OpenText

Context

The creative organization supported a wide range of products, campaigns, events, and internal initiatives across regions and time zones. Work was high-volume, highly collaborative, and often time-sensitive.

As the organization grew, existing tools and processes made it difficult to:

• Share work seamlessly across geographies
• Maintain continuity when team members were unavailable or on time off
• Ensure consistency across complex collateral and product portfolios
• Move work efficiently through review, approval, and compliance
• Onboard new team members quickly and effectively

The challenge wasn’t effort or expertise, it was fragmentation. The opportunity was to create shared systems that reduced dependency on individuals and made creative delivery more resilient.

Shared design environments

A key foundation was the adoption of Figma as the primary design tool.

Figma enabled a shared, real-time working environment where designers could collaborate, review, and iterate together across regions and time zones. This was critical for global teams, allowing work to progress continuously rather than stalling between handoffs.

In parallel, Adobe Creative Cloud libraries were implemented to support consistent use of brand elements, components, and assets across teams and tools. Together, these systems shifted work out of isolated files and into shared environments that supported collaboration and continuity.

Access, continuity, and file systems

To reduce risk and improve continuity, we standardized how creative assets were stored, named, and accessed.

This included:

• Centralized storage using OneDrive
• A structured collateral part numbering system
• Clear, consistent file naming conventions across projects and products

These systems ensured that any team member could step into a project at a moment’s notice, whether due to time off, shifting priorities, or urgent timelines, and continue the work without disruption.

This approach reduced bottlenecks, improved resilience, and made creative delivery less dependent on individual availability.

Project management & workflow

As part of improving delivery visibility and coordination, we migrated project management from Basecamp and Wrike to Trello.

Custom workflows were created to reflect how creative work actually moved across disciplines, including:

• Writing and content development
• Design execution
• Design review
• Subject matter expert review
• Approval and handoff

By aligning workflows across writing, design, and review, teams gained clearer ownership, fewer handoff issues, and a shared understanding of progress and priorities.

Templating & production efficiency

Collateral production was particularly complex given the number of business units, products, formats, and collateral types.

To address this, we developed a structured templating system using Adobe InDesign, enabling teams to produce consistent, on-brand collateral efficiently without starting from scratch for each request.

Templates provided guardrails that improved speed and quality while still allowing flexibility for content variation and regional needs, and had a strict part numbering system to be able to track asset versions, edits, and translation across geos.

Accessibility & compliance

Accessibility was treated as a core requirement, not a final step.

We implemented accessibility processes aligned with WCAG 2.0, including:

• Built-in accessibility checks
• Documentation and guidance for teams
• Verification steps integrated into the creative workflow

This ensured that creative output met global legal requirements and was usable by the widest possible audience. Accessibility became a core part of how work was done, at the beginning of the design process rather than an afterthought.

Enablement, training, and guidance

To ensure systems were adopted consistently, we paired tools and workflows with clear enablement.

This included:

• Comprehensive onboarding documentation for new team members
• Brand compliance training to support consistent application of standards
• Clear guidance on how and when to apply systems across different types of work

As AI tools became more prevalent, I also developed AI usage guidelines to help teams understand where AI could support creative work responsibly, where it shouldn’t be used, and how to align experimentation with brand, legal, and ethical considerations.

Together, these efforts reduced ambiguity, accelerated onboarding, and gave teams confidence in how to work within established guardrails.

Events & Global Execution

OpenText supported a significant number of global summits and events, each with unique requirements but shared execution challenges.

To streamline planning and delivery, we developed:

• Event blueprints
• Consistent branding structures
• Reusable wordmarks and visual systems

These assets made it easier for teams to plan, execute, and scale event experiences while maintaining brand consistency and reducing setup time.