Innovative completes graphic proofs quicker with Resilio

Introduction

Managing client expectations and demands across an expanding print and media agency is challenging. Coordinating design and print jobs, accessing project files on demand, and keeping all files up-to-date are crucial to delivering exceptional service to clients.

Innovative Design, a creative agency based in Waterloo Canada - operates across 3 local offices, offering design and marketing services for digital and print media. We’ll share how Innovative Design prevailed over office bottle neck challenges after partnering with Resilio.

Challenges

#1: Syncing Adobe Files Across Locations

Prior to partnering with Resilio, Innovative Design was faced with the challenge of syncing 800,000 files across its three offices. The associates worked on native Adobe files which included a variety of resource links connected to a specific file. When the file path changes in these files, the links would break. This was a huge issue the marketing team faced, if an associate emailed a file from one office to another, they had to make sure the links were intact and needed to change the file path in order to keep the original properties.

“We weren’t using any tools before Resilio, we were struggling with workflow, which was partly due to the rapid growth of our company. We started feeling the pain when we got our second location.”– Ken Brubacher, Project Manager.

The creative agency ran into bottlenecks, if one office was busy and others could serve more customers, the available offices did not have access to the necessary files. Each office had a custom file system and the frontline team had to shuffle the order of incoming calls to the location that held the required files for a job. With client requests growing, the company needed to maximize their talent, no matter what office associates were working from when a request comes in.

#2: Overcoming Downtime With Network Failures

Innovative Design needed a more robust and on-demand backup solution that would efficiently restore 4.5 TB of data if a massive failure occurred at any of its three offices.  If a such event happened, it would take a week to rebuild their RAID and copy everything to go live again in an office.

“We’re talking about a week to restore 4.5TB of data. If we had to rebuild the RAID, or if the RAID failed and we had to copy everything back, this process would take a week,” Brubacher explained.

Solutions

#1: Resilient P2P Synchronization

The solution was an unrivaled synced and secure network. By partnering with Resilio, Innovative Design could scale their marketing and design services across its three offices. Leveraging the power of Resilio, the company’s Windows PCs map directly to their NAS box’s main folder and when an associate works in one office on a file with link files in the paths, they are the same in other offices if someone opens that same file.

“We were able to turn around graphic proofs quicker based on our staff’s availability versus forcing it through a bottleneck at a specific office. Connect has made us more efficient,” explained Brubacher.

#2: On-Demand Data Restoration

Innovative Design set up a third tier serving as an off-site back up used to duplicate data at its offices.  Each office location has a NAS box and Raid 5 configuration with a dedicated PC running Resilio clients to the network path. The company’s data was local, if a massive failure occurs, the third tier used for replicating data via Resilio from the locations can be brought into the office environment and get offices up and running again with up-to-date data.

Impact

Before partnering with Resilio, Innovative Design was subject to office bottle neck and week long delays to get an office running again after a system failure. They were met with the challenge to scale their services and meet the demands of their customers due to a unique local file storing system. Today, Innovative Design is powered by resilient technology that enables cross syncing of over 800,000 files across locations and the ability to immediately transfer, consolidate, and restore 4.5TB of data.

“We now map directly to the NAS box main folder and when someone works in one office on a file with all the link files in the paths, they are exactly the same when in the other offices if someone opens it there.”– Ken Brubacher, Project Manager.