Successful Brand Management Requires Enterprise Digital Asset Management

Transcription

1 Successful Brand Management Requires Enterprise Digital Asset Management Nuxeo White Paper

2 Introduction: Building caring, genuine brand experiences requires enterprise-class DAM The fastest way to achieve a strong brand reputation is to build trust, says legendary marketing author and thought leader Seth Godin. Being trusted is the single most urgent way to build a business. 1 Gaining that trust, Godin says, requires engaging with customers at a human being to human being level, in ways that are relevant, authentic, and above all, caring: A brand can t care. All that can care is people [The organization] can hire people [and] reward people who care, and do work that demonstrates they care What we find is that the more people care, ironically, the better they do compared to the industrialized [marketers] who don t care and are just doing it for the money. 2 Brands that cling to old school notions of interruptive marketing and internally focused brand management will fall further behind. The brands that win will be those that cultivate caring, genuine engagement with their customers. In today s interconnected world, that means creating new, memorable digital media. However, as Seth Godin notes, brands have, for the most part, done a pretty poor job of building owned digital media properties. 3 Creating meaningful new digital media assets that build customer trust requires new, enterpriseclass digital asset management (DAM). This paper will inform you how true enterprise-level DAM is vital to successful brand management today. You will discover how enterprise DAM empowers workers and managers across departments, regions and countries to design, collaborate, track, publish and re-purpose digital assets, in ways that workgrouporiented DAM tools for small teams cannot match. With everyone on the same creative page, enterpriselevel DAM is a force multiplier, enabling faster and more effective digital asset planning and design that builds trust, brand reputation and new business. 1 Joe Lazauskas, You Need Editors, Not Brand Managers': Marketing Legend Seth Godin on the Future of Branded Content, The Content Strategist (Feb. 6, 2015). 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. Page 2

3 Legacy digital asset management is placing your brand at risk The new, enlightened brand management that Seth Godin calls for is especially critical for large multinational organizations, which must manage their respective brands with a global perspective. Legacy DAM tools simply can no longer keep up. First-generation (today s legacy) DAM tools create digital replicas of virtually all asset types in place of the original physical objects. While making it easier to store and distribute these assets, legacy DAM tools do little to provide a system of centralized management, visibility, or control over critical brand asset files, burgeoning in quantity as well as new file types. Organizations that delay in replacing legacy DAM systems will fall further behind competitors, with slow and unreliable processes through which content was created, modified, approved, and distributed through a variety of channels. This also needlessly keeps managers overseeing asset management in fire drill mode. In contrast, enterprise DAM meets today s business challenges by adding intelligence and metadata-fueled processes to digital asset storage, handling, retrieval, and distribution across multiple systems, virtual frameworks, and time zones. To keep up with the pace of accelerating business and technology advances, and to ensure that brand assets and long-term equity are protected and managed consistently. Upgrading to a full-featured enterprise DAM solution is vital to realizing the total business value of assets. Unlike the one-to-one relationship between an asset and file typical in legacy DAM tools, true enterpriseclass DAM embeds intelligence in the form of metadata and workflow processes into each digital asset. Assets can have multiple dimensions, more akin to software objects or containers, through the addition of rich metadata. Modifiable properties can be attached to the objects that represent individual assets and these properties can guide content creation, management, and consumption. This approach provides greater visibility to the entire range of enterprise assets regardless of where they are produced or stored and, in turn, enhances value throughout the entire lifecycle of each asset. A well-planned metadata schema creates foundational value, providing the conceptual architecture needed to make content more discoverable, accessible and ultimately, more valuable. Metadata turns video, audio or graphic files into smart content that is available to re-use, re-purpose or simply to inspire. The strength and relevance of the metadata associated with an asset is what makes it findable, and therefore usable. When done well, metadata is imperceptible and intuitive.4 Enlightened brand management is a multi-faceted discipline that becomes substantially easier through modern enterprise DAM. 4 Joe Horodyski, Metadata Maturity Helps You Maintain Business Relevance, CMS Wire (April 1, 2015). Page 3

