Boxer Creative, a brand design agency headquartered in Birmingham, UK, has enlisted Dalim Software’s ES project management system. The company was looking to build upon its Creative Approval workflow, which utilized Dialogue Engine.

Dalim’s ES gives the company more job management features and help expands some of Dialogue Engine’s functionality. Boxer’s system integrators, NAPC, had come from the Dalim User Conference, fresh with information about an advanced version of its customer-facing project management technology. Boxer also wanted to simplify the user’s end of the process.

“The approval structure possible with ES does just that,” says Rob Tarpey, Boxer’s director, Integrated Production. “We now have the ability to designate reviewers vs. approvers and to set up more complex workflows. I can put ten people in a group and define some as ‘almighty reviewers’, and others as casual reviewers. Some global users just review and can’t impact or disrupt the workflow we have in place.

“It has allowed us to more efficiently administer our creative review workflows with a much slicker and user-friendly end user experience,” adds Tarpey. “It has a customizable interface, wider browser support and is more in line with Xinet and other systems in our production group. We can scale the system up without completely revamping the workflow, like adding TWIST, when we are ready.”

Key to Boxer’s successful migration to ES was how little the workflow changed, from the user’s perspective. Tarpey worked closely with NAPC to create a workflow that was custom fit to their needs. “The end-user experience stayed the same,” comments Tarpey. “We are still using the Dialogue Engine for content review. Also, we still use our third-party color calibration software. We don’t have to overhaul our softproofing workflow or add a new monitor-based system.”

With ES, setup is faster following the definition of workflows, says Tarpey, which is especially noticeable when a new country comes on board. “When we add new countries to the workflow, there’s a lot less administrative work. We can set new ones very easily, which wasn’t the case before. There was a lot more manual project and user setup.”

Tarpey is intrigued that Dalim Software has brought video into the workflow, something he foresees being a bigger part of the agency’s toolkit in the future. “However, what I am most impressed with is that Dalim Software is not too protective with their technology. They make sure it does what the client base wants it to do,” says Tarpey. “They understand the importance of a software author, customer and integrator working together to provide a winning solution. They listen to their customers, something that is not as readily apparent from others in the industry.”