Build your process.
Grow your agency.
Deliver referral-worthy projects with less mistakes and more profit with process-driven project management.
Designed for creative teams and their clients
Unlock your agency's potential with strong process
In our own agency we struggled with our process. For years we didn’t really have one - making it up as we went along.
At the same time we failed to understand why every. single. project. was over budget. Spoiler alert: no process = no profits.
We also stumbled mightily when we hired new staff. We didn’t have the time to train them properly. As founders we’d always had an idea in our heads of what to do at each step, but that doesn’t really help anyone else.
It also meant that we weren’t learning from our mistakes, or improving our process to be better.
So then we finally got wise… We needed to put a clear process in place for each type of project we ran, and get it down on paper so we could follow it every time.
We spent a bunch of time outlining all the phases and steps for our key services in a wiki - adding notes and guides on how and why to do each part, pre-written messages to clients, and checklists for each part so we didn’t forget anything.
And then....... we promptly went back to what we were doing and forgot about the wiki.
So after banging our heads against the wall over and over as we saw our profits disappear while our team and clients got frustrated, we decided to do something about it.
We wanted to build something that was simple and easy for our team and our clients to follow, that would visually show off our process and keep everyone on track.
That’s what led us to build Outlign and put process at the heart of project management.
Mark, Dave & Ant
- Co-founders of Outlign
Process Projects
A new approach to running creative projects
Phases
Phases break a project up into major stages of work - usually tied to a key milestone or approval point. This makes things easy for your client to follow; showing project progress, next steps and major due dates - so you'll always know where things are at with just a glance.
Steps
Inside each Phase is a set of Steps that follow a particular order. Steps can be used to educate your client, share work and gather guided feedback, track rounds of revisions to avoid scope creep, and get clear client approval to avoid any miscommunication.
Made by an agency, for agencies.
Fresh off a decade of running our own studio, we’ve made Outlign to address some of the common pitfalls of creative project management.
Approvals
Get clear-cut approval by setting a Step as an Approval point - outlining exactly what the client is signing off. We even track the Step history to see who approved the work.
Feedback & Forms
Getting constructive feedback can be challenging, so set up a Step with some tips for your client, and add a Form with specific guided questions to see the quality of your feedback improve.
Forms also work great for asset collection, briefs and onboarding questionnaires.
Revisions
Doing work that's outside a project's scope is the single biggest killer for project profits.
Keep track of your rounds of design revisions by making each one a separate Step - thus removing any ambiguity with your client about how much work you've provided and how you're tracking with scope creep.
Internal Notes
Don’t let your guides & knowledge sit forgotten in a wiki; share your insights, reminders and guides with the team right beside the steps of your project.
Project Info
The best decisions are made when they're related back to key project info like the brief, agreed goals, and strategy developed early in the process.
We keep these details and documents always at hand with a dedicated Project Info section that's easy to access from anywhere on a project.
Education
Educate your clients by creating dedicated overview steps and embedding helpful videos, and guide your team with internal notes
See it live, no login.
The best way to get a handle on this new way of doing things is to view a demo or book a call with one of our co-founders and we’ll walk you through how it works.
When you build, implement, and hone your process over time, big things happen.
Your process is all over the place across multiple tools
One space that ties together your process, documentation and education
Your team makes things up as they go along, and strays off the path
Repeatable templates you build once and use time and time again
You struggle to train your team while spending too much time micromanaging
Agency knowledge is built right into your workflow, reducing mistakes
Clients get lost, disengaged, and don't know how to contribute
Clients are educated, engaged and can easily see where things are at
Projects are constantly over budget and delivered late
Your process is clear, you save time and headaches, and make more profit
STANDARD Projects
Organise the work with zero fuss
In addition to Process Projects, Outlign has Standard Projects with everything you need for projects like coordinating the work inside the studio or running a client retainer. A low-distraction approach to lists & boards that help you do the work, with much less time managing it.
Boards
Task Lists
TEMPLATES
From signup to project in 60 seconds
Spin up a new project in seconds using templates built by Outlign or your own agency, including all your team’s learnings, notes, and key steps already baked in - making sure you all start and finish on the same page.
Templates
FAQs
Outlign is a Project Management platform similar to others that you may have used with tasks, files, messages and more in one place. What's different about Outlign is we've added a new way to organise creative projects into a clear process to make it easier for you and your clients to follow.
And since we're designed specifically for creative teams, we've added in features that help to alleviate some of the typical pitfalls of running creative projects like tracking rounds of revisions, getting good feedback and ensuring clear approvals.
You simply pay for how many active users you have in your agency team. So if you're a freelancer you'll just pay for one seat, 3 seats if you're a power-trio and so on.
You'll never pay for your clients - they are always free to invite in to as many projects as you like.
You can view our pricing page here
Nope - you only pay for the users in your agency team... client users are always free, so invite them in and get a project rolling.
Outlign is awesome for communicating with clients... we designed our Process Projects with them in mind, making it easier for them to follow along, give great feedback and clear approvals.
At the same time Process Projects can be great for running an internal agency process, and we've added more standard projects so that you can organise things on the agency side in task lists or boards like you know and love - including assigning tasks, setting due dates, uploading files and discussing the work.
It's up to you!
If you like simplicity and realise that more features doesn't always mean more productivity, then you can definitely manage all your projects inside Outlign - we've been doing so at our own agency for over a year!
On the other hand, if you want a more complex tool to manage your internal work, then Outlign is a great option to use for your client communication whilst keeping your internal to-dos in your existing tool.
Absolutely! We're constantly listening to our users and looking for better ways to help your creative projects run smoother, with less mistakes, less effort, better work and more profits.
We'll generally be releasing new features each month or so - and if you have any ideas then send us your feedback!
- Educate and engage your clients for a better experience
- Keep internal & external teams on track with a clear process
- Create better outcomes and deliver great work
- Make less mistakes and more profit
Get your creative process on rails.
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