What creatives need most is time to do what they do best: create. However, in today’s remote environment, creatives are burdened with operational and administrative responsibilities that obstruct the creative process and make it difficult for them to hand over quality work on schedule.

At Adobe Workfront’s recent invitation-only virtual event, Creativity in Process: How Marketing Work Management Brings Agility to Creative Work, creative leaders gathered to discuss how they can enable creative teams to prioritize creative work by improving organizational support and project management systems.

The panelists focused on scalable solutions for visibility and transparency into creative teams and how creative leaders can take balanced, data-driven approaches to managing capacity and assigning resources. Scott Monroe, Senior Manager of Product Marketing at Adobe, moderated the panel of experts.

Scott kicked off the panel by asking Kim Sareny, Director of Creative and Brand Strategy at Rush University Medical Center, how the shift to an increasingly digital work environment has changed workflow for her creative team.

One problem with remote work is that creative teams risk being left out of the communications development process, Kim claimed. However, with the right communication, her organization’s creative teams can do more off-sight work than was originally expected. In fact, her organization is more productive now than they were before the shift to remote work.

“[The shift] got us thinking, ‘Do we really need to be in the office with our doors closed, not ever really going down the hall because we’re so focused on a particular task?’” She shared that ironically, after pivoting to remote work, her organization’s communications development process has improved.

Remote work in an increasingly digital environment offers creatives more flexibility, and this flexibility is here to stay, said Vikalp Tandon, Global COO of Creative Services at Dentsu International. The right kind of flexibility attracts the right talent.

Vikalp also shared that the pivot to remote working, combined with the novel possibilities of Cloud computing, has facilitated collaborative work across multiple offices within his organization and with different clients.

Scott then pivoted the conversation to creatives’ relationship with data. Contrary to popular opinion, creatives do enjoy working with data. Not only does it “fuel the creativity process,” a data-driven approach to capacity management can also directly benefit creative leaders.

Jessica Fein, VP of Brand, Content, and Creative at Bright Horizons Family Solutions, is dedicated to using data to help her creative team spend more time expanding their creative capacity and less time on managing projects.

In theory, for her organization to foster such an efficient work environment, account managers must accept more administrative responsibilities. In practice, doing so has proven difficult, as her organization’s internal clients still expect to work directly with creatives, and creatives would prefer to minimize the time they spend interfacing with clients.

“All of our creatives need to have that buffer, if you will, so that they can be focused on creating, and someone else will handle all the project management [and] administrative work,” Jess shared.

John Wamback, Director of Creative Services and Operations at Workhuman, agreed with Jess wholeheartedly. “We believe in allowing people to do what they’re uniquely qualified to do,” he said. The goal at his organization is for copywriters to write and designers to design.

To keep projects on track in today’s increasingly digital work environment, project managers must revise strategies to provide creatives the resources they need before projects start.

To do this, John said his organization tiers its projects. More than half of the creative projects at his organization don’t require management, and not managing low-priority projects saves everyone time.

According to recent reports and studies, Scott noted, creatives want to be involved not only in data, but also in strategies. Involving creative teams in strategic planning enables them to align their daily work with, and feel more connected to, overarching company goals.

Kim claimed one effective way to involve creatives in strategic planning is to grant them ongoing access to briefs that elucidate these strategies. John agreed that,“Having that good brief is tantamount to everything.”

Scott brought the panel to a close by asking what the future of creative work looks like.

John said digital modes of collaboration will continue to replace in-person whiteboard and brainstorming sessions, and organizations will base more of their decisions on data. Without adapting to an increasingly digital work environment, organizations risk falling behind or even becoming obsolete.

For Vikalp, technology is key. “For certain clients, the new creative canvas is so relevant, if they don’t adopt it, their audience will go somewhere else,” he said.

As creatives settle into a long-term digital work environment, using technology to foster creativity and innovation as well as leveraging data will be key to overall success.