The Gap, Inc.
the challenge
The Gap, Inc. Marketing Department manages the production of marketing materials for North America, Europe and parts of Asia. Their legacy FileMaker-based system wasn’t handling their needs to organize marketing briefs: descriptions of marketing materials to be produced including creative guidelines, production workflows, schedules, distribution planning, along with management and reporting tools for their workforce.
Information had become fragmented and stored in disparate systems. Users got stalled by inefficient workflow that they couldn’t customize, and the system didn’t do much to track localization of content for their global marketing activity. The question for The Gap’s Marketing Department was: Should they invest in a new enterprise solution, or re-build their own?
the beezwax solution
Beezwax worked closely with management to review The Gap’s needs, and confirm that FileMaker remained the most appropriate platform for managing marketing briefs. Compared to other solutions, FileMaker offered superior flexibility at an estimated half the cost.
Beezwax built a robust solution for collaborative management of their marketing operations, including:
- A user-configurable template system for efficient management of marketing briefs.
- Use of derivative briefs which allow for localization to different countries.
- Accommodation of specific departmental aesthetic preferences.
- A custom report builder was designed for users to select and filter report data to meet their needs, then save the custom report for future use.
THE SUCCESS STORY
Beezwax helped The Gap, Inc. find consensus, and savings, by rebuilding their marketing briefs management system. Efficiency bottlenecks were removed, allowing for easy communication and collaboration. The solution is far more user-focused than previous systems were, making work easier and more cost-effective. They extended their investment in the FileMaker Platform, while working with Beezwax to create a new solution that is scalable and ready to adapt to future needs.