Creative Edge

Design and multi-media company Creative Edge benefits from a major improvement in the dynamics and efficiency of its business model

Best practice in: 	Broadband
Sector:			Design and multi-media
Size of firm:		8 employees
Location:		Truro, Cornwall
Website:		www.creativeedge.co.uk

Creative Edge provides a range of design-related products such as web sites, logos, corporate identities, brochures, packaging, advertising and exhibition stands for companies of varying sizes across a range of industry sectors. 

Objectives: 

The partners of the design and multi-media company Creative Edge recognised that broadband offered the company the ability to be able to bring about a major improvement in the dynamics and efficiency of its business model.  Its aim was to use broadband to become more productive and achieve more with their existing resources.  

Solution: 

Creative Edge now uses a BT ADSL connection provided through Actnow, an initiative to provide broadband technology to businesses in Cornwall.  

Results: 

Creative Edge has recognised considerable benefits from an improvement in the dynamics and efficiency of its business model as result of the implementation of broadband in early 2002.  

The introduction of broadband has meant that designs can now be emailed in a pdf attachment to clients and other parties involved in the design process.  The size of of pdf files required for designs and artwork is considerable.  This means that the emailing of pdfs was previously very restricted when using a 56k dial-up modem.  "Email has been the biggest change in how people have been doing business in the past year," says David Rickett, founding partner. 

The extent of the change to the business and its way of working, brought about by the implementation of broadband, is deeper than it may at first appear.  The dynamics of the business model have been changed considerably and the main reason for this is the speed of communication that the use of broadband offers.  

Previously the business model for design work involved the transportation of designs to clients for review, either by courier or post or by arranging a meeting of perhaps all the different people involved in the design process.  This was time consuming and costly, particularly as the development of designs is very often an interactive process, involving several review stages before the final design is agreed. 

Now, as a result of the use of broadband, pdfs can be sent via email to all the people involved, dramatically reducing the costs involved and the time required between design conception and completion.  "The speed of processing a job is much faster.  Pdfs can be viewed instantly.  There is a far more rapid speed of reaction.  In addition the costs of delivery are lower as we are not charging customers for couriers, postage and the printing of artwork etc."  

It has also changed the nature of the company's relationships with their clients.  "Even design briefings are now taken primarily by email.  Our suppliers and customers are changing the way they do business as a result of broadband".  Although this has led to less face-to-face contact with clients David says, "We communicate more and better because of broadband."  Also important, says David, is that "being on top of technology presents a professional image to our clients."

The use of broadband has improved their process for researching and buying photos and images.  "We do a lot of photo researching for clients," says David.  "We are now able to look at more images than we used to be able to and we can also buy and download the images online."

Another benefit stressed by David is that he knows what broadband is going to cost the company each month.  The cost is not variable as it was with the dial-up connection they used previously and so there are no unexpected high costs to allow for when usage is particularly high.  

Challenges: 

One challenge often faced by Creative Edge is to meet tight production deadlines when reviews of designs by people in diverse geographical locations are required before the final design can be signed off by Creative Edge's client.  In one recent case where design proofs needed to be agreed overnight, the members of the client team required to review the designs were all in different locations, including one person in Italy.  The use of broadband enabled the deadline to be met with all parties involved being able to review the designs in time.  

The last word: 

"Whereas a 28K to 56K modem was desperately slow, broadband has totally changed the way we view looking and researching on the Internet and doing business," says David.  "It has enable us to achieve major improvements in the dynamics and efficiency of our business model."