Customer stories


Brains Design

The Creative Solution for Brains Design-FileMaker Pro

Brains Design is one of Australia's premier advertising and creative design agencies specialising in the information technology and telecommunications industry. Clients include Cisco Systems, Intel, Fujitsu, Logicalis, Linksys Netforce, Novell, PalmOne, SGI and Blackspot's Road Angel. Brains' creative services incorporate writing and design across all aspects of print, online, radio, television and outdoor media to produce carefully measured and integrated advertising campaigns.


Business challenges

Brains Design needed to avoid missed deadlines, job over servicing and negative cash flow by managing all aspects of the advertising production process - from quoting and task management through invoicing, supplier negotiation and overall business management, using an integrated system based on a fully relational database.


Successful solution

Three years ago, the executive team identified that if the agency were to grow any larger, it required an integrated system to manage all aspects of the advertising production process - from quoting and task management through to invoicing, supplier negotiation and overall business management. The solution needed to be scalable to grow with the company. The aim was to ensure deadlines were met, estimates accurately reflected the real cost of doing business and staff remained productive. It also had to be intuitive and easy to use to ensure everyone - account managers, creative employees and administration staff - used it, as a database is only as good as the information put into it. Brains Design, which had been using its own FileMaker Pro system, has successfully used FileMaker-based Studio Manager for three years and has grown from 10 employees to the current 14 fulltime employees, and up to six freelance staff.

"It's an amazingly efficient way of storing information electronically for open access. In many ways the FileMaker database has become our corporate memory - capturing details of suppliers, clients and other contacts that are often lost when staff members move on," Ms Dickinson added.


The FileMaker and Studio Manager solution repaid itself in a month by saving time and making us more productive. Without it three years ago, we would have needed to employ another person two days a week just to manage quotes and traffic tasks within the team - today we'd need to hire even more people. Instead, we've been able to hire staff to support our core business of developing creative campaigns and providing excellent account management.

Dof Dickinson, Creative Director, Brains Design.


Customer benefits

The relational database allows easy analysis of which jobs and lines of business are profitable by comparing quote estimates against the actual time spent to do a job. This helps with business planning as it may mean rates need to be changed for future jobs to reflect the cost of doing the business or that the agency should no longer seek those kinds types of jobs. Alternatively, it can be used to examine how much the agency has spent with each vendor to assist when renegotiating supplier deals.

For Brains Design the combination of FileMaker Pro and the Studio Manager solution has been a complete success. The benefits have been to provide processes and systems that assist both the creative environment and business management by ensuring all information about the production process is captured and accessible from taking the brief, quoting for the job, scheduling, assigning and managing tasks through to final invoicing.

"We couldn't run without it. It provides a framework to develop the systems and processes to manage your business so you can grow," said Dickinson.



Contact information

Contact Info for Customer:

Dof Dickinson
Brains Design, Inc.
(02) 8437 8000
dof.dickinson@brainsdesign.com
www.brainsdesign.com


Filemaker Contact:

Kevin Mallon
Public Relations Manager
FileMaker Inc.
408-987-7227
kevin_mallon@filemaker.com
http://www.filemaker.com


Overview
  • Brains Design is one of Australia's premier advertising and creative design agencies specializing in the information technology and telecommunications industry.
  • Based in Sydney, Australia
  • 14 Fulltime employees with 6 freelancers.
Industry
  • Creative Markets
Solutions
  • Job estimation to quote to clients
  • Job tracking system for all activities and information associated with a job
  • Schedule of multiple jobs providing deadlines for all tasks by person
  • Electronic time sheets for projects and people
  • Fast and accurate invoicing
  • Job profitability analysis - comparing job quotes against actual costs
Benefits
  • Visual and intuitive design - easy for non-technical people to understand and use.
  • Time saving - automatically captures and shares information.
  • Increased productivity - all information needed to do a job is at your fingertips.
  • Easy analyses of past jobs to ensure quotes are accurate to prevent over servicing.
  • Automatic calculation of mark-ups and individual staff hourly rates for accurate estimates and billing.