How to prepare a brief when sourcing a Brand Management platform

Writing a brief for your template platform is a useful exercise as it will help you articulate what you need. Here’s a quick overview of things you can include which will help to provide a quote.

Your challenges

It’s helpful to give a brief overview of why you are looking for a branded template solution. What are the specific problems you want to solve? For example;

• Do you have local hubs who need to be able to create their own artwork?
• Do you have a brand device that is difficult to reproduce unless you have the right design tools/skills?
• Are you having issues with your current procurement process which you’re looking to resolve?

Or is there something else?

Features and functionality

Users

How many people do you expect to use the platform to make designs?

Our annual subscription fees are based on the number of users rather than the amount of artwork created. Some brand management platform providers base their prices on the amount of artwork created or downloaded so you may want to have an idea of this too.

Single sign on integration

Whether you want a ‘single sign on’ integration - where your end users can sign in with their organisation credentials and access the platform. We’d recommend this in most cases but especially where you have more than 50 people using the system. It makes it easier for you to manage users and revoke access when employees leave.

Image library integration

Whether you want to integrate with an existing image library or DAM (Digital Asset Management system). This means that end-users can pick an image from your library without leaving the brand management platform. Make sure that you include the name of your DAM so that you know that you’re supplying as much information as you can for an accurate quote.

If you don’t have a DAM then you may like a brand management platform, like BrandStencil, that has an optional image library built in if required.

Importing images

If you don’t want to integrate with an image library and want to use the brand management platform as your image library do you want to do a one time bulk import of images that you have elsewhere? For example, in a shared folder. You can choose to add images yourselves or importing your images may be an optional service that you can opt in for. It’s worth bearing in mind that all of your image metadata would need to be imported too.

Ordering system

Do you want people to be able to order from the platform? This might be readymade material, like leaflets or merchandise.

If you do want ordering do you want to integrate with an existing print/fulfilment supplier you already work with? Include the name of your supplier so you can ensure that the quote is accurate.

Templates

Brand management software like BrandStencil host digital customisable templates that are created by their developers so it’s a good idea to put together a template wish list. This will give you a ballpark figure for the cost of developing the templates as you probably won’t have your designs ready yet. Also, in our experience, requirements and priorities can change between gathering quotes and onboarding a platform into your organisation.

We would make some assumptions about what functionality you want but if you can provide further details it means the costs will be more accurate. The ‘scope’ may change later as you start thinking in more detail about what you want. That is fine but it’s useful to remember that this may either increase your costs or you may need to decrease features elsewhere.

For example,

• You may initially think you need 3 social tiles but at a later point decide you only want two. This would reduce the costs.
• Or, you may think you’ll need posters in A4 but find out that people would like the poster in A3 also. This would increase the costs.

In either case we can keep the cost the same and reduce another feature OR just increase the cost.

List of templates

List out the designs you think you will need, e.g; general poster, services leaflet, calling card, business card. For each it’s useful to know;

• How many sizes do you want it to output in? E.g. A3, A4
• How many sides/pages will it have? E.g. 1 side, 2 sides.
• Will it output in any other file type than PDF? E.g. JPEG
• Will it be multilingual? If so, how many languages?
• Do you expect to offer colour schemes (choose a colour updates a single or multiple colours in the template)? If so, how many colour schemes will you offer?
• How many different layouts will you offer? A layout is broadly the same content but presented in a different way, or with a different style.

Some brand management software host Adobe ID templates. These types of templates you can create yourself, however there are a few things that you need to bear in mind;

• You’ll need to pay for an extra license from Adobe
• Someone in your organisation will need to know or go through training to be able to create them
• When they move on to a different position or organisation you’ll need to put their replacement through the training
• You won’t have access to the extensive experience that brand management companies have in creating effective and successful templates

Brand devices

If you have any specific brand devices you want to use you may want to mention them in your brief if you think they may be difficult to replicate. It’s useful to send your brand guidelines along with the brief itself.

Training

Do you have any specific requirements around training? For example, do you like training sessions online or in person? If you aren’t sure you can just ask for more information about training options.

We recommend including advocates from within your organisation that can champion the onboarding and internal rollout of the brand management platform so it’s a great idea to include them in the training.

Anything else to add?

Think about what will make the platform successful for you? Is there anything else that’s important to you that isn’t mentioned elsewhere? If so, add it into your brief as it will give us more insight into how we can help.