Customer stories


iMagic

iMagic increases creative output and decreases administration with Streamline

Business Challenge

iMagic is a creative communications studio that transcends the traditional advertising and design agency business model and focuses 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.

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 streamline the flow of work through the business, limit over servicing, manage resources effectively and ultimately take on more projects to improve profitability.”

Successful 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: Streamline, by Particle Systems.

Streamline, developed in FileMaker Pro is a single workflow management and database solution which enables iMagic to quickly and easily track and manage design jobs, briefs, individual and project time sheets, disbursements, invoicing, quoting and contact information. This solution ensures all time and materials are captured in the system and accurately on-charged to clients.

Product

  • Streamline from Particle Systems built in FileMaker Pro 9 – able to be used by up to 250 users across multiple sites and currency systems

    Customer Benefits

    The introduction of Streamline has greatly improved iMagic’s everyday management of projects. The solution allows iMagic to produce quotes and purchase orders, allocate tasks to design teams, track time and generate invoices in a fully integrated digital workflow system.

    Using Streamline, iMagic has gained:

  • A fully integrated system that manages administration across the total project lifecycle including quotes, purchase orders, scheduling, resource allocation, time sheets, disbursements and invoicing
  • A simplified invoicing system that is activated immediately when a project is closed ensuring that budgets are up to date and cash flow is maintained accurately
  • Improved budget visibility with ongoing updates to budget reports and over serving flagged as it happens
  • A system that is reliable and fully up to date with the latest FileMaker Pro underlying database technology
  • A fast, responsive and easy to use interface that even the creative team operate easily
  • A highly scalable solution that will grow with the company and change to meet its dynamic needs
  • The ensured security and confidentiality of an internally managed system – not one hosted on an external web server

    With Streamline, iMagic has:

  • Improved overall business administration efficiency by 30 percent
  • Had a positive impact on profitability
  • Improved productivity by 20 percent
  • Reduced the time spent on invoicing 10 fold
  • Significantly reduced incidences of client over servicing
  • Captured accurately all its third party supplier costs and disbursements in order
  • Significantly reduced the amount of time spent by management staff on administrative tasks, allowing them to concentrate on keeping iMagic creative

    Fairbairn commented, “There are many project management and database solutions on the market now but I’ve found Streamline to be the best. It has delivered us a fantastic return on investment (ROI) and I recommend it as the premier solution for the creative industry.”

    “Streamline was superior to the competing solutions we trialed and the key attributes for us was that it was easy to use thanks to the straightforward interface. This was especially important because in the past some of our staff have been known to opt for paper time sheets over the computer system because they had found it clumsy and time consuming which led to inaccuracies. With Streamline this is no longer a problem, the team are no longer frustrated so they can get on with the job of being creative and perform to the best of their abilities.”

    “Streamline 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. Streamline 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



    Contact information

    Contact Info for Customer:

    Imagic Graphics Limited
    +64 3 365 1809
    ideas@imagic.co.nz
    http://www.imagic.co.nz


    Filemaker Contact:

    Colleen Elcham
    Marketing Coordinator, Asia Pacific
    FileMaker Inc.
    +61 2 9641 8084
    colleen_elcham@filemaker.com
    http://www.filemaker.com.au


    • Hoyne Design