Creative Services ERP Platform for Packaging Design
Overview
A comprehensive enterprise resource planning system built specifically for creative agencies serving enterprise CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) clients. The platform manages the complete lifecycle of packaging design projects—from initial client request through multi-stage approvals, time tracking, and complex billing workflows—handling hundreds of concurrent projects with thousands of individual artwork pieces.
This system replaced fragmented spreadsheets and email-based processes with a unified workflow that captures every billable minute, tracks every design revision, and documents every client approval.
From Custom Solution to Market-Ready Product
Artis was originally developed as a bespoke system tailored to the specific business processes of a packaging design agency. Over 10 years of production use, it evolved into a mature, battle-tested platform handling real enterprise workloads.
The publicly available demo represents a standalone, market-ready product—decoupled from the original client's proprietary data and processes. I have authored comprehensive documentation to support commercialization:
- Product Guide — customer-facing detailed functional specifications that frame the system around business value and real workflows
- Go-to-Market Strategy — positioning, target segments, pricing models, and competitive analysis
Key Achievements
- Sole developer and architect for 10 years (2015-2025), responsible for the entire technical stack, business analysis, and direct client communication
- Unified legacy spreadsheets and manual workflows into a single tool, eliminating context-switching and duplicate data entry, saving hours of rework each week
- Reduced billing cycle time through automated invoice generation with per-piece pricing calculations and rush fee automation
- Eliminated revenue leakage via comprehensive time tracking and per-piece artwork tracking that ensures every billable item flows through to invoicing
- Delivered comprehensive reporting suite with 34+ financial and operational reports giving leadership a 360° view of profitability for data-driven decisions
- Built self-service customer portal for project requests and approvals, speeding up order workflows and freeing the account team for higher-value work
Functional Modules
Dashboard & Project Workspace
Work starts at the Dashboard—a filterable command center showing every project's status, team, deadline, and financial position. Exception alerts highlight budget overruns and missing estimates before they become problems. Opening a project reveals the complete picture: individual artworks with complexity-based pricing, time records broken down by week and activity, approval journeys tracking reviewer decisions, quality threads documenting issues and resolutions, linked estimates and purchase orders.
Project & Artwork Lifecycle
Multi-tab project view with 12+ status stages and validation rules. Per-piece pricing engine with 4 complexity tiers (Extra Simple to Complex), automatic rush fee calculation, and alteration tracking that distinguishes free revisions from billable changes. Bulk Excel import for artwork catalogs with validation.
Client Approval Portal
Dedicated external interface for client reviewers with task-based organization (My Tasks, In Process, Completed). In-browser PDF preview, single-click approvals, structured rejection with marked PDF upload. Complete audit trail for compliance—who approved what, when, with comments.
Project Estimates & Purchase Orders
Estimate PDF generation with multi-project consolidation, and direct client email delivery. Automatic PO creation from approved estimates locks in pricing and establishes billing boundaries. Revisions tracking of estimates. Artwork-to-PO locking ensures estimate-to-invoice integrity.
Financial Operations & Billing
Purchase Order lifecycle with real-time budget monitoring, 95% threshold alerts, and automatic date extension when project work exceeds PO periods. Monthly billing workflow with multi-manager approval, PDF invoice generation, and invoice override support. Accrued vs. actual reconciliation for revenue recognition (ASC 606/IFRS 15 compliant).
34+ Analytical Reports
Comprehensive reporting hub across Billing, Projects, Time, and General categories. Per-piece profitability analysis, PO tracking with hierarchical breakdowns, cycle-time metrics, and approval workflow analytics. Excel/PDF/CSV export with scheduled delivery.
Time & Resource Management
Integrated time capture within project context with activity categorization. Weekly timesheet grid with submission and approval workflow. PM time estimates for capacity planning with calendar visualization. Automatic PTO accruals by tenure level.
35+ Background Automation Jobs
Custom-built job scheduler running approval reminders, deadline alerts, PO expiration warnings, and billing triggers. Queue-based email with retry logic for reliable delivery. Automatic cloud archival (Dropbox) for audit-ready document retention.
Technologies
Backend: ASP.NET Web Forms • Web API • .NET Framework • Entity Framework 6 • SQL Server
Architecture: Modular Monolith • DDD • CQRS • Clean Architecture
Frontend: AngularJS • TypeScript • SCSS
Infrastructure: Custom background jobs • Queue-based messaging • Dropbox API
My Role
I served as the exclusive developer, architect, and business analyst for this enterprise system over a decade-long engagement. My responsibilities encompassed:
Business Analysis & Requirements Engineering
Gathered requirements directly from stakeholders in user-story format, formalized them into technical specifications, and created lifecycle diagrams for complex entities like Purchase Orders. Navigated ambiguous client terminology to build coherent, industry-aligned workflows.
Full-Stack Development
Designed and implemented every layer: database schema with hundreds of tables, backend API architecture, domain logic, and responsive frontend interfaces. Built the system to handle complex billing scenarios.
Architecture Evolution
Progressively refactored the architecture as the system grew, ultimately achieving a modular monolith with clear bounded contexts. Implemented port-adapter patterns for infrastructure dependencies, ensuring the core domain remained isolated and testable.
Performance Engineering
Identified and resolved performance bottlenecks through database optimization (indexes, materialized views, denormalization), deferred financial calculations using a custom queue system, and caching optimizations.
DevOps & Infrastructure
Built all background processing in-application since the hosting environment didn't support external schedulers—including graceful shutdown handling. Implemented security measures and diagnostic collection for system health monitoring.