Cutting approval latency from nine days to two
By moving approvals out of email and into the workspace, Copperline shortened review cycles and made every sign-off auditable.
- Workflow design
- Advisory
9 → 2
Days per approval round
94%
Approvals with a written record
3
Brands run in parallel
The client
Copperline Agency
- Industry
- Digital agency
- Engagement
- Workflow design, Advisory
- Year
- 2024
“We didn't need a new tool. We needed the decision to live next to the work.”
Account director, Copperline Agency
The challenge
Approvals at Copperline lived in email, usually three threads deep and always missing one stakeholder. A single review round averaged nine days, and when a dispute arose about what was actually approved, nobody could produce the record.
The approach
We treated approval as a first-class object: one link, one decision, one timestamp. Each round now closes in the workspace with a named reviewer, and anything unanswered after four days escalates to the account lead automatically.
- Single-decision approval links per review round
- Four-day auto-escalation for open approvals
- Decision log attached to every project
- Separate brand identities per client
Making silence visible
The escalation rule mattered more than expected. Once account leads saw unanswered approvals on a dashboard, clients started responding faster — the process change was really a visibility change.
The outcome
Approval rounds now close in two days on average, and 94% of sign-offs carry a written record. Disputes about what was approved simply stopped happening.
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