Case study - searchable talent database (Dragonfly)

Reducing development costs and streamlining business operations with GravityView

Written by Zack Katz

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Dragonfly came to GravityView seeking out a solution that would help them to modernise a database of talent that had been curated over a decade of work in the industry.

Dragonfly Video Production is a 15-year-old video production company based in London’s Soho Square. Striving to create unique, exciting content that’s truly a cut above the rest – they provide stellar production support and cinematic quality video for brands across the globe. 

The diversity of Dragonfly’s client list demonstrates their success at tailoring the message and production to suit the widest sectors — including leading charities, airlines, technology, health and beauty, retail, telecoms, automotive, government, education, insurance, food and drink, aerospace and fashion.

Dragonfly recently implemented a solution for their talent database using GravityView. By using Gravity Forms and GravityView, they were able to reduce development costs and improve business operations.

Dragonfly Talent Profile
Dragonfly’s curated talent database has media samples and contact details for their talent.

What Problem Were You Trying to Solve?

Our most valuable asset as a business is our global network of talent. We work with an agency business model, which means we rely on freelance suppliers to provide top quality services for our clients.

It’s crucial that our production team have quick and easy access to our talent pool. We had an existing “Talent Microsite”, which allowed us to store suppliers’ contact information, but it was becoming increasingly challenging to monitor and use.

We wanted to create a brand new, searchable front end for our database of talent, which would help us to organise and manage our network in an efficient way.

What Were the Shortcomings of Your Prior Talent Directory?

Our existing talent microsite was outdated and very clunky. It was built over 10 years ago, and was full of bugs and errors. The system was becoming very complex to use and update – the user interface was non-intuitive and it relied on multiple third party systems. We knew it was time to update, but anticipated a lengthy, difficult process.

Why Did You Choose GravityView?

GravityView was clearly the best option for us. It was so capable of working alongside Gravity Forms — a system we had used before — and required minimal modifications. Being able to use a pre-built tool helped us to lower costs as we built our database, and also ensured that our new system was ‘future proofed’.

Using GravityView to manage our network of talent has been a real game changer for us. It’s a real solution.

What Is Your Experience with GravityView?

Managing submissions with GravityView has been consistently straight forward. We’re able to manage a high-volume of applicants through the microsite, seamlessly organising them into categories that can be searched quickly and efficiently by our in-house production team.

Our network of talent is crucial to our success so using GravityView to manage our network of talent has been a real game changer for us. It’s a real solution.

Dragonfly Voiceover Talent Database

How Was It Working With GravityView From a Design Standpoint?

GravityView allowed us to design the front end of our database without limitation. The visual elements and layout are exactly on brand and fit seamlessly with our new website. It was excellent to work without restriction, and has produced an end result that we are all very happy with – and proud to share!

Most of our requirements were very easy to implement — as the functionality existed already within GravityView. A lot of the heavy lifting had been done for us — and anything we wanted to customise was fairly straight forward. It was a real pleasure to have a system that worked by default; making any bespoke alterations easy to implement.

It was a real pleasure to have a system that worked by default; making any bespoke alterations easy to implement.

How Has GravityView Impacted Your Business?

Using GravityView has saved us a huge amount of time — and money — both from a development point of view, and in terms of our day-to-day operations.

Dragonfly Talent Sign-Up powered by GravityView
Dragonfly’s custom talent database is powered by Gravity Forms and GravityView

GravityView helped us streamline our internal systems and processes, aiding our production team as we turn around complex projects to tight deadlines. With GravityView’s help, the Talent Microsite has reduced our production team’s workload, allowing us to complete jobs more quickly and efficiently.

The impact of the tool is far reaching — we use it across our business:

  • For internal use: Our production team can search and allocate jobs seamlessly using the talent microsite.
  • For freelance talent: We invite freelance talent to sign up using our online form – which automatically categorizes and filters the applications into our searchable database.
  • For clients: Using our bespoke Voiceover Microsite, our clients are given the opportunity to browse and select voice talent. This is an enormous time saver for us as a production company – and ensures client satisfaction. We’re very proud to be able to share such an intuitive, modern tool with our clients – and feel it really represents us as a business.

Everything continues to function like clockwork.

Generally, we’ve seen far fewer people struggling to use the new microsite – virtually nobody has experienced issues compared to our previous system. Everything continues to function like clockwork.

What Would You Say to a Business Considering GravityView?

GravityView is the most impressive plugin we’ve used by a long margin — we would recommend it without hesitation. This couldn’t be more genuine — any new website we built in the future, GravityView will be our go-to.


Thank you, Dragonfly, for sharing your experiences with GravityView!

GravityView is a WordPress plugin that allows you to display Gravity Forms entries on the front end of your website. Do you have inefficient databases or directories? Do you power your business with private, fragile spreadsheets or applications? Try GravityView today.

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