original action is in-scope and truly does need to happen. This is especially helpful for in-house teams and clients that require an extra level of brand security. Again, resolutions can also be filtered to show only the changes that need to be made.

Comment Promotions

Once the latest version of an asset has been sent to the Account Director or the Client, they’ll need an easy way to make sure that all revisions have been executed correctly. To do that, they’ll need to see the feedback that was submitted on the previous version. By promoting a comment, you can essentially copy/paste feedback from the previous version to the latest version. Then, a side-by-side comparison of the two versions allows them to easily see what feedback was not actioned and might still need to be done with another round of revisions. This way there is no confusion over versioning, no back and forth regarding what comments were made, and nothing falls through the cracks.