Digital Asset Management Brand Technologies

Todays tip will involve using Lab color space in Adobe's Photoshop CS4. We'll make a curves adjustment layer, tweak the a / b channels, adjust the layer opacity, and BAM! Your photo just got more color than a new 64 pack of Crayola's ! Prepress color management and color manipulation done fast.

Step one, open your image and under "Edit" menu, use the Convert to Profile command, and choose Lab.

Step Two go to Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Curves

This is the second video in the series of Widen customer interviews with Cheryl Rugland, Agency Director for Edge Advertising. Watch as Cheryl explains the how the first objective with catalog production is accuracy. The main goal is to get the best product information in the catalog for the dealers and to always keep their deadlines. Edge has been able to produce their catalogs in the same amount of time over the last several years while adding more vendors and more pages to each catalog. Essentially, they have done more work (more output) in the same amount of time by creating efficiencies with the help of Widen digital asset management and catalog production technologies and services. Watch the video to learn more about achieving catalog production objectives with Widen DAM software and catalog production services.

This series of posts features a video interview with Cheryl Rugland, Agency Director for Edge Advertising. Edge Advertising is the in-house agency for the Le Mans Corporation, a distributor of powers sports products—products related to motorcycles, all terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, and jet skies—with brands including Parts Unlimited and Drag Specialties. Edge is one of Widen’s longest-standing customers and uses Widen for a number of services from catalog production to digital asset management. With the help of Widen services and technologies, Edge produces over 10,000 catalog pages per year. Watch the video for an overview of Edge Advertising.

Common challenges with digital asset management programs include segmenting internal and external groups of users to have varying levels of access to specific groups of digital assets. Widen makes this easy by empowering clients to govern their user base and the level of interaction they have with different digital asset libraries. Roles and Permissions controlled by client administrators make governance a critical yet manageable part of DAM software deployments in organizations of all sizes. Watch the video to learn more.

Widen provides Digital Asset Management implementations with a phased approach. As a service provider, it’s important to Widen that we work with your team at the pace that you see fit. What does “done” look like? We want to know your expectations so we can help you manage the success in phases. Technologically, we provide the scalability to meet your demands as the system grows. Watch the video to learn more.

The Digital Asset Management system is the hub of the digital asset life cycle. DAM covers the management portion of the life cycle. Widen has developed tools upstream from DAM to support the creative workflow and approval cycles in addition to marketing and sales tools downstream. Watch the video to learn more.

Widen recognizes that digital assets need to be externally distributed, but also need to be internally consumed. Creative workflows demand hi-resolution files be accessible at local speeds. Marketing networks require remote access to the most current assets. Watch the video to learn more about the hybrid approach to digital asset management with the Widen Appliance as the creative workflow extension to the hosted model… entirely under the Software as a Service approach to DAM.

Every user experience is important to Widen. An important part of the user digital asset management software experience is having a clean, friendly, intuitive user interface. Widen continues to advance the User Interface to make the user experience as enjoyable as possible. Watch the video to learn more about how Widen shares in the success of adoption with digital asset management system deployments.

Everyone wants to know about best practices in digital asset management. Best practices with digital assets metadata and taxonomy development, categorization, etc. As a DAM SaaS provider, Widen takes digital asset management best practices to another level by leveraging the collections of digital asset usage data to help clients compare against past usage and performance within their DAM system and with other Widen clients. Watch the video to learn more about Widen’s ratios referred to as “Digital Asset Management Success Metrics.”

Digital Asset Management is not all about technology. If you’re considering Widen in your digital asset management project, then service must be important to you. Widen is a service company. We’ve been that way for 62 years. Watch the video to learn more about how Widen provides Digital Asset Management Software as a Service, emphasizing the last “S” in SaaS.

What Digital Asset Management technology is going to fit the needs of your company? How often are upgrades provided? How are upgrades determined? Watch the video interview to find out more about how Widen goes about involving clients and delivering DAM software upgrades.

Awhile back, we participated in a RFP for a digital asset management system at a large enterprise. In working through the RFP, we put together several video responses to the different sections. In the videos that follow, I'll talk about Widen’s qualifications, experience, practices and approach to providing digital asset management solutions as a service provider.

Watch the video to learn about why Widen understands digital asset management software and, more importantly, what goes in a DAM system.

Watch the video compilation from several marketing professionals discuss how digital asset management supports brand consistency.




In the first segment, Michele Bedard, Vice President of Marketing, Sub-Zero, Inc. and Wolf Appliance, Inc. talks about how Sub-Zero and Wolf are all about the brand experience. For that reason, it is important to have brand consistency so the “brand” looks and feels the same from whatever source a consumer or partner would see it. Web-based digital asset management tools provide representatives in the field and/or channel partners, access to use the latest brand-approved digital assets – images, videos and marketing/promotional materials – from anywhere in the world.

