What Is Admation?
Admation is a project management tool that enables ad agencies and brands to manage the full cycle of their creative projects, from briefing through to task allocation, resourcing, managing approvals and storing final assets.
Based in Melbourne, Australia, Automaton was founded in 2001 by Darin Lloyd and Stefan Wright. Automaton launched its first software RetailPath with the objective of streamlining the production of retail marketing material.
In 2007, Admation was rolled out to help marketers improve efficiencies across their marketing campaigns. Since its inception, Admation has integrated additional modules such as resource management to provide users with a more holistic solution. In 2017, Admation was awarded two gongs for ‘2017 Great User Experience and Rising Star’ by FinancesOnline. In 2019, SoftwareSuggest awarded Admation with ‘Best Value Software and Trending Software’.
Who is Admation for?
Marketing teams, ad agencies, production teams, and legal teams use Admation’s project management software. While the tool’s interface and features look the same to each user, roles may interact with the system at different touchpoints throughout the lifecycle of a project.
For example, an account manager might use the briefing feature while a designer in the creative team would take advantage of Admation’s online proofing tools and DAM. The software services teams are as small as 1-10 users and up to 100+ users in large enterprises.
What challenges does Admation help solve?
1. Poorly briefed marketing projects
Admation provides online briefing tools to eliminate briefs that are incomplete or inaccurate. Users can create a marketing brief template to capture every detail of any type of project. Mandatory fields on the briefing form ensure that no important details are bypassed.
A brief can also be sent through a quick approval process to guarantee that all stakeholders are satisfied with the final brief outline.
2. No central platform from which to manage marketing projects
Admation provides an effective framework from which to plan and track projects. Offering unprecedented transparency, all briefs, files, assets, feedback, and approvals are saved in a central online location that is accessible to all approved stakeholders.
A user-friendly dashboard enables users to view the progress of all projects in progress at any time, from anywhere. The software eliminates much of the repetitive admin and duplications that go with managing projects.
3. Inefficient approval processes that lead to high artwork revisions
Manage approval workflow with approval templates and tools that eliminate bottlenecks and the cost of high artwork revision. Customize an approval workflow process to suit any organization’s structure. Once stakeholders are entered into the approval framework, they can’t be bypassed which could lead to a compliance issue. This feature also guarantees that only the right stakeholders are involved in the review process at the right time.
Admation’s Reserve Button for Legal or Compliance ensures that a representative can reserve approval to eliminate double handling.
What’s on the Admation roadmap?
Since Admation was launched in 2007, the product has continued to evolve. More recently, the Admation team has focussed on building upon its resource management module to ensure that the software offers a comprehensive all-in-one tool that enables users to manage their entire content production.
And the product roadmap for the coming year includes some exciting updates, namely:
The team at Admation understands the importance of user experience and is, therefore, focussing their efforts on how the product can be improved to deliver the most effective tool possible. The team values feedback and will continue to listen to their client base to enhance existing features as well as create new features. They will also continue to work on integrating Admation with other industry tools.
Admation Features Overview
To get an idea of how Admation works, here’s a tour of the main features and how they can help you manage your creative projects with more ease, efficiency, and speed.
Online Brief Feature
Create a comprehensive brief with Admation’s Online Brief feature. Users can select from a range of customized briefs that they’ve previously created. The brief form includes mandatory fields to ensure that important information isn’t overlooked. Briefs are then routed to a nominated user/s which guarantees that it doesn’t get overlooked.
Project Management
Manage all documents and files in one central platform with Admation’s Project Management module. An intuitive search function can locate any file in just seconds.
A central, user-friendly Dashboard displays all projects in progress in realtime which can be viewed by all approved users. Powerful reporting tools can generate a WIP report in a matter of seconds which can be automated for a daily/weekly/monthly delivery.
Approval Workflow Management
Manage approvals with a dedicated Approval Workflow Feature [KD4] that can manage simple or complex approval processes. The system gives users two approval options: Anybody Approve for quick approval or Everybody Approve in a stakeholder group.
The Approval Checklist feature requires a list of items to be checked off before a project can be signed off. Online Proofing tools enable reviewers to markup artwork and leave text comments to ensure feedback isn’t misinterpreted.
Resource Management
Customize resource templates to allocate tasks to team members in a few easy steps. A Department Dashboard enables managers to have full visibility over resources to view workload capacity. Tasks can be reassigned with an easy drag ‘n drop tool. Time tracking captures an accurate picture of resource expenditure with individual times saved automatically to an online timesheet.
Digital Asset Management
Store current brand assets in Admation’s DAM feature [KD8] to reduce the risk of using old assets in campaigns. Users can convert image sizes and formats, and share it to approved stakeholders quickly and easily. Avoid copyright issues with automated reminders for image expiry dates. Save final assets to a secure, central location.
Admation VS Monday
Like Monday, Admation offers project planning tools, project tracking and the ability to collaborate with various stakeholders in one, central platform.
Admation differs from Monday in that it offers extra features such as project briefing tools, approval workflow management, and digital asset management. Admation is a comprehensive end-to-end solution, enabling teams to manage a project from initial brief to the review and approval phase to archiving and storing project documents, artwork, and assets.
Admation Integrations
Integrations include:
- Mediaocean ad agency finance software (formally BCC)
- Box.com
- Amazon
- AWS Storage
- Google Drive
Admation also has a mobile app that provides users with access to all project approvals. Receive approval notifications and view a list of approvals on the go. The app’s inbuilt proofing tools allows users to markup artwork on the go.
Admation Pricing
Admation costs from $30 per user per month. Costs are calculated according to four categories such as Team, Business, Enterprise and Ad Agency; and are also dependent on what features and modules are used. To see Admation in action, book a free demo and trial upon request.
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