From Creation to Publication: How Monumental Sports & Entertainment Streamlines Design Work with Wrike

Monumental Sports & Entertainment is one of the leading sports and entertainment groups in the United States. Serving multiple major league sports teams; large venues that host a wide range of live events; a broadcast network for digital, mobile, and OTT platforms; and a host of innovative data-driven partnerships and services, the organization is committed to “raising the game” through innovations that create extraordinary experiences.

The group’s ultimate mission is to be an unparalleled community-driven enterprise and showcase the best teams and entertainment venues, while investing in and giving back to the greater Washington, D.C. region. Monumental Sports & Entertainment supports many teams, including the Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards, Washington Mystics, and Capital City Go-Go.

The Challenge

Monumental Design, the internal creative agency at Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), creates assets to support the marketing efforts of multiple sports teams and venues in the Washington, D.C. area. But without a designated project management system in place, new project requests were coming to designers from multiple, non-design internal collaboration tools.

“While a standard request process was in place when I joined, many clients were not using the systems. And when they did, it wasn’t meeting their needs,” recalls Lori Meyers, Manager of Digital Assets at MSE. “While learning about how creative was requested and stored by both clients and the internal agency, it was obvious we were in need of a better process.”

“A major goal from my perspective was to cut down on the time designers spent on administrative tasks, file management, and client outreach,” adds Grace Marland, Design Art Director at MSE. “They needed to spend more time where their talent lies: in the creative process.”

Together, Meyers and Marland worked to find the right solution. “We wanted to save our designers time on working through and completing a creative request, including downloading and reuploading assets,” notes Meyers. “We both really wanted a project management tool that would work seamlessly with our digital asset management system.”

The Solution

The team’s existing digital asset management vendor, MediaValet, introduced MSE to Wrike’s collaborative work management system. “Due to the API connection that was already established between MediaValet and Wrike and the fact that other MediaValet clients were already leveraging the integration, we chose Wrike over other competitors,” says Meyers.

Streamlining project intake

The first step in MSE’s transition to Wrike was creating customized request forms that would consolidate all incoming requests into Wrike — and with Meyers and Marland working together, it only took about two weeks to do so! “As with any transition, our clients were initially wary, but we included them in the request form design process to solicit their feedback. And once we launched, clients quickly came on board and recognized that their requests were being completed faster and more accurately,” boasts Meyers.

With everything centralized in Wrike, designers have better visibility and accountability for their assignments, priorities, and progress. “Our designers use Wrike as their guide of what needs to be completed and when. With dashboards for each designer, widgets for new requests, quick status update messages, and weekly ‘Tip’ features, our designers can see where everything is and what needs to be addressed,” explains Meyers.

Centralizing every step of the creative process

Due to Wrike’s powerful integrations with Adobe Creative Cloud and the MediaValet DAM, the Monumental Design team can now complete every step of their creative process within Wrike. From request to design to review to publication, it’s all happening in one location.

The designers were already using Adobe and MediaValet, so they love that Wrike seamlessly connects those tools and develops a cohesive user experience for them. “Once a request has made it through the life cycle to the ‘Approved’ status, the designer then changes the status to be ‘Trafficked to MediaValet,’” explains Meyers. “When that process has been completed, the request is ‘Archived.’”

Managing workloads effectively

With all design work now delivered in Wrike, Meyers can leverage Wrike’s workload management and reporting features for full visibility into the team’s capacity.

“We use Wrike to assign and manage our designers’ workload,” begins Meyers. “By assigning an Effort to each creative execution, our team can see how much time is accounted for each designer by day and week. And by knowing how much approximate time is needed to complete an incoming request, the designers’ workload can be rebalanced to assign new requests to available designers.”

“The effort allocation features not only helped our workflow,” explains Marland, “but it also gave us many valuable insights about designer accountability and where our time is best and most efficiently spent.”

As more sporting venues begin to reopen and plan for a post-pandemic world, the Monumental Design team has experienced increasing volume to support the ever-changing landscape of welcoming fans back to live events. Thanks to Wrike, Meyers and the Monumental Design team have been able to manage this influx of work, ensure on-time delivery, and prevent burnout. 

Proving team value to executives

“Having Wrike gives us the documentation and data we need to share with senior leadership,” notes Meyers. “We report our team usage, individual client usage, and request types. Since we rolled out Wrike, we have been able to show the amount of work being requested and completed to justify our role within the company and the cost savings of an internal agency versus external resources.”

The Conclusion

Wrike has helped the Monumental Design team streamline their creative operations, simplify their workday, and complete more work faster.

“Anyone who is looking to manage multiple projects daily should consider Wrike,” declares Meyers. “The ability to customize request forms and have all our specs/dimensions automatically provided to our designers once a request has been submitted is extremely useful. We save time knowing what the clients need from us and then can track the progress of each request, which is something we couldn’t do previously.”

“Our designers can work within an environment that is easy to understand and provides them with the ability to communicate and share easily with clients. As an organization, we now have a standard process for requesting all new creative and storing procedures for easily accessing, which saves us time and money,” concludes Meyers.