Creative Manager is a web-based business project management service provider. Their software, Creative Manager Pro, is available as a service, so you don’t have to worry about support issues. The service provider takes care of technical support, but also of upgrades, new features, and the maintenance of your database. All you have to do is appoint a liaison officer for the communications between Creative Manager and your company.
Creative Manager Pro is Agency and Project Management Software for the Creative Design industry, produced for design firms, ad agencies, in-house creative/Marketing Communications departments, and creative service firms. It has job tracking features which streamline the entire firm, from developing new business, to staffing, managing, and executing projects through to accounting and financial reporting.
Creative Manager Pro supports Customer Relationship Management, Document Management, Shared Calendaring, and Accounting. Although there is nothing to install, setting up the system involves quite a bit of preparatory work. You should know how you will organise your projects workflow, which templates will be available to your end-users, and how an opportunity will become a project and ultimately will be charged to the client.
This involves more work than with systems that are designed for stand-alone use, or for very small organisations. Creative Manager Pro is flexible enough to accommodate most any type of workflow, but there must be a workflow to work with. It works with both PC and Macintosh from any location over any connection. It may also be installed locally on the client’s own servers. All options include training and support.
Among the features of Creative Manager Pro, you will find:
Charting of important industry metrics and firm statistics.
Manage contacts and leads.
Create project schedules, calendars and manage tasks.
Take your contacts and calendar on the road with iCal, Address Book & Outlook
Approve timesheets, purchases, invoices and budgets.
Review and approve artwork online.
Free client and vendor access to streamline workflow.
Store and manage digital assets.
Manage and balance the books.
Graphically view your firm’s metrics - manage your firm by the numbers.
Creative Manager Pro 8.15Release 8.15 includes many enhancements that Creative Manager says customers have been asking for. I asked for an access to test and review the system and was given one within the day. I conducted the test as if I were the liaison officer in a PR agency with 20 users to serve.
Creative Manager Pro can easily accommodate more users. My own feeling after having tested the system, would be that it can easily scale to large environments. Creative Manager’s PR told me they serve customers with 3,000+ end-users, and that came as no surprise to me.
I first had to set up the system. This involved going through the complete set of Administration screens. Not everybody will have to go through all the setup options. In fact, there are three levels, ranging from basic to advanced. You can start using Creative Manager Pro after you have set up the basic options. These involve security settings, transaction settings, control accounts, check formats, templates, etc.
The system is conceived to be used by an organisation, so some options will require an approver, while others pertain to setting up the system so that it matches your business setup: P.O. numbering scheme, project numbering, reporting, etc.
The system enables you to exchange data with your local servers or even desktop PCs or Macs. Files from other project applications, your local Address Book, project types, etc. can be imported into the system, in delimited file formats. This allows you to set up the system locally and then upload the files for Creative Manager Pro to use as a basis. It can also mean that you are migrating from another business project management system and are entering the exported data from that system into Creative Manager Pro.
Creative Manager Pro also supports export of data through delimited file formats. Contacts, invoices and reports can be exported.
Working with Creative Manager ProAfter having spent about two days setting up most of the options, I was ready to work with the system. Because I was also the one who had set up the system, all the choices I had made were immediately clear to me. However, it was not hard to see that the person in charge of the system setup has an enormous responsibility.
I would like to compare the initial Creative Manager Pro system to a framework that allows you to set up any sort of workflow. If the admin does his job right, the workflow will have all the right clues, fields, and templates so you will understand how the flow works. If the admin does a lousy job, you will get stuck somewhere inside the workflow and you will need the admin’s help to get out.
The implementation success of Creative Manager Pro therefore depends largely on the skills of the admin and project manager. An end-user who doesn’t know about the initial choices that have led to the workflow and the screens in the Creative Manager Pro system, must nevertheless be able to manage his/her contacts, opportunities, media, projects, material, etc without much effort.
What the software can do to help, is give the end-user as much information as possible regarding a selection he has made. That is exactly what Creative Manager Pro does. As soon as you select a client, you can actually open a dashboard view of that client, which will show your pending activities, events, opportunities and projects.
No
Consistent Information RichnessThis information richness is consistent throughout the system. So, if you want to see how much an estimate differs from the actual project price, you can take a look at the Project dashboard and there you will instantaneously see how much that is. It will show you a lot more too, for that matter.
Creative Manager Pro is not just for following up business activities. It will also enable you to work together in a team. There are screens for creating creative briefs, upload digital assets and notify team members, send digital art reviews to others for approval, etc.
Creative Manager Pro is not for individuals. To use the service for individual business tracking would be overkill. But as soon as you work together with more than ten people, I believe Creative Manager Pro is a system that can save you time and money by enabling you to track everything related to your business better and faster, and even anticipate problems that would go unnoticed without the system—such as delays and invoices being overdue.
Subscriptions to the service start at $370.00 per month for ten users.
