If you’ve been managing your creative projects with IBM’s Marketing Operations OnDemand (MOOD) system, previously known as Unica Marketing Operations OnDemand, you might be feeling abandoned since IBM announced it plans to end support for the product on June 30, 2017.

Instead of feeling abandoned, how about feeling supported? Vya has a great alternative for MOOD users. Our Vya creative production systems enable users to seamlessly route, approve and track progress on creative projects. Even better, we just announced a new release of the system with an upgraded user experience and enhanced reporting capabilities.

We all have a pretty good idea of what traits we like to see in new employees. There’s a laundry list of cliché adjectives nearly every manager at some point is guilty of pulling from when putting together a job listing. We want our candidates and future employees to be dynamic, motivated self-starters with a passion for whatever their specific role will entail. The point is we know, almost to a fault, what we’re looking for in an employee.

Well, any human employee, that is.

From Deadlines to bottom-lines, I put my marketing department under constant pressure to show ROI. This means every project and every process must be evaluated and prioritized based on the resources available and the return it will generate. In short, you need to get the most out of your team at all times. Basically, success comes down to productivity.

Whether it’s a one-page holiday card sent to 100 people or a comprehensive annual report distributed to thousands of company stakeholders, any creative project your business takes on has its challenges. If your designer goes through several rounds of revisions, not only can there be confusion as to which version is the most recent, but multiple documents can also eat up email or FTP storage space. Executives need to sign off on the creative, but don’t want to be overloaded with the minutiae of daily edits and emails. And every person involved has to adhere to a timeline so that the finished piece is in the hands of shareholders or customers when it needs to be.