For video production company Element 26, client and peer collaboration is key to success. And thanks to Quip, staying connected has never been simpler.

Founded in 2013, London-based Element 26 create compelling video-based marketing content for corporate clients worldwide.

With a core team of 20, its artists, producers and marketers rely heavily on fast, accurate and contextual collaboration to ensure success for its diverse portfolio of global clients.

But as it discovered, working across a suite of standalone tools is less than ideal – especially when dealing with multiple stakeholders, including freelancers. This disjointed way of working would often lead to internal frustration, and plenty of toing and froing with clients as siloed, file-centric collaboration took place over various platforms.

The team knew it needed to nurture a more immediate, hyper-collaborative culture, which is why Element 26 chose to deploy Salesforce’s best-in-class collaboration platform, Quip.

To learn how this shift transformed collaboration for Element 26 and its clients, we invited them to run us through a typical project journey – from brief to sign-off – in a live webinar.

The webinar panel included:

●      Nathan Haines, Managing Director at Element 26

●      Kate Aldridge, Senior Producer at Element 26

●      Louis Tsamados, Editing Colorist at Element 26

●      And me - Prina Mandavia, Solutions Marketing Manager, UK & Ireland at Salesforce

Here’s an overview of what we heard – and saw:

The customer is the director

For a video production company like Element 26, competition is fierce. Sure, a great product is always appreciated, but great service is the key differentiator.

With its current tech stack – which includes a combination of Sales Cloud, Pardot, Quip, and Inbox – the team can collaborate with clients anytime, anywhere across the entire project journey. But it’s Quip that has made the biggest impact to the quality of its client service.

By enabling real-time access to production documents on desktop or mobile – including briefs, creative frameworks, and video drafts – the client is empowered to guide and direct the project in collaboration with its creators.

Not only does this help eliminate delays associated with siloed project management, but thanks to Quip’s flexible integration with the likes of Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, Element 26 can also scope, build and manage every opportunity, proposal, and project in the cloud.

A smarter way to collaborate

To demonstrate how this works in action, Senior Producer Kate Aldridge created a use case in which Salesforce had requested one of its video products.

Opening the briefing document in Quip, Kate showed how everyone involved with the project can collaborate on the master version in real-time. This not only ensures that all comments, notifications and amends are viewed in context, but that everyone is always working on the most up-to-date iteration of each project.

To the right of the document is an instant messenger feed, where users can discuss the brief and ‘@’ relevant users with messages; a feature which also extends to copy notes and time-stamps on video content.

Kate also noted how clients can engage with a creative template like a video script or storyboard. For demo purposes, a client is seen adding a comment to a script requesting ‘more emphasis on the call-to-action’. Managing Director Nathan Haines then sees this comment appear in real-time, allowing him to respond quickly with appropriate changes.

Stay updated – home or away

Due to the global nature of its work, it’s rare for the whole Element 26 team to be in the same place at once – especially during the operations phase when many team members may be required on-set.

To ensure the client and the team back in the office stay up to date with all the happenings on-set, updates are shared on Quip. For example, if an actor is late, or a piece of equipment is missing, the production team can notify and collaborate with the team back in London to help resolve the issue faster.

This same level of hyper-collaboration extends into post-production, where the client can view the product come together chronologically, and even make suggestions using time-stamped comments on work-in-progress video.

Before Quip, this would be one of the trickiest phases in a project for Element 26. To get feedback from the client on a rough video cut, the content would need to be uploaded to its website on a private page, often resulting in staggered email feedback from multiple people.

Reel-to-reel collaboration

Today, collaboration is seamless, contextual and productive. And as Kate testifies, Element 26 clients have been more than happy to engage with Quip, with many relishing the opportunity to help drive their project towards success.

Watch the on-demand webinar to hear the full discussion, or see a demo of Quip in action.