The a2 Milk Company replaced email-based artwork approvals with a single workflow spanning internal teams in four markets and the external digital agencies working alongside them — giving marketing a documented approval record and removing the version control problems that came with managing packaging approvals by email.
About a2 Milk Company
The problem: manual approvals and no reliable record
Artwork creation and approval ran on a mixture of email, Microsoft Word templates attached to those emails, and personal follow-ups. It was slow, but the bigger issue was what it could not produce: a reliable record of who had approved what, and when.
Version control suffered accordingly. With approvals scattered across inboxes, there was no single answer to which version was current or whether every required step had actually happened.
“The consequences were that there were delays in asset design, approval and production, and there was a risk that necessary steps were missed due to inadequate oversight and manual processes.”
a2 Milk Company project manager
What they needed
a2 Milk Company turned to Simple Admation for marketing approval software that could:
- Pre-define workflows, contributions and required activities according to the type of asset being created
- Remove friction from feedback — multiple reviewers commenting at once, with version control and an audit trail of who contributed what
- Configure notifications and automation so assets did not stall between stages, reducing manual chasing
- Let reviewers mark up specific areas of a design to give feedback or approval
- Extend that markup capability to third parties, including external digital agencies, with access to the artwork they needed and nothing else
Working across internal teams and external agencies
That last requirement is the one worth dwelling on, because it is where most approval processes break down.
Like most brands of its size, a2 Milk Company does not produce everything internally. External digital agencies work on artwork alongside the internal marketing teams — and in an email-based process, that means the agency operates in a parallel universe. They receive files, send files back, and their feedback and sign-offs live in a different place to everyone else’s.
Simple Admation brought them into the same workflow. Agency users mark up artwork in the same environment as internal reviewers, with the same version control applied, and their contributions recorded in the same audit trail. Access is scoped to the artwork they are working on, so an external partner sees what they need without visibility of unrelated projects or internal areas of the platform.
The practical effect is one approval record rather than two. When the question is who approved this pack and on what basis, the answer does not depend on whether the person who approved it worked for a2 Milk Company or for one of its agencies.
The rollout: pilot first, then scale
Simple Admation worked with teams across Australia, New Zealand, Greater China and the United States to configure the platform, run training and walk-throughs with decision makers, and provide guides so attendees could support their own teams afterwards.
What made the rollout work was the decision not to switch on the whole business at once:
- A product champion was appointed as project lead, with the first department running as a pilot — allowing configuration to be adjusted before wider release
- Requirements were fed through heads of department, project leads and named admins, so they stayed clear and stable
- Users were trained only on the parts of the workflow relevant to them, reducing confusion
- Other departments were brought on gradually, each with internal advocates already using the platform
- Feature requests did not hold up the rollout — teams used the platform as it was while enhancements were developed
- Platform administration was formally handed over to named people at a2 Milk Company, establishing ongoing ownership
The entire implementation was delivered remotely across three regions, including early-morning sessions to reach the US team.
“We had no issues with the remote implementation. We rolled out Admation across three regions without any problem.”
a2 Milk Company project manager
The outcome
Structured implementation and clear ownership gave a2 Milk Company effective collaboration across its teams, a streamlined approval process, and automated notifications and reminders that keep work moving without manual chasing.
The more significant outcome is a reduced risk of non-compliance — against regulatory, brand, supply chain, customer, legal and manufacturing requirements. In a category where packaging claims are tightly governed, the ability to demonstrate that the right people reviewed the right version is not an administrative convenience. It is the point.
See how it works
Simple Admation connects briefing, online proofing, multi-stage approval routing and an automatic audit trail in one platform — for internal teams and the external partners working alongside them. See our customers for the organisations using it.