4 Enterprise digital asset management enables digital business transformation New digital technologies have created a massive shift in IT infrastructures, organizational strategies and business processes. As digital transformation continues to make inroads into every aspect of business, Gartner advises that companies begin a digital strategy conversation to discover the most effective ways to integrate advanced communication and digital tools into operations, and encourage CIOs to identify and respond to digital opportunities within the enterprise. 5 Gartner 6 identifies digital business as an advanced stage of its digital transformation roadmap and maturity model, which focuses on the convergence of people, business and things amid an emergent blurring between the physical and virtual worlds. Enterprise-class DAM has a clear and vital role to play here, enabling effective collaboration and management of huge volumes of brand assets required to support brand engagement at all levels - from global to local - in a cohesive way despite the complexities of diverse arrays of systems, storage formats, legal issues, approval processes, worldwide distribution needs, and localization issues encountered in today s globalized marketplace. Enterprise digital asset management is key to brand protection and consistency Protecting brand integrity and preserving consistency across multiple channels should be a prime consideration for every organization in the digital age, but a recent Gleanster survey suggested DAM solutions at many organizations are not up to the task. According to the survey results, 67% of all organizations lagging behind top performers reported that while they have tools to centralize digital assets, they still struggle with effectively reusing their assets. Many organizations in this group, Gleanster noted, still maintain content on separate share drives and suffer from vast asset management inefficiencies, requiring staff to spend up to five times longer to obtain the right content for their needs. 7 Digital content transform into digital assets once organizations make them easily identifiable, searchable and available in real time to those who need them. Market competitors who can achieve digital asset status quickly improve their odds of winning in today s fast-moving, multichannel marketing and sales environment. 8 The fundamental challenges faced by organizations addressing brand management include: Lack of a centralized asset repository. A readily accessible repository does not exist for hosting, sharing, and updating branded digital assets. Effective management of large volumes of assets. Basic asset management processes, such as collaborative creation, approval, and distribution, overwhelm staff members because of the massive volumes being handled. 5 Lee Weldon, Gartner, Agenda Overview for CIO Research, 2015, (January 2, 2015). 6 Gartner, Gartner's 2014 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Maps the Journey to Digital Business (August 11, 2014). 7 Gleanster, Gleansight Benchmark Report - Digital Asset Management (2014). 8 Ibid (emphasis added). Page 4

5 Inconsistencies among assets. Asset version control, status, permissions, legal issues, and similar properties are not handled consistently across the organization, creating confusion and inefficiency. Digital asset management, by any other name File management problems. The vast numbers of files in asset libraries and across an organization s network create ongoing management problems, wasting time and money through inefficient use of resources. A good DAM will provide control and visibility over all the assets for a brand, from creation through to distribution and archiving, including approval tracking and rights management. An immediate benefit of a DAM is that users can see which assets already exist, giving them the potential to re-use existing material, rather than commissioning new content or artwork. Clearly, this removal of unnecessary duplication saves both time and money for the organization. 9 While the terminology describing DAM systems may vary somewhat according to the field or discipline, the essential elements remain the same. Branded content management, for example, applies more directly to the types of assets at the heart of an organization. The Gartner IT glossary uses the term branded content management and defines it in these terms: From a technology perspective, branded content management is the automation of processes from initial creative idea through to production and storage and, ultimately, to the fulfillment of branded content in the field and across various channels/media. The range and variety of DAMs available in the industry can create confusion, as capabilities vary greatly. DAM capabilities are also sometimes made available as a specialized subset of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. Without integration into existing systems, however, much of the business value of DAM tools is lost. Enterprise DAM: Out with content overload, in with consistent brand storytelling Content overload is a universal problem that extends across the entire corporate spectrum, but it is particularly acute for organizations at the enterprise that generate and distribute massive volumes of digital content to a global customer base at transactional levels in the millions. Many of these organizations particularly those in the upper tiers of brand recognition have the additional problem of controlling the creation and distribution of brand assets across an international workforce where effective collaboration and consistency are absolute requirements. A 2015 market intelligence report from AIIM, the Association for Information and Image Management, indicated that most businesses see enterprise content and document management as a mission-critical issue. But even as they are taking steps to address the problem, content is often spread across three or more systems for handling content, records, and document management, making it difficult to integrate asset management across differing systems Liz McClellan, How to Use Digital Asset Management to Protect Your Brand, Business2Community (March 24, 2015). 10 Doug Miles, AIIM, ECM Decisions: Strategic Options for Managing, Accessing, and Preserving Content (2015). Page 5

