Inside Out.
The inside word from people just like you.
iMagic – Creative Communications Studio
“Streamtime allows my company to focus on doing what it does best – creating exciting design for our clients not wasting time on administration. The staff love it because it is so simple and it saves us so much time overall. Streamtime is allowing us to grow and take on new projects, increase our portfolio and improve client satisfaction and overall profitability.”
Paul Fairbairn, Managing Director
iMagic increases creative output and decreases administration with Streamtime
Challenge:
Leading New Zealand creative communications studio had experienced rapid growth and 12 years from its beginning was flourishing. New business was coming in quickly and the design team were happily inundated with projects. The challenge came in managing the increase in workload and the associated demand for more effective and accurate administration. Some of the tasks that were high on the agenda of Founder and Managing Director, Paul Fairbairn including the raising of purchase orders, tracking disbursements and issuing client invoices. Fairbairn began to notice that the existing administrative system was delaying the billing of completed projects and subsequently impacting on the business’ cash flow. He quickly realised that iMagic needed an integrated billing system that would simplify the total management cycle of projects – from quote to invoice.
A related challenge for the business was accurate monitoring and tracking of client and project budgets. Fairbairn said he was also looking for, “A solution that would monitor client servicing levels in order to streamtime the flow of work through the business, limit over servicing, manage resources effectively and ultimately take on more projects to improve profitability.”
About iMagic:
iMagic is a creative communications studio that transcends the traditional advertising and design agency business model by combining in one team web developers, print designers, new media designers, editors creatives and communication strategists as well as an in-house editing suite.
Based in Christchurch, New Zealand with 13 creative employees, iMagic’s focus is firmly on creative output. With a broad range of clients that vary from retail export to technology, the studio consistently manages more than 100 projects at a time varying in scope and type from website development to interactive presentations, brochures, billboards and TV production.
Solution:
iMagic is the first to admit that administration and process comes in at second to creativity and client satisfaction on its list of priorities. By 2006 the burgeoning business was however catching up with the administrative side of the business and iMagic realised it needed an intuitive, integrated and easy solution to capture its critical business information and ensure processes like quoting and invoicing were as seamless as possible. To find the best replacement the existing database solution and self-written scripts for job quoting and tracking, iMagic investigated and trialled multiple products – both web-based and local database driven – but eventually settled on a highly recommended product: Streamtime.