The needs and goals of every creative and publishing workflow differ. Thus, when discussing services to fill your needs and reach your goals, it’s best to do it one-on-one, between client and consultant. Broadly defined, the essential services offered by Pariah S. Burke include:

Workflow Optimization

Is your workflow running as efficiently and smoothly as it could? An experienced consultant can evaluate your current workflow, including systems, procedures, and personnel, and recommend changes to help it run at peak productivity.

By observing and evaluating your personnel as they work through projects and daily tasks, a consultant’s objective eye can often spot potholes on the road to success and help to fill them.

Workflow Migration

Moving from QuarkXPress to InDesign, PageMaker to QuarkXPress or InDesign, Microsoft Word to InCopy, Freehand to Illustrator, or Mac to Windows? Changing the key tools in any workflow is more than a matter of installing new software. When there’s work to be done, it’s critical that a migration happen smoothly with minimal impact on clients and deadlines.

Every department will have concerns that must be addressed. IT may have to adjust system or server permissions, install additional tools, and will definitely need to learn how to spot and answer the most common technical issues new software introduces. Creative personnel must be trained to translate their proficiencies with out-going tools into equal proficiency with new tools. Management must be taught to pass along the knowledge to new hires and to appreciate the impact of new tools on the work they oversee.

Migration Evaluation

With creative and publishing tool makers promoting their products, hyping them more than ever, and sometimes taking potshots at the competition, it can be difficult to see the forest through the reams. Is InDesign or QuarkXPress better suited to your needs? Are you doing too much in Photoshop when Illustrator would give you a productivity bump? Is your organization—and PDF—truly ready to go paperless? Can your publication use InCopy out of its $249 box, or must you look into a broader solution like K4?

These are just a few questions facing creative, advertising, and publishing workflows, both in agencies and in corporate production departments today. They aren’t easily answered.

Once a font of useful information, search engine queries on creative products and processes deliver at least as much misinformation and confusion as reliable data and clarity. Websites like Quark VS InDesign.com help filter some of the mud from the water, but even that independent resource cannot answer the question of which tool is better for your specific needs. Downloading evaluation software is a good first step, but how effectively can one truly test out brand new software in 14-30 days? First one must learn to use the software, often from general interest books that only touch on the basics, and then try to use it in simulated work scenarios. What other changes will need to be made to accommodate the new tool? How well does it work with other mission-critical tools? Will it work with your current assets like fonts, imagery, and other media, or will you need to upgrade or convert them? If media must be converted, what tools are needed to effect the conversion and how much clean-up work will be required? Can the new tool work with legacy documents, or must they be recreated by hand?

An objective workflow consultant can help you cut through the hype and clutter to present a clear view of the true impact of a workflow migration.

If you already feel it’s time for a change, if you already have a new tool or system in mind, I can help you make an informed decision including the full facts about costs and benefits, effects on surrounding tools and systems, potential alternative solutions, and total cost of ownership. Let someone with experience using a variety of tools in similar workflows help you know what a potential workflow change will bring.

Inter-Office Workflow Calibration

Teams working in different locations under local and disparate workflows can detrimentally impact communication, collaboration, and the global workflow. Offices and workgroups must be fully compatible with each other, and ready to move projects smoothly from one step in the chain to the next.

A workflow calibration involves on-site observation and analysis of all offices’ workflows. The environment, procedures, and personnel are observed and analyzed, and then calibrated into a cohesive, unified workflow free of localized peculiarities and inter-office collaboration stumbling blocks. By the end, all workgroups will be using identical software versions, flow processes, and procedures, enabling not only free communication and collaboration between offices, but also easier and more predictable comparative performance evaluation.

Training

Already know what tools are required for your workflow but need to get your personnel up to speed fast? Are you in the position of recognizing that your team isn’t using a tool to its maximum potential?

Whether it’s a complete workflow restructuring or simply learning what’s new in the latest version of a tool, I customize every engagement to your unique workflow, aiming at—and hitting—your stated goals. Training on-site at your offices, using actual documents produced by your team as learning aids in hands-on instruction, is the most effective method of education comprehension and retention.