VML Bloodstream
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Every idea has
a heartbeat.

Ideas deserve to live. They pulse through briefs and handoffs, through brainstorms and late nights, evolving as they go. Bloodstream exists to keep the pulse strong.

VML South Africa — Brief Management & Delivery Platform
Exco Overview — April 2026
The challenge

What we're solving

Briefs arrive inconsistent and incomplete

No visibility into pipeline, quality, or resource pressure

Reverts and rework cost production time nobody tracks

The platform

The agency's
circulatory system

AI-powered brief management and delivery platform — from intake to production tracking. Built specifically for VML SA.

Discover
Define
Develop
Deliver
Diagnose

Integrated with Workbook • OKTA SSO • Box.com • Microsoft Graph • N8N

The question we get asked

Why not just use WPP Open?

WPP Open

  • AI for campaign work — planning, creative, audience, media
  • Generative content at scale
  • Agent Hub, Open Intelligence, Adobe + Google Earth
  • Closed ecosystem of WPP tools
  • Designed for clients & marketers

Bloodstream

  • AI for agency work — briefs, traffic, scheduling, production
  • Workflow across the full delivery lifecycle
  • Live integration with Workbook (timesheets, jobs, resources, rates)
  • Open integration: Box, Microsoft Graph, N8N, OKTA, Supabase
  • Designed for VML South Africa agency teams

WPP Open is how we make the work.
Bloodstream is how we run the agency that makes the work.

The journey

Built on proven foundations

Antonio's Briefing Tool

  • Functional brief upload prototype
  • AI enhancement workflows
  • Complexity framework (Green / Orange / Red)
  • Section-by-section AI prompts

Bloodstream Platform

  • Production-grade infrastructure
  • 10+ system integrations
  • Full brief-to-delivery lifecycle
  • Client Portal + Studio Portal
  • Quoting, scheduling & traffic command
  • Governance & audit trails
What's shipped

Live on Production

Briefing
Client PortalSeparate client-facing deployment
AI Brief Enhancement3 complexity levels • section-by-section
Pulse CheckAI quality scoring before finalisation
Vision ExtractionImage-heavy & scanned brief support
Internal Briefs6 types — Production, Events, Radio, Stills, Renewal, Agency
Delivery & Production
Traffic Command CentreBook & Brief, dispatch, attention lanes, revisions
Scheduling443 resources, 33,000+ jobs synced from Workbook
Today ViewCurrent bookings • mark-as-done
Quoting Tool4-step wizard • live Rate Cards
Job Vitals & Client HealthBurn rates, deadlines, compliance
Studio Portal (Axon)Internal brief tracker
Revert SystemAI adjudication • severity tracking
Meeting MagicianAI scheduler with Teams integration
Platform & Governance
Circulation DashboardPipeline metrics • AI impact
Social PlannerContent calendar • client review • approvals
Admin & PermissionsRole-based + Super User
OKTA SSO Authentication
Workbook Data SyncDaily automated sync
Box.com IntegrationAuto folder creation
Audit LogEvery action logged
NotificationsEmail + in-app
Bug Logging & User GuidesFAQs • onboarding • feedback
In testing

Built & In Testing

Preview

Timing Plan Generator

Chat wizard, AI Review, save/discard baseline, Gantt, drag-to-reschedule.

Complete 90%
Preview

Resource Planner

Annual campaign calendar with heat-mapped resource pressure and overlap detection.

Complete 100%
In Testing

Chronos Time Push

Flag-gated push of time entries from Bloodstream tasks back to Chronos.

Complete 60%
In Testing

AI Timing Plan Review

Diff baseline vs live state to flag what changed, why, and what's at risk.

Complete 75%
Deep dive

Traffic Command Centre

What it does today

  • Book & Brief flow — initiate, dispatch, route to teams
  • Attention lanes on the Board
  • Bulk actions + revision indicators
  • Saved views + workload scope toggle
  • Timeline + Workload views
  • KPI expansion + smart-chip filters
  • Sub-brief sequencing
  • Email notifications to teams

Why it matters

  • Quick view of resource availability — who's free, who's loaded
  • AI resource matching — find the right person, not just the available one
  • Everything pushes through to Workbook — agency source of truth
  • One pane of glass for all in-flight work
  • Replaces ad-hoc spreadsheets, Slack threads, status meetings
  • Traffic plans against actual capacity, not assumptions

Bloodstream is the workflow layer. Workbook stays the operating platform behind the scenes.

What's next

The Living Timing Plan

Every other tool we've built feeds into one thing — a Timing Plan that's alive.

Now

Living Timing Plan

Timing Plans pull real data from Scheduling and Traffic, sync user tasks, surface resource availability live

Timesheet Integration

Timing Plan tasks become Workbook timesheet entries via Chronos push

Then

Resource Availability Awareness

Auto-detect conflicts against live scheduling capacity

Then

Rollout & Adoption

Onboarding broader agency teams, training, embedding into daily ops

Later

Continuous Optimisation

Feedback loops from delivery data back into AI estimates and quoting

Every tool feeds the Timing Plan. The Timing Plan becomes the operating rhythm of the agency.

Under the hood

Production-ready, not prototype

60+ tables
Database architecture across 2 Supabase projects with row-level security
58+ migrations
Versioned, sequential database migrations — structured and repeatable
100k+ records
Synced daily from Workbook — resources, jobs, bookings, capacity
Full audit
Every AI interaction logged — model, tokens, cost, execution time
Workbook API
Reverse-engineered undocumented API with 7+ Databoard integrations
OKTA SSO
WPP authentication with non-standard JWT handling and session management
By the numbers

Scale of the build

126,000+
Lines of Code
251
Components
60+
Database Tables
31
Pages
10+
Integrations
513+
Commits
43
Env Variables
5.5
Months
Effort comparison

What this would have taken

22+ months
Traditional development
1 senior full-stack developer
5.5 months
AI-augmented development
1 developer + Claude

~4x acceleration — production enterprise software, not throwaway code

Philosophy

AI isn't a feature.
It's the architecture.

Brief enhancement
Strategic advice
Quality pulse check
Timing plan generation
AI Timing Plan Review
Revert adjudication
Meeting scheduling
Quote scope matching
Vision extraction
Traffic resource matching

And the platform itself was built with AI.

Experience

See it in action

Every idea has a heartbeat.

Bloodstream keeps it beating.
VML Bloodstream