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Taming the Creative - Does it have to be so hard?

The team at Streamtime know creatives. In fact, there are as many creatives on their team as I.T. guru’s. Their desire is to help make creative businesses a success, by taking care of the details, but also showing how to increase efficiencies and ultimately profit.

You have a business that sells ideas: a skill some clients treat like a commodity. You know it's not, but the way some of your competitors act, you start to understand why some people may think that. Why is it that others in the industry seem to discount their entire added value as if it were baked beans in the supermarket? It seems there are too many people willing to sacrifice today's fee in hope that the client will pay a more realistic rate tomorrow.

What is an hourly rate? A client can get a loose creative strategy or idea from you over a coffee. Do you charge those 30 minutes at just half your hourly rate? The client would say, “That only took you 30 minutes.” Your answer would be, “Actually, that took me 30 years.”

Ideas are not things pulled randomly off shelves. They do not ship them in boxes across the world; they cannot be manufactured in China. They are wonderfully unique to you. You are indispensable on that level. If they replace you, or go somewhere else, they will never find your creative mind or way of problem solving in anyone else. Your ability and talent today is a collection of genetics, social conditioning, inspiration, accumulated knowledge, perseverance and that little X factor that enables you to look at a problem in an entirely different way than the mass populus.

Some clients think creatives charge like lawyers. Some clients are also stupid. Of course we do. Lawyers, accountants, mechanics, architects, art directors, copywriters, designers and most tradespeople charge for their time. The simple fact is that lawyers and accountants are just better at capturing and billing it than creative people.

Creatives are actually very philanthropic. We would love to be paid for our work, who wouldn’t? But for us, the thrill of a blank canvas (or LCD screen or paper or whiteboard) is enough for us to willingly give our ideas away – just to see them become reality. We see the world, in many ways, as inherently flawed. So much of it could be done better. Why does this appliance not work as it should? Why does that look so ugly? Why am I uninspired when I try and use this thing? Surely there must be a better way of doing this chore.

And when we solve it, we just want to see it materialise. We never captured all the real time it took to solve the design problem. Truthfully speaking, our timesheets were filled in at the end of the month, and all those incidentals – like office supplies and photocopies – were too numerous and too frustrating to keep tabs on. Besides, surely we quoted with enough buffer not to have to write down every freakin’ photocopy.

And therein lies the problem. We are creative people trying to be administrators. We are creative people trying to do invoicing. We are creative people trying to keep track of all the detail any project or job contains. And it’s all a misfit. Like asking Hitler to help out at kindergarten. Like expecting the government to actually make tax and paperwork easy to understand. Like expecting our partners to understand why we are still working at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Imagine a utopia: a well-oiled machine, able to deliver everything the clients are asking of us. Not just the ideas, but the job on budget, on time, with a healthy profit at the end – and no one did really late nights or weekends.

Sound too good to be true?

Thankfully, with Streamtime, it’s not. Their designers have designed the solution for your designers. There are great tools now on the market to tame the creative studio, Streamtime is the award winning solution that has become the industry benchmark. Job tracking, production scheduling and time capture has finally come of age. Making a strong, healthy profit and knowing which client that came from is instantly achievable. Knowing which staff are your greatest assets is only a keystroke away.

Creative businesses can’t rest on great ideas. The company needs to be strong. Owners need to know their business inside and out. Planning for tomorrow relies on your ability to decipher yesterday and today. The seat of your pants is no longer an appropriate way to fly, but with today's job management Streamtime - your creative business can finally take off.

About Streamtime Streamtime is a multi-award-winning total studio management system, designed for the advertising, interactive and design industries. Whether supporting a company of two or a multi-site organisation of hundreds, Streamtime enables complete traffic and production management, signaling an end to job bags and hand-generated invoices and timesheets. From the accounts team to designers, both at their desk and, using Streamtime's new iPhone application, on the road, Streamtime maximises workflow, taking productivity and creativity to new levels.

[15th September, 2008]

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Creative people aren’t always so keen on organising their lives and keeping up with the admin side of things – but a solution is at hand, in the form of Streamtime

Let’s talk some truth here. You have a business that sells ideas: a skill some clients treat like a commodity. You know it's not, but the way some ...

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