Michael Terry is the Art Director at Signature Press, a full-service design and print house in North Salt Lake, Utah, USA.
He spoke to the GoProof team recently about how our online proofing software has saved him a ton of time and money, how clients have embraced it and how easy it is to roll out.
MICHAEL:
We’re Signature Press, we are a full service for anything from your designing print products to web products. We do websites. We also have our full printing press floor and digital press floor.
We do all our own deliveries, anything you need printed we can do. We also do banners, wide-format, things like that – your vinyl. We also do apparel, so screen-printing, embroidery, vinyl. We kind of do everything that a client would ever need to promote their business. That’s kind of what we pride ourselves in.
We’ve been in business for 30 years, we’ve been in this location for 10. There are anywhere from 15-20 of us at a time.
HOW DID YOU PROOF WORK BEFORE FINDING GOPROOF?
Well, our workflow was really… we would just create a PDF and send it over through email and that was really it! There wasn’t a lot to it.
I don’t think we’ve ever had anyone mark up a PDF, which would have been great if they had. They would email us back with their changes and a lot of times we would have to ask for ‘Did you mean here? Or here? Or…’
We always had to ask – well not always – but a lot of times we had to ask just to make sure we understood what they were saying. Trying to understand their view of it versus our view of it.
Then when I came in, I was like ‘we’ve got to do something different with this’ ‘cause a lot of our clients, they’re not technology savvy, you know they’re just doing their jobs and trying to get things done.
I also wanted to find something that we could track our proofs, so we could track what we were doing. I wanted to make sure that we were being efficient and we were communicating with our clients as well. So that’s kind of where I had to go out and start looking for some proofing options.
I had never used a proofing technology or program in any minor jobs but I felt working here it was a good start. Good place to do it.
WHY DID YOU CHOOSE GOPROOF?
You know, actually, I tried another proofing software first and I… it was… I could not use it. It was… I couldn’t figure it out! And I work on computers all days, I feel like I’m pretty technology savvy when it comes to that.
Then I found GoProof and found it to be very easy to use and I could see myself using it with these ‘mom & pop shops’ that come in and ask for stuff but also use it for our biggest clients that are state-wide and nationwide healthcare providers and things like that. So that’s really what made me want to use it.
The biggest pain [before GoProof] was spending time making your PDF, you’re having to send that PDF to the correct person, and then trying to understand their response. They may be talking about one thing but if you’re not seeing where that is on the PDF… so you have to call and ask for, ask what they mean or exactly where it is.
And that times adds up. That’s not billable time. That’s not us actually working on their project, it’s us making changes. You know, that’s us trying to decide where the changes should be.
So, you know we were losing out on, not just money but we were losing out on time. And a lot of times we would sound like we didn’t know what we were doing when we were calling our clients to ask them.
That was the biggest thing, you know? We just needed to find a solution that would cut that time on our end and on their end ‘cause they were getting frustrated too!
Being able to get the changes from them through GoProof and not only are they able to state exactly where that change is - they can say you know ‘strike this’ ‘put this here’ but I can also say ‘Hey, this is why I did it from a design standpoint or even a brand standpoint.
And we’re able to actually talk about it and it’s all right there in that designated space and that makes a world of difference.
HOW DID YOU ROLL OUT GOPROOF WITH YOUR CLIENTS?
I definitely… I tried it with one person first, you know whoever I thought was the lead in that department. I wanted to get them on board first.
So we actually used a mock proof: ‘So I’m going to send this over to you, I want you to take a look….and this is kind of what we want to start doing.
And that’s when I also made that [GoProof] one sheet, ‘cause I really wanted to… again a lot of my clients they’re not very tech savvy. So I wanted to give them just a quick thing to go off of. Say OK so this is how I approve a proof, this is how I make changes.
And then as they started using it and liking it, I started sending it to their team as well and got everybody involved.
[Time to roll out GoProof] Honestly, after we did that quick mock-up – our quick mock proof – the next day we were using GoProof exclusively as far as proofing goes. Everything from that point and we’ve used it ever since.
I don’t think it took more than an hour to be honest to have them [the clients] on board with it. I think once they saw that they could make the changes as easily as they could, they were ready to go and we just started using it.
HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU SAVE WITH GOPROOF?
[1 hour per day saved using GoProof] I think for my clients. I would say FOR ME, it’s probably closer to 2 or 3. And I’m not being… that’s not an overstatement!
When I first came in and started working with some of these clients, I felt like we were on the phone with them pretty much constantly. I was calling to say ‘I’m calling just to make sure this is right’ or what not.
And I think that since we’ve been using this our calls have gone down significantly. We’ve started being able to really get these proofs done quickly and I think they’ve seen that change and we definitely have.
So I think 2 hours a day – even almost to three – wouldn’t be overstating it. And we charge about $85 an hour. For us that’s a pretty big change and that’s a big change for them too, as they get that saving as well.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE GOPROOF FEATURE?
Well for me, it’s being able to do it straight from InDesign. That’s been the biggest time-saver for me.
For my client, it’s being able to see the actual [proof] without having to know how to use mark-up PDFs, things like that. They’re able to just go in to the [proof] and see all the things that are waiting for them to comment on and make those changes on the actual piece of design and not have to worry about me not understanding what they’re looking for.
Like I said, we’re now able to actually send that proof over and I can see exactly where they’ve marked it, what they want to add in that space. It’s cut down those calls and it’s cut down the errors of me not understanding and sending back a change they didn’t actually mean for it. We changed, and there’s a difference there.
HOW WOULD YOU RATE THE SERVICE FROM GOPROOF?
You guys have been, from the very beginning, top notch. And I’m not just trying to say that just to make you guys feel good! When I first started using it, Fran has been amazing from the very beginning – she’s been more than helpful.
Any time I that have an issue you guys are on it, even though we are at a completely different time zone. I don’t feel like I’ve ever had to wait more than a couple of hours to get something fixed.
And even then, if it needs to be fixed it’s nothing huge. It’s never been ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t do anything - fix this!’ Your uptime is incredible and I’ve never had any problems with that.
Just keep doing what you guys are doing! Everything that you guys have upgraded since I’ve started using has been helpful.
Yep, I love it!
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