What is Online Proofing and Why does it makes more sense today?

Proof Cafe
Aug 22, 2017 · 4 min read

What is Online Proofing and Why does it makes more sense today?

Online proofing is the technique used by web designers, creative designers, professional photographers, marketing agencies and audio as well as video production houses and alike companies, to share their design work, to collaborate in terms of review and approval of the proof online. Before arrival of online proofing, designers, photographers would share the copies of their work with customers, reviewers physically or over email. It led to sending files to-and-fro, confusion about what is reviewed, where is it reviewed, what has been updated/corrected, etc. As more and more review work is being done online, it has not only brought the clarity of processes, information flow but also speed up the sharing, review, approval and in turn the delivery process.

Online proofing uses online website, web application and/or mobile application for sharing, viewing, commenting, reviewing and approving the designs work. It keeps audit trail of the changes done within the application to a given design artefact.

Why Does Online Proofing Make Sense Today?

Why Does Online Proofing Make More Sense Today?

Let’s look at the reasons why online proofing is gaining popularity among designers, marketing department , creative agencies and many business associates involved.

Agile Business Environment

The world we live in today, businesses are required to be leaner, more agile than ever. New products are getting launched at a rapid rate, that world never saw before. It has not only put pressure on the technical teams to deliver product/service but also marketing , legal, finance teams to convey right positioning, message, notice using marketing/legal collateral. Conventional way of responding will only slow down the overall process.

Being agile requires your team to embrace better technology to facilitate quick response time. Online proofing tool provides such technology for stakeholders to respond on time.

Collaboration Is Integral Part of the Proofing Process

No one can understand the benefits of seamless collaboration than marketing teams, business associates involved in delivering products/services to market. The Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy certainly fails without sound collaboration. Any design artefact used to enable technical or marketing or legal or finance team to work further needs to be deliberated, thoughtfully reviewed and then delivered. Better collaboration platform brings clarity, improves response frequency

Online proofing software enables and engages team for better collaboration.

Insanely Lower Costs

Online proofing tools facilitate online proofing, collaboration and review process at much lower cost. The cost of sharing and circulating digital proof is not only efficient but also can be done at a fraction of a cost compared to circulating a hard copy of a proof. Even compared to soft proofing (which also involves upfront investment), online proofing is easier and cost effective.

Proof Anywhere, Anytime

The very fact that online proofing tools are available online make those accessible from anywhere and almost any time of the day and night. This removes the geographic, time constraints for global teams working across locations. You don’t even have to keep downloading newer files, online proofing tool shows you what is the latest copy of the proof.

Better, Faster, Cheaper

Unlike past, the internet has become much faster, better and I’d say more reliable. The reliability and consistency in terms of internet availability, speed. Also the devices such as laptop/desktop, smartphone, tablets: iPhone, iPads, etc. as well as internet browsers (Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari) to access media files have become compact as well as super fast to process, render images, audio, video files. The internet technology has simply made things cheaper to use and buy.

No More Enterprise Software, It is Your App

The evolution of social media has simply change the way users have been using “software”. Just recall whether someone ever taught you to use Facebook, Gmail or Skype, Twitter, you simply downloaded the app, signed up for the account and woohoo. In the same way, online proofing is becoming your app, rather than forced as some legacy, complex “enterprise” software. Online proofing software that is web based, easy to use makes life easier for marketing, design agencies and professional stakeholders involved.

Simply SaaS

Though I mentioned it earlier, most of the online proofing tools are offered as Software as a Service (SaaS) solution. SaaS solutions are no more alien concept to most businesses. In fact, SaaS has been highly embraced by SMBs as well as large corporations. No more download, installation, maintenance, upgrade, data centre or even security worries. SaaS has simplified things I just mentioned: someone is better at these jobs of installation, maintenance, etc and handling those completely for you. You simply have to logon to your own app and start collaborating, reviewing your proofs.

Source: Article originally published at Proofcafe blog.

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