Online Client approvals

[firemanob]

Hey all.. new to this site. I am researching companies that can offer proprietary online client approvals, prefferably with online annotations and automatic emailing when files have been approved etc. Something coherent with a pdf workflow. Does anyone or has anyone used a specific company for this? Has anyone run into any difficulties with this? I am in the beginnning stages of researching this for my company. I work in the pre-press department of a large corporate HQ for a major hotel chain.

Any suggestions comments and input would be welcome please. Thanks!

[budafist]

Someone else asked a similar question a while back.

We use email for sign off around here. You can attach pdfs with an email. They are time/date stamped and you receive them almost instantly. No need for an email to advise you that a client as approved - they can email you themselves.

[doubting_thomas]

Hey all.. new to this site. I am researching companies that can offer proprietary online client approvals, prefferably with online annotations and automatic emailing when files have been approved etc. Something coherent with a pdf workflow. Does anyone or has anyone used a specific company for this? Has anyone run into any difficulties with this? I am in the beginnning stages of researching this for my company. I work in the pre-press department of a large corporate HQ for a major hotel chain. What's you budget? There are a number of products out there that can handle
this sort of thing, but many of them are (to my budget) expensive. If it's all going
to be internal you may want to look at some of the features in Acrobat 8. It has
the ability to do most of the tasks that you listed, though I've not yet been
able to demo it (OS 10.3.9 here:mad: )

[Big Perm-dizzle]

My company is building an app for this issue, stay tuned. Think Basecamp for print designers.

[Seapony]

Someone else asked a similar question a while back.

We use email for sign off around here. You can attach pdfs with an email. They are time/date stamped and you receive them almost instantly. No need for an email to advise you that a client as approved - they can email you themselves.
Ditto.

Although just thought I'd add that for a final proof I prefer a hardcopy to be signed sealed and delivered. The "old school" in me still doesn't rely solely on soft proofing methods particularly for image tone accuracy and color sensitive collateral and the other reason is that it's always good to have a physical signed copy on file. I don't know if you already incorporate a similar method but I thought I'd just toss that nugget out there for your added consideration.

;)

[PrintDriver]

I don't use online soft proofing except to clear up text errors and other non-color critical proofing. For color critical work we ALWAYS send out hard copy for client approval. When a 16'x40' banner is the wrong color, that's a LOT of wrong color.

Although I gotta say, Modern Postcard has it set up right.
They have detailed instructions on how to use their custom profiles and if you follow ALL of their prep and save instructions to the letter, a soft proof is sometimes good enough. After a couple of runs with them we were confident enough in their profiling ability to forgo the hard proofs on non-critical pieces.

[firemanob]

Thanks for the input everyone. The budget that we have is basically going to be determined by the CCO once I make the presentation to him. I am trying to get an idea of what even out there. Unfortunately this isnt going to be used in house so using emails with attached pdf's wont work in this situation. The main goal here is that once creative ( our design team) is finished with the designs and has gotten basic approval and we have moved into a production phase with the zillion rounds of changes and or corrections, we will be able to be more productive by having our clients sign off on them online. Oddly enough the clienst dont sign off on hard proofs. That is done here by the Creative Director. Our clients (which are our hotel chains btw) sign off on the presentation, design and colors in the beginning and then final color approval is given by creative. This is mostly because each hotel chain works within brand standards so that color usages are already set. In our experience the marketing people cant tell a bad 4 color image from a good one so creative has the go ahead on approval of those.

Ugh.. holy drift away from the topic Batman. None the less, if anyone does hear of anything please drop me a line. Ill keep an eye on the forum and see what comes up..

Thank again for all your input.

[urstwile]

Just a thought:

You might want to check with your regular print vendors. One of the print vendors we work with also offers other services, like image databases, for example. It might be that they have some type of option that you're looking for.

I found this after a Google Search on Proof Approvals (http://www.meta-comm.com/products/approval_manager/).