Creative work sits at the centre of every ecommerce brand. From product photography and evolving brand assets, there’s a constant flow of visuals and ideas that need to move fast. 

Creative operations are the systems and processes that help all that work happen smoothly. Because if you don’t have a solid structure, things can get messy quickly. When briefs live in someone’s inbox, feedback is scattered across tools, and final files are hard to track down, creative gets clogged up by bottlenecks. 

This results in wasted time, duplicated effort and slower launch times. All of which can impact your bottom line. 

So in this article, we’ll get into the details of creative ops management. Whether you’re in the marketing team, ecommerce or design, a good process is going to ease friction for everyone. 

What are creative operations?

Creative operations (often called creative ops) is the way an ecommerce brand manages creative work from start to finish. It includes the people, processes, and tools used to plan work, gather feedback, approve designs, and deliver final assets. 

For ecommerce teams, creative operations cover a high volume of repeatable work. This can include product photography, PDP and website updates, paid ad creative, email and social content, seasonal campaigns, marketplace assets, and brand guidelines. Creative ops makes sure all of these assets are produced on time, to a clear standard, and with everyone working from the same source of truth.

The reasons why your current creative workflows aren’t working

Most ecommerce creative workflows don’t slow down because people aren’t trying. They halt because the system can’t keep up with the volume and speed ecommerce demands. When you’re juggling product launches, campaign deadlines, and BAU content, even small gaps in process turn into daily friction. Here are some reasons your creative workflows are slowing you down: 

[fs-toc-omit] Your briefs aren’t clear enough upfront

If goals, formats, deadlines, or ‘must-haves’ aren’t clear at the start, the work begins on shaky ground. That usually means extra rounds of changes, more back-and-forth, and a longer path to approval.

[fs-toc-omit] Feedback is scattered everywhere

Comments in Slack, tweaks in email, notes in Figma, and ‘quick thoughts’ in meetings make it hard to pull together a single clear direction. People end up guessing what to prioritise, or redoing work that was already discussed somewhere else.

[fs-toc-omit] Files are hard to find (or easy to mix up)

When assets live across personal drives, Dropbox, WeTransfer, and old links, time gets wasted searching or re-requesting. Even worse, the wrong version gets used because it looked ‘close enough’ in the moment.

[fs-toc-omit] Approvals are slow or unclear

If no one knows who needs to sign off on creative, or approvals happen randomly with no deadline, work slows (or stops completely). Stakeholders drop in late, priorities shift, and timelines stretch past your original launch date.

All of this leads to the same place: more rework, slower turnaround, stressed teams, and launches that take longer than they should. Not because your team is slow, but because your workflow is doing them no favours.

If this rings true, it sounds like you need to implement creative ops to keep everything moving forward. 

8 steps to improving your creative operations

Bringing in creative operations doesn’t have to mean a huge overhaul overnight. The best setups are built in stages, starting with the biggest pain points and tightening things up as you go. Here’s a clear, workable path for ecommerce teams.

1. Map what’s actually happening today

Start by mapping out what your current process is, from the moment someone requests creative to when the final asset is ready to use. Include every step people take, who’s involved at each stage, where work gets handed off, what tools get used, and how approvals really work (including the informal stuff, like ‘quick checks’ in Slack or last-minute changes from a stakeholder).

This will show you where the bottlenecks are and where information drops off between teams. You’ll also spot gaps that aren’t obvious day-to-day because everyone’s busy patching them as they go. For example, you might have a solid briefing process with templates and clear expectations for designers, but no shared place to give feedback — so comments end up scattered across email threads, Figma notes, and messages, and the designer has to piece it together. 

Once you can see the full workflow on paper, it becomes much easier to decide what’s already working well and what needs changing.

2. Get clear on what your goals are

Different ecommerce teams need different things: a small team running monthly drops will have a different set up to a brand producing daily ads and constant PDP updates.

So start by choosing the outcomes that matter most. Maybe you need a faster turnaround so launches don’t slip. Maybe you need better consistency across channels, or just better visibility into what’s in progress.

3. Standardise your briefs

A solid brief can be a shortcut to better creative. It’s nothing to do with your design teams’ skill, rather it helps set expectations, put ideas into context and means there’s less disruptive feedback. 

Lucy, our graphic designer here at Dash, says this: 

“My “must-haves” for a good brief include a clear timeline and deadline, goals and objectives, any copy or messaging that needs to be included, information on the audience and most importantly of all - what assets and deliverables are required.”

So keep it simple, but make it consistent. You should have one briefing format, used by everyone. 

