The Studio, Anywhere Real Estate’s in-house agency, had a reputation for being slow. We had a one-size-fits-all turnaround time of 10 business days, but deadlines were mostly driven by our internal clients. Couple that with an inability to track or measure missed deadlines and an ever-increasing workload, we had a problem on our hands.

We understood the speed expectations of our internal clients – impossibly fast. But when discussing with our designers and copywriters, the resounding answer to how long things should take – well, it depends. It depends on if we get good information up front, how promptly clients respond to proofs, where the final deliverable is going, and the list goes on.

My challenge was, how do we dispel the reputation for being slow, give our producers enough time to do their job well, and develop measurements to hold our team and clients accountable?

The solution: a service level agreement (SLA). A comprehensive, mutually beneficial, document which clearly outlines what our internal clients can expect from The Studio including workflows, timelines, and additional resources. In addition, it outlines client responsibilities and best practices to streamline projects and ensure their timely delivery.

We started by breaking down our processes step-by-step. This gave us an opportunity to identify ways our process could be more efficient, while also outlining what would be critical to include in our SLA. Let’s look at a standard creative process:

Step 1 - Project Set Up

A request is entered by an internal client into the project management system (Workfront) using a form. The project management team reviews the request to ensure there is enough information to begin work on the project.

Even if we design our request forms to be thorough and include required fields, we can’t control the quality of the information entered. We can however determine how quickly the project management team should review and respond to the request, and we know we should do it quickly.

For transparency, we outlined in our SLA:

• The requester is responsible for providing a thorough project description and corresponding details. We also provided best practices for submitting jobs.
• The Studio guarantees a project manager will review and respond to the request within 24 hours of entry. If the request has complete information, it will move forward. If there is not enough information, project management will send it back to the requester for more. The project duration begins once all information is supplied. The Studio will follow up on missing information for four weeks. If information is not received within four weeks, the request will be cancelled.

For accountability, we built measurements in Workfront to track:

• Projects that are returned to the requester for more information. This data can be used to address and educate repeat offenders.
• Amount of time between project entry and time of first response by project management. This data verifies we are responding to all requests within 24 hours of entry.

Step 2 - Production

The request has been vetted by project management, set up in Workfront, and assigned to the team for production, including copywriting and design. This step makes up the bulk of the known project duration. By using historical project information, we were able to identify criteria and examples of projects that fit into three tiers – low, mid, and high complexity – which would solve for most projects we support.

We then could assign durations by complexity. Low complexity project durations solved for speed, while mid and high-complexity jobs balanced speed with sufficient time for the creative team to produce great work. It’s important to note here the balance between speed and quality.

• Low: 2 business days from Ready to Start to Proof 1
• Mid: 6 business days from Ready to Start to Proof 1
• High: 8 business days from Ready to Start to Proof 1

In the SLA we included project criteria, examples and duration by level of complexity.

We then measured our ability to hit these turnaround times by comparing the Target Proof Date (start date + production duration from SLA) to the Actual Proof Date. Our goal is a less than 5% error rate on hitting our Target Proof Date. As long as we stay on or ahead of our goal, we have data points to share with leadership speaking to our ability to hit the deadlines we’ve promised.

If we’re consistently hitting all our deadlines, this alone would be sufficient. However, this data doesn’t do us much good if we don’t understand why a deadline was missed. When the Actual Proof Date is after the Target, the project manager is prompted in Workfront to capture additional details about what caused the delay.

This level of detail gives us actionable items to improve performance, for example if deadlines are consistently missed due to:

• PTO. We can implement better coverage protocols or address scheduling conflicts.
• Change in Creative Direction. We can discuss with our clients why they are regularly changing direction mid-stream and make recommendations on how to avoid in the future.

Step 3 - Client Approval

Proofs are sent to the client for review. How quickly the requester responds is out of The Studio’s control, but we can manage expectations by publishing some guidelines in our SLA. If a client responds to the proof quickly, it’s easy to work it back into the designer’s queue. However, if the proof is awaiting feedback for a week or two, it may be more difficult to fit back into the designer’s schedule.

In the SLA, we’ve outlined that if requesters respond within 48 hours, we can revise and release within 24 hours. If the client responds after 48 hours, the project loses its place in the queue and work may take up to another 48 hours to resume. This buys the production teams some time to squeeze the work in or reassign the job.

We are able to track in Workfront if requesters are responding within 48 hours so we can understand the impact on the team’s assignments.

Step 4 - Release Deliverables

The distribution methods for deliverables can vary greatly. Some deliverables are simply emailed, while others are loaded into content management software, or sent to vendors for further processing. While we don’t have control over back-end product functionality or vendor timelines, we can communicate average turnaround times for release processes, and clarify that it falls outside of our production timelines.

Overall, we’ve found that clearly defining expectations in an SLA and setting up corresponding measurements has produced stellar results. In the years since this was implemented, we successfully reduced overall project turnaround time by 45% and our clients ranked The Studio’s responsiveness at 98% and the time in which proofs are received at 92%.

Key takeaways:

• Take charge of what is within your control and recognize the aspects that are beyond your control.
• Actions and inactions have consequences and should be clearly outlined.
• Measurement is essential.