Meet IHAF member, Dan Buckhout—a marketing, creative, and publishing operations expert who specializes in assessing and implementing agency management systems, optimizing workflow, and process improvement. Dan successfully led the charge to replace the legacy project management and charge-back system used by the in-house team at Boy Scouts of America with a new, web-based agency workflow system. Here’s what Dan has to say about systems implementation.

“A thorough, detailed assessment process is key to finding the right workflow system for your team. With so many products to consider, all with different function sets and price points, you’ll want to take a step back and assess the current state of your team before you start shopping.

Questions to ask: What is our team’s current level of quality? What are our team’s processes? Are they mapped out and clearly understood? What problems do we need to solve? What barriers may prevent us from solving those problems and/or increasing our efficiency?

Once you’ve know where you are, you should define where you want to go: What processes need to be streamlined and optimized? What improvements in product and/or service quality would truly delight our clients? What buy-in do we need from stakeholders outside of the in-house agency? What opportunities are we missing?

Answer those questions plus a few more and then you can begin evaluating systems. But remember, securing a new system isn’t the end—it’s a means to an end."

Thanks Dan! Join IHAF on August 8th for Dan Buckhout’s webinar on workflow systems implementation. To register, go to ihaforum.org. Until then, you can follow the conversation onTwitter and, if you’re an IHAF member, on our closed group via LinkedIn.