Creative operations, or "creative ops," is the process of managing and optimizing creative production. Similarly to marketing operations, it involves streamlining workflows, improving collaboration, and implementing best practices to ensure that your team is working as efficiently as possible. A Creative Operations Platform also meets business needs like predictable timelines, efficient use of resources, and provides answers to key business questions.
Understanding what outcomes you are looking to achieve and asking the right business questions to support those outcomes are at the foundation of success. At Lytho, we like to say, “what’s measured is managed.” To support you, below is a cheat sheet pairing common business questions and the appropriate report to provide you with the data you need.
Leadership
Taking a step back to understand team accomplishments, production, and resourcing.
| Business Question | Purpose | Report Type | Columns | Filters |
| Are we providing teams enough time to complete the project? | Assess timelines and durations for accurate expectation setting | Project |
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| How many requests are not being planned ahead of time? | Evaluate rush request trends | Project |
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| How much work is the team producing? | To gauge the amount of work the team is accomplishing and recognize the production volume compared to request volume | Request |
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| Where is the most work coming from? | Determine where production volume is coming from and if it needs to be leveled | Project |
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| How long did it take for different types of projects to be completed? | To understand the time it takes to complete certain types of projects and how do those compare to each other | Request |
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| How long did it take for different types of projects to be completed? (Use this report to leverage relevant custom fields) | To understand the time it takes to complete certain types of projects and how do those compare to each other | Project |
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| Are projects being completed on time? | Evaluate how many items were early, on time, or late | Project |
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| Are projects aligned to strategic goals of the business? | This is often based on custom field data. You can see what initiative work may align to, which helps account for the % team time spent on a certain focus. This would be different than where the work is coming from. | Project |
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| What Tier work is being requested the most? | This helps teams understand staffing allocation, forecasting, staffing decisions, and what areas should be a focus for further attention/optimization. | Reviews |
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| What type of deliverables are being requested / produced? | This helps teams decide the types of projects they are regularly taking on and to appropriately resource said projects. | Requests |
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*Represents customized data points (custom fields, tags, and priorities) in Lytho environments. Will be different for all.
Proactive Team Management
Evaluating current work within Lytho and resource management.
| Business Question | Purpose | Report Type | Columns | Filters |
| What are my priorities for the week? | What does the team need to focus on | Project |
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| Is anything at risk of not meeting deadlines? | Do we need to shuffle work or priorities | Work |
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| Who are bottlenecks in our workflow? | Where is work being blocked? | Work |
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| Are the team members I need available to do the work? | Who has what work on their plate. Do we need to redistribute work? | Work/ OR maybe this isn’t a report, but looking in the Workload tab |
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*Represents customized data points (custom fields, tags, and priorities) in Lytho environments. Will be different for all.
Time
Reviewing all things time including duration, time tracking, and LOE.
| Business Questions | Purpose | Report Type | Columns | Filters |
| How much time are we spending on rework? | Addressing the number of versions it takes for a proof on average | Reviews |
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| Are we estimating the correct amount of time for work? | LOE vs. time tracked | Project |
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| How long is the average project lifecycle? | Calculating how long it will take for a team to complete a future project. | Project |
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| How long does it take from acceptance to first proof? | How quickly is the team turning around request? Are teams meeting SLAs? | Requests OR Project |
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| How long does it take the team to vet a Request? | Time from submission to acceptance | Requests OR Project |
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| How long is the team waiting on Reviewers to respond? | Review Turnaround Time | Reviews |
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*Represents customized data points (custom fields, tags, and priorities) in Lytho environments. Will be different for all.