“Honestly, I’m not sure how we survived”, says Priscilla Groves, the founder of Piehole.tv, a boutique video production company. “I was a copywriter, and my partner, Aurelie, was an art director”. The two of them were making hundreds of videos a year. They should have been successful. Instead the harder they worked, the harder it became to keep up with payments to suppliers.
“We made the typical ‘mistake’ many makers do”, we thought because we were busy and had lots of clients, everything else would sort itself out. Sometimes there was lots of money in the bank account, but the team had no real sense of how much of that money would end up being theirs. Projects had a nasty habit of popping up months after they had been delivered to clients with overlooked bills to subcontractors still to be paid. While Piehole was awesome at delivering kick ass videos on time and under budget for clients, their own bottom line wasn’t always looked after so well.
Since adopting ProcurementExpress.com at Piehole.TV, things have changed dramatically. Each project is set up alongside their project management software, basecamp. Budgets are set up for each part of the production, from voiceovers, sound, animation and design to internal staff bonuses.
Just as Priscilla was able to log into Basecamp and see what stage a production was at, she can now log in and see the exact financial status of every project. At a glance, she can now see how much money still needs to be paid to suppliers at a project and company wide level. “This has made it much, much easier to sleep at night”. I can see exactly where we are financially and Aurelie has a much better handle on how profitable each job will be.
“I literally don’t know how I survived without it. I can recommend anyone in the creative industry, like Piehole.tv, who works on a multi-project basis to take a look at managing their costs with ProcurementExpress.com.”
