PASADENA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Central Desktop, provider of the industry-leading cloud-based social collaboration platform for businesses, today announced the availability of its Common Ground™ edition, a new collaboration solution designed to help marketing agencies maximize billing hours and increase client retention. Common Ground is built on Central Desktop’s award-winning collaboration platform and is the first solution on the market to integrate an online review and approve process for creative files. Common Ground features a complete suite of tools that enables internal and external teams to streamline creative and operational processes, facilitate social collaboration, share files and centralize communication.

“We developed Common Ground specifically for marketing agencies to help them solve day-to-day business challenges”

Marketing, advertising and creative agencies are under tremendous pressure to deliver top-notch campaigns in the shortest time frame possible. As client engagements are added, relying on phone, email, FTP and in-person meetings to communicate becomes increasingly fragmented and inefficient. The creative workflow process also becomes difficult to manage, leading to miscommunication, missed deadlines and long review cycles. To address these problems, Central Desktop introduced Common Ground to enhance client communication, streamline processes and improve project management.

Common Ground by Central Desktop features:

• Client Connect – Create a virtual team room that serves as a centralized online location for communication between the account team and clients.
• Digitized Review ± Approve – Provide in-line edits directly on proofs of nearly any format including JPEG, PSD, PDF, MPG, AVI, MOV and SWF. With Common Ground’s built-in approval workflow, proofs are easily routed to different stakeholders for review and approval.
• Feedback Loop – Keep clients on track with deadlines and expedite the client feedback process by setting up a shared workspace for discussing the latest proofs.
• Work Order Manager – Automate the work order process with Common’s Ground’s powerful workflow functionality. Create workflow rules that automatically assign tasks and send alerts.
• Innovation Room – Establish an “offline” brainstorming workspace to spur innovation. Maintain a knowledgebase of new ideas, research and creatives.
• Pursuit Suite – Collaborate with key internal members on proposals, RFP responses, presentations and other files. Simultaneously edit documents, hold threaded discussions and consolidate feedback before presenting to prospective clients.
• Media Share – Use Common Ground to share files with vendors, partners and media outlets instead of using email and FTP.

“Different market segments and departmental use cases naturally have different needs and requirements for their collaboration solutions,” said Brad Shimmin, principal analyst at Current Analysis. “Central Desktop clearly understands this and has developed a very productized and targeted solution for marketing agencies. Common Ground’s Review + Approve functionality in particular is extremely well-integrated with Central Desktop’s platform and provides a seamless experience for users without imposing bespoke development work.”

“We developed Common Ground specifically for marketing agencies to help them solve day-to-day business challenges,” said Isaac Garcia, CEO and co-founder of Central Desktop. “With the integration of three critical applications – in-line annotation of media files, complex file sharing and social media – into one easy-to-use system, Common Ground is the most comprehensive collaboration solution for marketing agencies. Our strategy going forward is to continue adding functionality to Common Ground while developing these customized end-to-end solutions that address the specific needs of our target market segments.”

Pricing and Availability

Central Desktop’s Common Ground is now available in two editions, Common Ground Essentials and Common Ground Elite. Pricing starts at $899 per month for small teams.

For more information, please visit http://www.commongroundmarketing.com/.

About Central Desktop

Central Desktop delivers a cloud-based social collaboration platform that revolutionizes how people connect and share information to drive profitable business results. Businesses of all sizes use Central Desktop’s complete online collaboration solution to manage projects and documents in the cloud with colleagues, customers and partners. Key Central Desktop customers include the Humane Society of the United States, CBS, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Netflix, Gymboree, Workday and Harvard University. Founded in 2005, Central Desktop is a privately-held company with headquarters in Pasadena, California. For more information about the company, visit http://www.centraldesktop.com.