You could set up a briefing template in a word document or use a specific project management tool. Scoot down for some tool recommendations to improve your creative operations. 👇 

4. Build a simple, repeatable workflow

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel here. The goal is just to get everyone working in the same way, so creative doesn’t feel like a different process every time.

Start by agreeing on the main stages your work should move through. Keep it simple and easy to follow. For example: request → brief approved → in production → review → final approved → ready to use. Call the stages whatever makes sense for your team, the important bit is that everyone knows the route.

Once that’s in place, day-to-day work gets lighter. People don’t have to ask where things are at. You can spot hold-ups quickly. And you’re not relying on memory (or chasing in Slack) to keep projects moving.

Bear in mind, a workflow only works if people actually use it, so start with something repeatable, then refine as you go. 

5. Set ownership and approval paths

Once your workflow is clear, the next step is making roles clear too. Creative moves faster when everyone knows what they’re responsible for.

Who’s in charge of writing the brief? Who needs to review the first draft? Who gives the final sign-off? And does that change depending on the type of asset? 

This might change as you grow, roles changes and people join your team, but keeping a track of who is responsible for what will speed things up in the long run. 

6. Centralise feedback

Feedback gets messy when it’s spread across five places. A few notes in Slack, a comment in Figma, a ‘quick thought’ in email, and suddenly no one’s sure what’s actually been agreed. So make a call on where feedback should live, and stick to it. That might be a proofing space, a project card, or wherever the asset is being reviewed.. 

It also helps to set expectations from both sides before the work starts. Designers can explain how feedback will be handled and roughly how many rounds are expected. For example, you might decide that most assets get one initial review and one final polish round, unless something big changes. That kind of agreement keeps things focused and stops projects drifting into endless tiny tweaks.

7. Create a single source of truth for assets

You can have a great workflow and clear feedback, but if final assets end up scattered across drives, desktops, old WeTransfer links, and ‘final_final_v3’ folders, things fall apart fast.

So pick one home for your approved creative. Somewhere searchable, organised, and built for the way ecommerce teams actually use assets day to day. 

Oh hey, that’s exactly what a DAM (digital asset management tool) like Dash is for. 👋😇 A DAM helps you store, tag, sort, and track your assets properly, so the right file is always easy to find — and it’s obvious which version is the latest.

It means your brand has one clean, central place for every product photo, campaign file, ad variation, and brand asset. You can organise work by product, launch, channel, or whatever fits your team. You can add tags and custom fields like SKU, season, usage rights, or campaign name. And when someone needs an asset, they can just search and grab it in seconds.

8. Track, tweak, and scale

Once the basics are up and running, check in on them regularly. A quick monthly review is usually enough. Look for the same issues popping up, tweak the workflow to smooth them out, and add automation wherever it genuinely saves time. 

4 tools for improving your creative ops 

Thankfully, your creative operations don't need to live in spreadsheets and word docs. There are plenty of tools out there designed to help you move creative projects along quickly and efficiently. Here are our top picks. 

[fs-toc-omit] 1. Dash for finding and sharing creative assets.

You can pour time, money and resources into the best creative in the world, but it doesn’t matter if nobody can find it again. That’s what a digital asset management tool like Dash is for. 

Dash gives your ecommerce team one place to store and organise every asset in your creative workflow. Think product photos, campaign files, ad variations, and brand assets. It’s a clean, searchable library for your creative, so your team isn't scrambling around Drive folders trying to find the latest product shots. In Dash you can: 

• Find creative and use it: When people can find your creative content, they’ll use it. It seems obvious, but it’s really easy to lose assets in Drive folders and hard drives. Dash keeps everything centralised, and lets you search for content using keywords, tags and filters. 
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• Makes creative usable across every channel: Dash makes your content easy to find and repurpose across all your channels. Before you download an asset, you can crop and resize assets to suit different channel requirements, so you’re not looping designers in for every tiny format tweak. 
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• Reduces partner admin: Branded portals let retailers, agencies, and distributors self-serve approved assets, so your team isn’t stuck emailing links all day.
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• Stops replicated work. If people can’t find an asset quickly, they’ll likely recreate it. Dash keeps everything in one searchable place, so you reuse more and repeat less. 

• Keeps versions crystal clear: Dash lets you store multiple versions of the same asset in one place. When something like a logo gets updated, your team is notified, and you can easily roll back to an earlier version if needed. 

• Speeds up product launches: With Shopify and design-tool integrations, assets move from ‘in-progress’ to ‘live’ without loads of uploading, downloading and back and forth. 