6 Part of the problem is coordinating the story being told by the brand assets, achieving consistency in transmedia storytelling, as described by digital media strategist Alex Struminger: A movie or publishing franchise may have a combination of video, books, games, toys, live events and social media activities all under the umbrella of a single unified story theme. The digital assets required to manage such a complex and multi-dimensional campaign are often staggering in number. [A recent] interactive campaign for a global soft drink brand required the management of around 80,000 pieces of digital video and the metadata needed to organize them! 11 Today, we ve entered the brave new world of digital assets where the storage and distribution challenges are very different from the days of physical objects. As organizations struggle to organize, filter, archive, and distribute the mounting gigabytes of assets, DAM has introduced tools that offer promise in not only organizing assets, but also using them in a more consistent way. DAM initiatives that extend beyond isolated departments or regional facilities, connected to the rest of an organization's ECM system, leverage greater value from effective integration. The efficiency of the work environment that Gartner calls the digital workplace is heavily dependent on shared assets, knowledge, and skills, which in turn relates to the degree of integration of the toolsets used for asset management. "By collecting related digital workplace tools and services into a common portfolio, IT leaders can more easily promote skills transfer and application reuse across the three constituencies: employees, partners and customers. Experience gained in mobile application development for employees, for example, can be applied to partner and customer communities, or skills developed in user experience design for customers can be applied to employees." 12 Key benefits of adopting an enterprise-class DAM The rationale for adopting an enterprise-caliber DAM system as a way to better meet digital asset branding requirements seems readily apparent to those who have already done so and discovered the benefits. To those considering or evaluating DAM applications as a solution to large-scale asset management, these are a few of the benefits that can be realized, all supported by well-designed DAM toolsets. In the transition from a physical world to one in which assets are represented digitally, there is tremendous opportunity available when treating assets as digital objects, as is possible with a DAM, rather than physical objects. Integrating business rules into assets makes management and distribution of each asset more easily trackable and visible through each lifecycle stage. By storing and accessing assets through a DAM, the return on investment can be more effectively measured and understood. Large media assets can be handled in automated ways through a DAM, allowing assets to be modified and transcoded to fit the various distribution channels and end uses. 11 Alex Struminger, What's the Value of DAM? Let Me Tell You a Story, CMS Wire (August 13, 2014). 12 Gartner, Gartner Says the Business Consumer Requires a Digital Workplace (July 17, 2014). Page 6

7 As new communication technologies arise in the future, digital assets accessible through a DAM will be posed and ready to take advantage of all the opportunities and possibilities, likely to emerge in use cases that haven t even been envisioned yet. As a pioneer in the evolving paradigm refining techniques for modeling assets as software that reflects business operations the Nuxeo Platform offers a flexible, full-featured digital and media asset management system that includes asset capture, automatic metadata extraction, video storyboarding, flexible content modeling and support for a broad range of file types. Nuxeo enterprise DAM in action: Case studies The Nuxeo Platform supports a highly customizable Digital Asset Management module adaptable to the compute-intensive operations and large-scale storage requirements of managing images, audio, and video routinely created, stored, and distributed in brand management environments. Tasks that would be difficult or impossible in other DAM systems, such as transcoding and automatically distributing massive media files across multiple channels, can be readily handled by Nuxeo s DAM module and integrated into the corporate-wide ECM system processes. Scalability geared to enterprise volumes of files from millions to billions is another benefit of Nuxeo s architecture and technology. Nuxeo s facility working with high-definition video and delivery on demand to multiple channels suits one of the primary requirement of brand managers: dealing with the complexity of acquiring, accessing, sharing, previewing, searching, transcoding, and distributing high quality video content through centralized management tools. Brand management often suffers when information and content exists in isolated siloes across a company. Fig. 1. A sample video asset view, including pre-built widgets for video storyboarding, automatic transcoding and video publishing, as well as custom workflow integration. The integration capabilities of Nuxeo can eliminate cross-system barriers and provide an asset management platform with high visibility, a high level of interoperability, and centralized access to the full range of assets. Page 7

