DesktopMedia, founded in 1989, was one of the first companies here in Indianapolis to recommend and place Apple computers in early adopters within the creative community including quite a few ad agencies, corporations and commercial printers that are still with us today.

Our depth of knowledge both at the desktop and server level has meant that we have worked with every conceivable product Apple has ever produced. As the long-standing de facto standard in content creation and publishing there isn’t a product or workflow that we touch that doesn’t owe something to Apple Computer.
I founded DesktopMedia the day a Mac SE landed on my desk along with a product called Pagemaker. Today, I carry a MacBook Pro, an iPhone and an iPad and I can’t imagine life without them and for that matter Apple without Steve Jobs.

Having said this, let’s remember it is the product that stands the test of time — the exquisitely engineered product — that rarely fails, plugs and plays, without worry because it all just works and of course, that’s what we, the customers, want — technology that serves us and not the other way around.

I’ve given the platform speech a million times — we’ve reached the point where our computing needs have come down to choosing appliances, with my favorite, a dishwasher analogy as follows: “when you shop for a dishwasher, do you really worry you won’t understand how to operate a Kitchenaid vs. a Kenmore? Or do you shop feature, price and reputation? particularly service? Who wants to be without a dishwasher for any length of time? If you want an appliance that’s easy to use, reliable, consistent, and engineered to last, you’ll choose the superior product and that has always been an Apple computer.”

Yes, I know I’m indulging in sentimentality, but would my career or the careers of those that have worked for DesktopMedia over the years have been as challenging or as passionate working with some box running Vista? Apple products have spawned rich communities of industries including design, development, consulting and technical support. DesktopMedia began as one such company. As Jobs once said, “…you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” And as I trace my dots tonight, I know the path that DesktopMedia has traveled was guided by no less than Mr. Jobs himself.

Cate Indiano
Owner, President
DesktopMedia

MRM is a management application that can function as simply as project management for your in-house creatives or as robustly as enterprise resource planning for all of marketing. Much depends on the features you need or specifically the functions within your department you need to manage.

If you’re simply looking for task and deadline management, there are plenty of cloud applications that you can choose from for a per user, monthly fee. If you’d like to manage your budget, vendor invoices, and track your staff time (including load balancing) then you’re stepping up to a middle of the road product that can either be installed locally or in the cloud. If you’re looking for all of the above, but need to add media buy and analytics to the mix, you should be considering a best in class solution that will offer you a variety of configuration options.

There’s never any time to capture the specifics of your work, but when the boss comes knocking and either wants to justify your department’s existence, or better yet, brag about the volume and success of your hard work, what tool will you choose to demonstrate your value?

If you’ve ever spent any time in lean manufacturing principles you learn faster isn’t necessarily better. In fact, steady wins the race in terms of completed, successful product.

To be clear, I participated in a series of labs that demonstrated the principles of lean manufacturing. Everyone in our group was given a station and a specific task to execute. Once our task was complete we were to move the product, we’ll call it a “widget,” on to the next station.

At the whistle we all worked as quickly as possible to move our product thru the line. After an hour, our supervisor asked us to stop to review our success. Not a single widget had been successfully created and over 50% of the work in progress failed our quality control tests.

What gives? We all worked quickly and efficiently and not a single product? Our supervisor was very displeased — work in progress was useless inventory. Where did we go wrong?

The supervisor asked us to try again. So we doubled down and worked even faster in the next hour trying to get product out. We only managed a few products out and none of them worked. The rest of the work in progress again failed at a staggering 60%.

So we went station to station trying to find clues. It soon became apparent that not all tasks were created equally. Some tasks required more parts or time than others. Since we were all working at a feverish pace, we soon found bottlenecks in the workflow.

Working faster created more problems and increased the bottlenecks which put pressure on those respective stations. The operators with the bottlenecks felt rushed to catch up and did not complete their tasks correctly.

So in the next lab, we modified two aspects of the workflow. We slowed down being extremely careful to execute our tasks correctly AND we did not advance our product to the next station until the next station was ready for it.

The outcome, a significant increase in completed functional products!

Additionally, quality control tested early in the workflow as opposed to the very end of the workflow allowed us to intercede without wasting a lot of time. Let’s face it, when you catch a problem at the bitter end of the workflow, you know you will have to put things “in reverse” sometimes starting all over again.

Tinkering with quality control checks throughout our workflow also increased the successful production of product.

You know the old addage,

you never have enough time to do it right, but you always have time to do it over

This may be the unspoken truth in most organizations, but let me ask you this, are you making any money?

Wasted time = wasted profit