Dashboard

A customisable, complete system overview from the home page. This Page shows summaries of any report or schedule within the system.

Each widget on the dashboard links to a more detailed page with the relevant information.

It is possible to customise dashboard access levels by user or by position within the company. The Thinking behind this is that designers aren’t going to want to see lots of financial info and your MD probably won’t want to be bothered with how many times a piece of artwork has been sent.

Planning

Use this tool to research the best media for a particular area of the country.

If you are planning a campaign for a client’s new store opening and not sure what the best media in that area, this module can help.

Use our comparison tool to get a rough idea of where you should be advertising.

Create speculative campaigns and allow clients to add or delete jobs and sign off campaigns online.

Enable clients to create their own campaigns online and automatically-price adverts (NB this is a press only feature at the moment).

All interactions/changes are logged by the system giving a full audit trail showing who approved what and when.

Change these spec jobs into real jobs at the click of a button.

Jobs

Create new jobs, for door to door leaflet distribution, internet adverting, out of home campaigns, press adverts, print jobs, radio and TV campaigns or artwork only jobs.

Create jobs from scratch or change spec jobs from the planning section into “live” jobs.

Press jobs automatically price based on the universal publication rate card and your client’s negotiated discount/rate, thus saving your staff valuable time.

Orders are automatically created from the information entered and are despatched, via email, to the relevant media or print representative.

Order have inbuilt links enabling the rep to enter an order reference number (or URN) and confirm receipt of the order.

If it is necessary to amend the details of a job, the details can be changed in the job sheet and the system will despatch an email with an amended order to the original rep.

Copy instructions (for new or repeat copy) can be confirmed and emailed by the system to the relevant contact at the supplier.

A brief enables Account Handlers to provide the studio with any extra information required to make up the creative or artwork. There is also a job bag facility, hosted on Amazon’s S3 cloud servers, which enables Account Handlers to upload any files relevant to the job. The job bags can also be used by the studio to store all their artwork (.indd/.psd) files

In the near future we are looking to add an online artwork approval system
A time sheet module is also provided but it is up to the agency to set what type of time they want to record (eg speculative artwork, production artwork, creative time, development, UX, UI, etc.)

There is no limit on the number of types of time that can be recorded and each type can be charged out at a different rate

Artwork Fulfilment

View a schedule of jobs ordered by deadline

This schedule shows the basic job information with links to detailed job information, the brief, job bag, time sheets, despatch information as well as the job’s audit trail

The job bag sits on Amazon’s S3 cloud servers and can store any number of files relating to the job including (but not limited to) office files, images, .indd files, .psd files, mp3s and videos

The job bag stores all past versions of files, i.e if a new version is uploaded, this and all previous versions will be stored in the job bag, with the newest version being the default

Artwork can be despatched directly from within the system via Adfast, email or FTP. Other despatch methods are planned for future development

A time sheet module is also provided but it is up to the agency to set what type of time they want to record (eg speculative artwork, production artwork, creative time, development, UX, UI, etc.)

There is no limit on the number of types of time that can be recorded and each type can be charged out at a different rate

Invoicing

Invoices are created directly from the system database which ensures that nothing is overlooked and errors are reduced.

Invoice numbers can be skipped if an invoice is made in a proprietary package.

Vouchering is also built in via Ebiquity’s online vouching system API. The system automatically looks for voucher copies for press adverts after the insert day has passed.

Purchase invoices are checked off against the values in the system.

Once the sales invoice has been created, the purchase invoice is checked and marked as correct and, for press jobs, the voucher is received and correct, then the job can be exported to your accounts package. If you are using Sage we have an app which will import the information for you, otherwise the system will create a csv file for you to import into your accounts package.

Reports

We are adding new reports all the time as they are requested by agencies. Our most popular reports are;

• Daily Job List – a list ordered by deadline time of all the jobs which must be completed today and what stage they are currently at. Not so useful for the studio who need to plan further in advance but very helpful to keep an eye on things and ensure that artwork is being despatched on time.
• Client Schedule – a schedule of jobs showing client, supplier, date and other relevant job information. This report shows the cost of the bookings to the client.
• Agency Schedule – a schedule of jobs showing client, supplier, date and other relevant job information. This report shows the cost of the bookings to the agency.
• Work in Progress (WIP) – a list off all the jobs on the system that have been started and have yet to be invoiced (does not include cancelled jobs).

Access & Security

This module offers all your agency users access to the whole site, or enables customised access based on their login id. Each agency is given 1 admin user who can then create and set access levels for each required user. There are no limits on the number of users you create. There are, however, restrictions on short, unsecure passwords.

Data

Our databases contain over 2.5K publications. We will be launching radio, TV, out of home and door to door databases over time. We have made a decision not to have a database for internet advertising as it is far too large an area to cover. Likewise with print we have decided not to support a database. The reason behind this is that a large proportion of agencies only use a handful of printers, so giving access to a database of thousands seems unnecessary. So for both internet and print we will not be updating the way the system currently works in terms of the database.

Updates

We aim to roll out updates every 2-4 weeks.