• Gives everyone confidence they’re using the right thing: When the source of truth is obvious, teams move faster and make fewer mistakes.

Learn more about digital asset management for ecommerce brands. 

Pricing: Starts at £99 / $139 per month with unlimited users and all features included on plans. 

[fs-toc-omit] 2. Airtable for creative project management

Airtable is a flexible database-meets-spreadsheet tool that lots of ecommerce teams use to run creative ops. You can build a request form, turn it into a brief, track stages like ‘in production / review / approved,’ and view everything as a calendar, kanban, or timeline. It’s especially handy if you want a lightweight workflow you can customise around shoots, campaigns, PDP updates, or ad production.. 

Brands like Passenger use it alongside Dash to help their creative asset management workflows run smoothly. 

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans typically start around $20 per editor/month and go up to roughly $45 per editor/month (annual billing), with enterprise pricing on request.

[fs-toc-omit] 3. ClickUp for document management 

ClickUp is a good all-rounder if you want briefs, tasks, and project chatter living together. You can build your workflow stages into lists or boards, drop your brief templates straight in, and keep repeat jobs like weekly ads or PDP refreshes moving without starting from scratch every time.

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at around $7 per user/month (annual billing).

[fs-toc-omit] 4. Filestage for proofing and approving creative 

Filestage is for keeping creative reviews clean and simple. You upload an asset, share it with the right people, and they can leave comments directly on the work — whether that’s an image, video, PDF, or deck. All feedback stays in one place, tied to the right version, and you can see exactly who’s approved what, so nothing gets lost inside threads.

💡Dash also lets you leave feedback on assets. Contributors can submit assets for approval, and you can comment, approve and reject as you see fit. 

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans scale by team size and features (typically mid-market SaaS pricing for small–mid teams). 

The best way to improve your creative operations

The best way to improve your creative operations is to get the right tools in place. A tool like Dash will help you manage, organise and share all the assets you’re creating, so your creative doesn’t get clogged up by bottlenecks.

With Dash, you’ll get a clean, searchable home for every approved asset, plus everything you need to keep creative moving across your team and channels. Take it for a spin with a free trial and see how much smoother your creative ops can feel.

FAQs about creative operations 

[fs-toc-omit] Should you hire a creative operations lead? 

You may be wondering if it's worth hiring someone to help you with your brand’s creative operations. Whilst creative ops can be a huge task if you’re a larger company, its not always necessary. Let's take a look at some reasons why you might - or might not - decide to hire.

When it is worth hiring a creative ops lead

Bringing in a creative ops lead usually makes sense when creative has become a high-volume, business-critical function. If you’re producing assets across multiple channels, launches and markets, having someone own the system behind the work can take a lot of pressure off the team. They bring consistency to briefs, keep workflows running, reduce messy feedback loops, and make approvals predictable. 

The downsides to hiring one

A creative ops lead is a real investment, so the cost needs to match the complexity you’re dealing with. If your workflow is still fairly simple, it can be overkill. There’s also a risk of hiring too early and ending up with more process than you need, especially if the person isn’t ecommerce-savvy. And like any role tied to change, it takes time to embed. You won’t feel the full impact if the rest of the team isn’t ready to follow a shared way of working.

If you’re on the fence

If your pain is mostly around asset chaos, slow reviews, or unclear ownership, you might not need a full-time hire yet. Some brands start by giving ops ownership to a studio lead or project manager, bringing in a freelance ops specialist for a short setup sprint, or tightening up the basics (workflow, briefs, feedback, DAM) first. If those foundations start to strain again as you grow, that’s usually the moment a dedicated creative ops lead really earns their keep.

[fs-toc-omit] What does creative operations mean?

Creative operations (creative ops) is how a team manages creative work end to end. It covers the people, processes, and tools that help creative go from request to approved asset in a smooth, repeatable way.

[fs-toc-omit] What is a creative operations lead?

A creative operations lead owns how the creative process runs. They set up workflows, improve briefing and feedback, plan resourcing, and remove bottlenecks so creative is delivered on time and at a consistent standard.

[fs-toc-omit] What is the difference between creative operations and marketing operations?

Creative ops focuses on making and managing creative assets. Marketing ops focuses on running and measuring marketing systems and performance — things like campaign planning, CRM, reporting, automation, and budgets. Creative ops supports production; marketing ops supports marketing scale and effectiveness.

[fs-toc-omit] What is the difference between creative operations and project management?

Project management is about delivering individual projects. Creative operations is the broader system those projects run through. Creative ops includes project tracking, but also covers briefing, feedback, approvals, asset storage, and continuous process improvement.