"I can show managers how long a job takes and what it takes to finish it," Roger says.

He also developed a Clients & Profits workflow chart. From this template, the department can easily plug in start and due dates, milestone dates, and other key information. "We hand it to the manager so they know exactly where their job will be as specific times," Roger says.

Currently, the creative services division is the heaviest user of Clients & Profits. "We're rolling it into the other departments," Roger explains. For example, the company's video department uses scheduling and job tickets, but depends on creative services to do the data entry. "We'll set them up as a cost center and bring them up to speed over the next year," Roger says. "Then they can do their own work."

Implementing controls

Keeping on top of about 200 active jobs at a time is no small feat. "My day starts with a production meeting first thing in the morning," Roger says, "then we have another short, informal one before we go home to check up on the day's progress." Production reports generated from Clients & Profits, along with automatic email sent when job status codes change, simplifies the process significantly. But some really big, complex jobs are supplemented with two magnetic job boards. "We use colored magnets to mark days and status codes so everyone can see right where a job is," Roger says. "We run all kinds of jobs through C&P," Roger says. The department produces a variety of collateral such as hats, logos, pens, banners, balloons, posters, and in-store displays for dish distributors. Additionally, EchoStar produces in-house video specials, commercials, and other broadcast media.

Pinpointing artists' downtime

All of the department's four project specialists input job tickets -- sometimes dozens a day -- to schedule tasks and keep the work flowing smoothly through creative. "They deserve major kudos for all their work on the front line," Roger says. With the four specialists staying on top of the work-to-do, the department is able to maintain a good and accurate schedule. Now, the communications department can pinpoint downtime for the artists, which lets them "plug in" small jobs. "Some of the smaller, quick-turn jobs aren't scheduled," Roger says. "It would take more time to do that than to finish the job."

One of the first things Roger did when he came on board was check out the built-in reports in Clients & Profits.

Not only does he run several workflow reports, he also dug into financial analysis. ("I had just finished my MBA," Roger explains, "and looking at the numbers just came naturally.")

One of the managers wanted a little more information about a certain job, so Roger ran a couple of reports from Clients & Profits. They discovered that there were 150 hours logged to the job, but no work had been produced! "Management was floored," he said. Another unpleasant surprise showed 47 hours of time logged to a job that was canceled.

By analyzing these reports, EchoStar can see howmuch we're spending and why. "It's really helped us take control and educate the other departments about what we can and can't do."

Motivating the crew

Although there was some initial resistance to the new use of Clients & Profits, the breakthrough occurred after the company demonstrated the vision of the corporate communications department. By showing them where the department is going, a lot of resistance to the new system evaporated. "Once they saw the reports from Clients & Profits, they were more okay with adapting to Clients & Profits," Roger says. (Not to mention that the word came down that anyone who didn't want to use it could look at the classifieds.) "Folks got motivated to take 20 minutes to add their time," he says.

Since the project specialists (the folks who make sure the jobs get done) were used to entering data in to Clients & Profits, the greatest resistance was adapting to creating schedules. But once they realized the value of scheduling and data tracking they grew to depend on it. "Now, if we have a power failure or tornado or something that pulls the system down, we can't be without it," Roger says.

Blazing a trail in satellite TV

EchoStar Communications Corp. was founded in 1980 by Charlie Ergen, his wife Cindy, and James DeFranco. Over the past two decades, the company has been blazing a trail in satellite television. Noted for an impressive list of industry "firsts," EchoStar recently won the "Best of What's New" award from Popular Science for developing in cooperation with WebTV Networks, Inc. the DISHPlayer, the world's first interactive satellite TV receiver.

EchoStar is traded on NASDAQ as DISH and DISHP, and was ranked 551 by Fortune Magazine in 2001. The company is the twentieth largest media company in the world, ranked by Ad Age, and second only to DirecTV in its media sector.