Job Management Software

[beckyismyname]

Hi All,

I'm looking into the possibility of purchasing some job workflow software for my graphic design team. Does anyone use this, and what are the positives and negatives of using such a system? and what software do you use?

We are a team of 10 in-house designers, based in different offices across the UK. We work for a company of 200+ staff and work on both project work for external clients and corporate marketing material.

At the moment I manage the workflow. We have a meeting every week and disseminate work. However the issues we have are:

1. Jobs land throughout the week, with very little notice, which pushes other jobs back
2. Poor briefing and lack of forethought by those briefing us means jobs go through lots of changes before getting to the end
3. Point 2 above also results in 'design by committee' and designers feeling like they don't have as much control as they would like
4. We are expected to produce work at short notice, and very quickly, resulting in lack of time to design well
5. Sometimes our services are offered to clients without asking us whether we can do it, and how much it will cost
6. Because designers work in different offices, I don't always know what work they are doing as clients go to them direct, so can't quality control, or help manage the project
7. Lastly, as the team grows it's getting harder to keep track of all of the jobs.

I think introducing some software to introduce a system of quoting for, 'booking in', then logging the life of that job would be very helpful. Ideally it would include a function for submitting and sharing comments on a piece of work, so we would put out a first draft of a document and then all parties involved could comment on one version and then it would be available to us all together.

These must be problems that all designers face so I'd be really keen to hear your experiences!
Thanks in advance.