Optimizing a Content Supply Chain With Adobe Workfront and Workfront Fusion

In the fast-paced world of omnichannel marketing, managing the ideation, development, and activation of campaigns can be extraordinarily complex.  Countless digital, print, audio and video assets need to be produced and executed across numerous channels including web, social, performance, outdoor, digital signage, menus, radio, email and more.

The number of individuals involved in these cycles can be equally as numerous, with teams organized in different departments and practice areas all involved in some capacity throughout different phases of the content supply chain. As is often the case, when these departments have differing ways of tracking work and inconsistent documentation requirements, problems arise. Communication between teams becomes siloed. Responsibilities, task assignments and dependencies are vague. Work progress as a whole is unclear, and key resources to be consulted are excluded at critical points in the project posing a significant threat of work duplication and inefficiency. Lack of consistent collaboration can lead to projects containing development specifications outside of capabilities and misaligned creative. Poor version control when sending assets or campaigns from one department to another is a recipe for rework, especially when multiple parties are required for feedback and approvals. Add in the required legal oversight and approval processes common in many industries, and implications can be drastic. All this rolls up into an increase in the percentage of errors in the finished product, greater time to market, and unknown capacity for work.

A strong content supply chain needs a standardized process to request work, as well as a centralized tool to plan a marketing calendar, provide a single source of truth for collaboration on campaigns and projects, and allow users to manage resources, task assignments and overall workload to ensure on-time and accurate deployments. This is where Adobe Workfront and Workfront Fusion come into play, offering a streamlined solution to these challenges.

The Power of Adobe Workfront

Adobe Workfront is a comprehensive work management software designed to manage the entire lifecycle of work in one centralized location. The platform utilizes customizable object templates and workflows to automate project tasks, ensuring seamless communication and task assignment without disrupting the campaign workflow.  

Key features include:

• Customizable Templates and Workflows: Automate steps within project tasks to streamline processes. 
• Built-in Notification Settings: Receive instant updates on tasks and respond to messages directly within the application.
• Request Workflows: Enable project admin teams to assign, review, and process new project requests seamlessly.
• Proofing Tools: Allow reviewers to communicate and approve content directly within the application, saving significant time.
• Intelligent Resource Management: Forecast, assign, and analyze team member workload and project cost.

Enhancing Integration with Workfront Fusion

Workfront Fusion is an integration platform that connects Workfront to virtually all other applications in a technology stack. This capability is crucial for unifying and automating campaign processes across different tools and platforms.

Key benefits include:

• Seamless Integration: enables Workfront to connect with other tools such as Adobe Experience Cloud and SQL Server databases.
• Improved Efficiency: automates and streamlines workflows to reduce manual tasks and improve governance.
• Enhanced Reporting: helps users achieve accurate timelines and projections for deliverables through automated data transfers.
• User-Friendly Interface: simplifies the user experience with intuitive design and functionality.

Real-World Application: How Adobe Workfront and Adobe Workfront Fusion Helped a Hospitality Brand Promote Its Largest Event of the Year

When implementing Adobe Workfront for a brand, it is imperative to place heavy emphasis on discovery ceremonies with key stakeholders to ensure a thorough understanding of a brand’s operational landscape surrounding work requests, content creation, approval, and analysis. The findings from these discovery ceremonies work to inform the strategy behind conceiving efficient workflows.

Our Bounteous x Accolite team recently engaged with a hospitality client struggling with overly complicated and inefficient workflow processes. During the discovery ceremonies, we discovered the teams working to promote the client’s largest event of the year were heavily siloed. On top of this, most of the processes the teams were using to track work required daily manual inputs, and the origin of campaign requests came from a list of over 80 project templates and timelines —most of which were being tracked and communicated via a tedious email process.

Using the Adobe Workfront and Workfront Fusion tools, Bounteous x Accolite created an efficient workflow for the various teams to submit and process new marketing campaign requests within a single repository. Adobe Workfront’s built-in notification settings allowed staff to receive instant updates on tasks and respond to messages directly in the application using native integrations to email and creative tools. Request workflows enabled the Project Administrative team to seamlessly assign, review, and process new project requests. Adobe Workfront’s proofing tools allowed reviewers to communicate and approve content directly within the application, saving teams significant time.

Through leveraging Adobe Workfront and Workfront Fusion to optimize the client’s workflow processes, the total number of forms required for project input was reduced by more than 70%, and tracking of accurate timelines and projections for deliverables was unlocked. Furthermore, we integrated Adobe Workfront with other tools in the customer’s tech stack, such as Adobe Experience Cloud, and a SQL Server database, to improve their process’s efficiency, governance, reporting, and user-friendliness.

When implementing Adobe Workfront, enablement is a key priority to ensuring success. Thorough change management between teams and a high level of comfort with the new tool are critical to platform adoption and the operationalization of new work processes. Without robust enablement programs and documentation in place early, adoption slows, and time to realize a return on the Adobe Workfront investment increases. By evaluating and utilizing various enablement models, we can ensure successful, practical transitions beyond simply functional implementations.

For the hospitality engagement, we created custom training documentation specific to their various user groups while implementing a “train the trainer” approach for group admins. The client team from this engagement is now empowered to own the Adobe Workfront platform and enable new features as desired. They have come to use Adobe Workfront as their primary project management tool and continue to see improved synergy between human and platform processes, as well as a better understanding of project timelines and SLAs.  
 

Enabling Smoother Workflows and Improved Processes

Adobe Workfront and Workfront Fusion offer powerful solutions for optimizing content supply chains and campaign processes. By automating workflows, enhancing integration, and empowering teams with best practices, these tools help organizations achieve a new level of efficiency and effectiveness in their marketing efforts. Whether dealing with disjointed priorities, manual processes, or siloed stakeholders, Adobe Workfront and Workfront Fusion provide the capabilities needed to streamline and unify marketing operations.