IST Management Case Study: AI Headshots for 1,800+ Staff
For fifteen years, IST Management sent employees to JCPenney photo studios to get their headshots taken. Switching to Aragon cut the cost per photo by about 40% and saved an estimated $25,000 to $30,000 this year.
Company: IST Management
Industry: Business process outsourcing
About IST Management
IST Management handles facilities management, mail and print operations, document management, and litigation support for its clients. Roughly 1,800 employees work on-site at client locations across every major market in the US. Because staff work inside client buildings under the IST name, how they show up on the website, in proposals, and on business cards is part of how the company presents itself.
The Challenge
IST's CEO wanted every employee's headshot on their business card. Finding a photographer in every market was the hard part, so the team partnered with JCPenney. The stores had portrait studios, the same backdrop everywhere, and a location in most of the markets IST worked in.
Employees were emailed a certificate, booked their own appointment, and drove to the store on their own time. They got three photos back, unedited, and sometimes at a resolution the design team could not use.
- Travel: the nearest store could be 90 minutes to two hours away
- Time: half a day to a full day per person
- Chasing: months of follow-up to get a single headshot
- Inconsistency: employees who did not like their photo sent in their own instead, and those never matched
- Cost: session fees plus travel and lost work time, across 1,800 people
"We would chase people sometimes for months to get their headshot... So it was all over the place."
— Brad Burgess, Vice President of Marketing
The Solution
Brad's team tested eight AI headshot providers. Three people went through each one the way an employee would.
"We looked at eight different providers... None of them were even close to the solution y'all provided."
— Brad Burgess, Vice President of Marketing
Two things decided it. The first was the interface.
"Your user experience and your user interface were just so clean, so professional looking, that we were like, sending our people here is not going to make them feel like they're going to some weird sketchy website, because a lot of them had really bad user interfaces."
The second was that the results looked like the person, which several other tools could not manage.
"We had people that were like, I would love to be a size zero, but I'm not. But this AI picture keeps making me a size zero, or it would do really weird stuff with their heads."
"Y'all's product looked like the people. All those little questions y'all ask at the beginning allowed us to get people that looked like them."
Employees pick their own wardrobe and backgrounds, and marketing runs the program centrally instead of managing 1,800 separate conversations. IST started with 50 credits, has run 80 employees through, and is buying more.
What Changed
The old process took half a day. The new one takes about five minutes.
"Overall the reaction's been incredible because it takes five minutes."
"There's no more harassing, there's no more begging for pictures, there's no more pleading for people to go, there's no more wasted emails. We send the link, we have no pushback, they click on the link, they complete it."
Employees get 100 images and choose their own. New hires finish before their start date, so their headshot is on the website, in their email signature, and on their business cards on day one.
| Traditional studio process | Aragon | |
|---|---|---|
| Employee time | Half a day to a full day | About 5 minutes |
| Travel | Up to two hours each way | None |
| Photos delivered | 3, unedited | 100 |
| Consistency | Varied by store, plus self-submitted replacements | Consistent across the team |
| New hires | Live weeks after their start date | Live on day one |
| Cost | Session fees, travel, lost work time | Flat rate, based on plan |
Results
- Over four hours saved per employee
- 5x to 10x faster initial edits for the design team, since files arrive correctly sized
- About 40% lower cost per photo
- Roughly $5,000 in hard costs saved so far this year
- An estimated $25,000 to $30,000 in total, counting time
"For our employees, easily a half day saved, and even more importantly, a half day of frustration saved."
— Brad Burgess, Vice President of Marketing
The headshots on IST's website are now made with Aragon.
"IST is a large company, but it's not a Fortune 500 company. We're not a billion dollar company by any stretch, but we compete against those... We're now able to showcase our employees in a more consistent, beautiful, natural way that we just weren't getting from the old headshot world."
— Brad Burgess, Vice President of Marketing
"I love the product. I love that it's easier. I love that we're saving money. I love that I know who I'm working with, that it's real people that are helping us."
— Brad Burgess, Vice President of Marketing, IST Management
A great team deserves great headshots.
Generate your team's headshots in minutes →
Learn More with Aragon
- Headshots for remote teams – how distributed organizations get consistent headshots quickly.
- Corporate headshots at scale – what enterprise rollouts look like from planning to delivery.
- Branded backgrounds for teams – apply your own backgrounds and styles across all staff photos.
- Keep your data secure – how Aragon handles photos and data.
- Read another customer story – Foundation Academy, 200 staff, six weeks down to two hours.
FAQs
Q: How much time does an employee spend on this?
About five minutes. They upload their selfies from wherever they are. No scheduling, travel, or appointment.
Q: Will headshots look consistent across a distributed team?
Yes. IST has employees in every major market, and their old approach produced visible variation between locations even though every photo came from the same studio chain. Admins can also apply branded backgrounds across the whole team.
Q: Can you tell which headshots are AI-generated?
The headshots on IST's website are now Aragon-generated, sitting alongside traditional photography. In their assessment, the difference is not apparent.
Q: Is this cheaper than traditional photography?
IST reports about 40% savings per photo, roughly $5,000 in hard costs this year, and an estimated $25,000 to $30,000 once time is counted. Our cost calculator can estimate your own.
Q: Is it secure?
Aragon is SOC 2 Type II compliant.