8 GSD&M: Replacing legacy system with enterprise-class DAM Lisa McIntrye, Digital Asset Management Librarian for GSD&M, a fullservice advertising agency headquartered in Austin, Texas, recently led the evaluation and replacement process for their legacy DAM solution GSD&M turned to the Nuxeo Platform after thoroughly researching vendor offerings in the market. With the use of the Nuxeo Platform, GSD&M gained a number of benefits, including: Thumbnail displays and previews of any file, such as Illustrator or Photoshop, without accessing the application Full cross-browser support so workgroups could continue using familiar tools Greater agility and responsiveness to enhance team productivity Automated synchronization of content among storage repositories and desktops through the use of Nuxeo Drive Developer-friendly APIs to extend functionality for complex GSD&M clients, customers, and internal staff members Future-proof functionality beyond the traditional DAM The deployment also took advantage of the metadata capabilities of the Nuxeo Platform. We are using Nuxeo s metadata inheritance functionality to ensure new files are going into the system as they should, and users see those files where they expect to see them, McIntyre said. The Nuxeo Platform has let us use metadata to build virtual navigations that are relevant to the user to be able to present information to them where and when they need it. Read the entire GSD&M case study. Electronic Arts: Winning the game of global promotions with collaborative enterprise DAM Electronic Arts (EA) first engaged with Nuxeo to build a content management application capable of handling seventy active game development teams simultaneously. To accommodate the extreme content management demands up to 1.2 terabytes per game per year Nuxeo collaborated on a customized extension of its content management tool to provide trackable, worldwide access to a build library deployed on the Nuxeo Platform. The successful implementation encouraged Electronic Arts to adopt Nuxeo s digital asset management module. Business partners for EA can now access rendered images and thumbnails, as well as components of the case management module, to use in promotional activities and advertising campaigns. The system encompasses game content across 8 individual websites, which can be quickly searched and content downloaded by business partners around the world. Read the entire Electronic Arts case study. Page 8

9 DAM for large-cap financial services: Effective brand management at massive scale To better serve up branded digital assets to their international clientele, this leading financial institution turned to the Nuxeo Platform and deployed the Digital Asset Management module, with customizations to fully meet the organizational requirements. The end solution that was developed handles all aspects of the brand interactions, providing financial information, product and service descriptions, promotional news, videos, and marketing literature in a variety of formats meeting the range of anticipated devices from smartphones to desktops. The company has an extremely high volume of daily transactions, sometimes reaching 20 million requests per hour, all of which have been serviced effectively on the Nuxeo Platform. Conclusion: Enterprise DAM drives digital transformation and successful brand management No enterprise can expect to prosper in today s complex, media-rich ecosystem without an effective means of managing and delivering the vast volumes of digital content that represent a company s presence in the market. Enterprise DAM is an essential ingredient in the process of digital transformation that is at the heart of brand management and a vital component to extracting the full value from every aspect at every stage of it s lifestyle. It s not enough to rely on past-generation solutions that lack the scalability, flexibility, and interoperability required to handle hundreds of thousands of assets. Deploying capable tools and technologies to support complex, enterprise-scale DAM operations can effectively accelerate the move toward greater digital business efficiency and serve as an engine for digital transformation. The Nuxeo Platform is uniquely equipped to handle the most rigorous enterprise DAM requirements on a worldwide scale. With the ability to incorporate the most complex business logic into rich content objects, the Nuxeo Platform enables the building of custom workflows and procedures around asset handling, supporting rich metadata-infused objects that support integration across organizational systems, and process automation to rapidly access, view, transcode, share and manage critical brand assets. We invite you to discover the opportunities that can be unlocked by Nuxeo DAM, bringing agility, responsiveness, and intelligent workflows to digital asset management environments: Download a free 30-day trial of the full Nuxeo Platform application development environment: o Nuxeo Platform, with Nuxeo Cloud for managing and running clusters on the cloud, o Nuxeo Studio, for easy customization of the Nuxeo Platform, o Nuxeo Marketplace, with a variety of add-ons and extensions, including enterprise DAM. Contact us for a demo. Subscribe to our technology updates and/or business updates. Page 9

10 About Nuxeo Nuxeo dramatically improves how content-based applications are built, managed and deployed, making customers more agile, innovative and successful. Nuxeo provides a next generation, enterprise ready platform for building traditional and cutting-edge content oriented applications. Combining a powerful application development environment with SaaS-based tools and a modular architecture, the Nuxeo Platform and Products provide clear business value to some of the most recognizable brands including Verizon, Electronic Arts, Netflix, Sharp, FICO, the U.S. Navy, and Boeing. Nuxeo is headquartered in New York and Paris Nuxeo. All rights reserved. All other company, product, and service names mentioned are the property of their respective holders. Page 10