Creative Manager Pro Business Project Management for Businesses and Corporations
Creative Manager is a web-based business project management service provider. Their software, Creative Manager Pro, is available as a service, so you don’t have to worry about support issues. The service provider takes care of technical support, but also of upgrades, new features, and the maintenance of your database. All you have to do is appoint a liaison officer for the communications between Creative Manager and your company.
Creative Manager Pro is Agency and Project Management Software for the Creative Design industry, produced for design firms, ad agencies, in-house creative/Marketing Communications departments, and creative service firms. It has job tracking features which streamline the entire firm, from developing new business, to staffing, managing, and executing projects through to accounting and financial reporting.
Creative Manager Pro supports Customer Relationship Management, Document Management, Shared Calendaring, and Accounting. Although there is nothing to install, setting up the system involves quite a bit of preparatory work. You should know how you will organise your projects workflow, which templates will be available to your end-users, and how an opportunity will become a project and ultimately will be charged to the client.
This involves more work than with systems that are designed for stand-alone use, or for very small organisations. Creative Manager Pro is flexible enough to accommodate most any type of workflow, but there must be a workflow to work with. It works with both PC and Macintosh from any location over any connection. It may also be installed locally on the client’s own servers. All options include training and support.
Among the features of Creative Manager Pro, you will find:
Charting of important industry metrics and firm statistics.
Manage contacts and leads.
Create project schedules, calendars and manage tasks.
Take your contacts and calendar on the road with iCal, Address Book & Outlook
Approve timesheets, purchases, invoices and budgets.
Review and approve artwork online.
Free client and vendor access to streamline workflow.
Store and manage digital assets.
Manage and balance the books.
Graphically view your firm’s metrics - manage your firm by the numbers.
Creative Manager Pro 8.15Release 8.15 includes many enhancements that Creative Manager says customers have been asking for. I asked for an access to test and review the system and was given one within the day. I conducted the test as if I were the liaison officer in a PR agency with 20 users to serve.
Creative Manager Pro can easily accommodate more users. My own feeling after having tested the system, would be that it can easily scale to large environments. Creative Manager’s PR told me they serve customers with 3,000+ end-users, and that came as no surprise to me.
I first had to set up the system. This involved going through the complete set of Administration screens. Not everybody will have to go through all the setup options. In fact, there are three levels, ranging from basic to advanced. You can start using Creative Manager Pro after you have set up the basic options. These involve security settings, transaction settings, control accounts, check formats, templates, etc.
The system is conceived to be used by an organisation, so some options will require an approver, while others pertain to setting up the system so that it matches your business setup: P.O. numbering scheme, project numbering, reporting, etc.
The system enables you to exchange data with your local servers or even desktop PCs or Macs. Files from other project applications, your local Address Book, project types, etc. can be imported into the system, in delimited file formats. This allows you to set up the system locally and then upload the files for Creative Manager Pro to use as a basis. It can also mean that you are migrating from another business project management system and are entering the exported data from that system into Creative Manager Pro.
Creative Manager Pro also supports export of data through delimited file formats. Contacts, invoices and reports can be exported.
Working with Creative Manager ProAfter having spent about two days setting up most of the options, I was ready to work with the system. Because I was also the one who had set up the system, all the choices I had made were immediately clear to me. However, it was not hard to see that the person in charge of the system setup has an enormous responsibility.
I would like to compare the initial Creative Manager Pro system to a framework that allows you to set up any sort of workflow. If the admin does his job right, the workflow will have all the right clues, fields, and templates so you will understand how the flow works. If the admin does a lousy job, you will get stuck somewhere inside the workflow and you will need the admin’s help to get out.
The implementation success of Creative Manager Pro therefore depends largely on the skills of the admin and project manager. An end-user who doesn’t know about the initial choices that have led to the workflow and the screens in the Creative Manager Pro system, must nevertheless be able to manage his/her contacts, opportunities, media, projects, material, etc without much effort.
What the software can do to help, is give the end-user as much information as possible regarding a selection he has made. That is exactly what Creative Manager Pro does. As soon as you select a client, you can actually open a dashboard view of that client, which will show your pending activities, events, opportunities and projects.
No
Consistent Information RichnessThis information richness is consistent throughout the system. So, if you want to see how much an estimate differs from the actual project price, you can take a look at the Project dashboard and there you will instantaneously see how much that is. It will show you a lot more too, for that matter.
Creative Manager Pro is not just for following up business activities. It will also enable you to work together in a team. There are screens for creating creative briefs, upload digital assets and notify team members, send digital art reviews to others for approval, etc.
Creative Manager Pro is not for individuals. To use the service for individual business tracking would be overkill. But as soon as you work together with more than ten people, I believe Creative Manager Pro is a system that can save you time and money by enabling you to track everything related to your business better and faster, and even anticipate problems that would go unnoticed without the system—such as delays and invoices being overdue.
Subscriptions to the service start at $370.00 per month for ten users.