How Northfold cut approval time from 9 days to 3

Northfold is a 24-person design studio in Bristol. They work on identities, campaigns and digital products for clients who are, in Hannah Pryce's words, "lovely, busy and very good at not opening attachments".

The challenge

Before Ferrybox, a typical review at Northfold looked like this. A designer exported a PDF, a project manager wrote an email, the client forwarded it to two colleagues, and the feedback came back in three replies that didn't agree with each other. Then someone asked which version they were looking at.

On average, getting a deliverable approved took nine days. Very little of that was the client thinking about the work. Most of it was waiting: for the email to be opened, for the right person to look, for a reminder to go out.

Project managers carried the cost. Every Friday went on chasing sign-offs so the next week's work could start, and every chase was a slightly awkward email that nobody enjoyed writing.

• Feedback arrived by email, in calls and in comments on shared drives
• Nobody could say for certain which version a client had approved
• Friday afternoons were reserved for chasing

What they changed

Northfold moved every active client to a Ferrybox portal over two weeks, starting with the three projects that had the longest review queues.

Designers now publish versions straight from Figma. Clients open a link – no account, no password – and comment directly on the frame. Each comment is tied to the version it was made on, so "the one with the blue header" stopped being a sentence anyone had to decode.

The bigger change was making approval a button. Clients approve a version with one click, and Ferrybox records who did it and when. If nobody responds, the portal sends reminders on its own schedule, so project managers no longer have to.

Internal updates go to Slack, so the team sees approvals as they happen instead of discovering them in an inbox on Monday.

The team kept the rollout simple. Each client got a short welcome note in the portal explaining how to comment and approve, and the first review in the new process was always a small one, so clients could try it on something low-stakes.

The results

Within the first quarter, the average approval at Northfold dropped from nine days to three. Review emails fell by 70%, because the conversation moved into the portal and stayed there.

Each project manager got around 14 hours a month back – time that used to go on reminders and status updates.

The studio also stopped losing track of what was agreed. When a client asks for a change to something already approved, the record shows what was signed off and when. That conversation is now short and friendly, rather than long and uncomfortable.

Northfold runs every client project through Ferrybox today, and new clients get their portal link in the kickoff email.