As a bonus to ensuring enterprise-wide brand consistency, Sub-Zero and Wolf have more distributors and dealers using their advertisements and promotional resources that fit within the corporate campaigns. Thus, they get more return on their advertising investments with extend the reach and utilization of corporate-branded materials further down the marketing supply chain.

Plus, the corporate marketing departments and individual distributor/dealer networks are more efficient and effective in their collaborative marketing communications functions. The centralization of all images, videos, ads and marketing materials allows Sub-Zero and Wolf to have greater control in managing access to digital assets in addition to greater ease in managing the obsolescence of digital assets.

In the second segment, Jim Scarlata, Senior Marketing Operations Manager for Knaack LLC, explains that the Widen DAM solutions offer up the ability to have 100% brand consistency. In this economic climate where staffs are lean and staffs have numerous other responsibilities, DAM or brand asset management software provides Knaack corporate marketing with a safeguard.

As the person responsible for the Knaack marketing operations, DAM serves as a “brand guardian.” No matter what a channel partner, marketing agency, internal or external user needs, they will get an asset that is current, one they can use, and use it in whatever format they need to complete the project.

In the third segment, Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager at InSinkErator, provides testament to how DAM software helps maintain global brand consistency in keeping with the InSinkErator global brand guidelines. To a company whose goal is to offer the most state-of-the-art and innovative products, they have an innovative system to store, retrieve and manipulate digital assets management in a way that best supports the marketing of those products.

Watch more Widen customer interviews to learn more about how Widen Digital Asset Management software and premedia services support the roles of marketing and creative people.

There are a lot of companies that will say “now is the time to gear up for the new year so that you can hit the ground running,” but this customer video compilation goes to show why top marketers implemented Widen digital asset management programs to improve their marketing operations. See why these marketers have made the investment in Widen’s hosted DAM software to create efficiencies, improve productivity, and increase brand consistency throughout their marketing channels.

• Are you wasting precious time and resources managing and fulfilling requests for brand assets?
• Are you looking for ways to improve marketing efficiency, effectiveness and agility?
• Are you seeking fool-proof ways to achieve brand consistency across all customer touch points? 
• Do you want to empower sales channels to be more effective?

In the first segment, Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager at InSinkErator, talks about their growing problem managing and distributing brand assets. He explains what a problem it was to regularly get calls from customers, sales reps, ad agencies and PR firms needing digital assets and there was no easy way to provide them what they needed in a timely matter. Sound familiar? He knew they needed a more efficient digital media asset management system so he wouldn’t lose precious time having to duplicate the same process over and over again fielding requests such as “I need an image and I don’t know what format I need.” Each time, he would have to stop what he’s doing to find the asset, convert it, ship it, etc. Widen DAM asset management services changed all that and removed the burden of having to manage and distribute assets “the old way.”

In the second segment, Jim Scarlata, Senior Marketing Operations Manager for Knaack LLC, explains that there was one gatekeeper to their digital asset library and there was no easy way to achieve brand consistency across all marketing channels, ensure the most current brand assets were always available (and used), and make assets easily available to all channel partners. With Widen’s help, Knaack has a single online location for all of the most current digital content to be globally available to any approved user.

In the third segment, John Wernecke, Global Marketing Manager (Former Public Relations Manager), Motorola Mobile Devices talks about the ease of use when it comes to digital assets management with the help of Widen. The Widen Media Collective provides Motorola with enterprise-wide ability to share and collaborate interactively 24 hours a day, which has allowed marketing and creative groups to come together at a central location that is always accurate and working.

In the fourth segment, Michele Bedard, Vice President of Marketing, Sub-Zero, Inc. and Wolf Appliance, Inc., explains how Sub-Zero and Wolf is all about the brand and making sure customers have  a consistent brand experience across all touch points. The Widen online digital asset management tools provide the people in the field with access to the most current assets so Sub-Zero and Wolf brands look the same from whatever source anyone would see it.

In the fifth and final segment, Michele Kowalkowski, Catalog Manager North America, Brady Worldwide, Inc., talks about how the Widen corporate image library empowers sales people to carry out their jobs and supports relationships with their distributor networks. Without always having to be reliant on the marketing team, they have a digital asset library they can trust to be accessible when they need assets and get them instantly in the format needed to complete their project.

To get more takes from the pros, watch more Widen Customer Interviews.

I had a little fun with the 12-second Widen segment from the SIIA OnDemand 2009 Day 1 in Review video. In this video segment, Widen CEO Matthew Gonnering, preaches “Service is equally, if not more, important than the technology itself” when it comes to delivering Digital Asset Management Software as a Service. Check it out…




Catch the original video here: SIIA OnDemand 2009 Day One in Review


Keywords: DAM SaaS, Digital Asset Management Video, Digital Media System, Digital Asset Tracking, Video Hosting Service, Media Asset Storage.

Matthew Gonnering, CEO of Widen Enterprises, will present as part of the Company Previews session at the 2009 SIIA OnDemand Conference. If you’re planning to attend, be sure to check out the Widen presentation scheduled for Thursday, October 29th at 10:10am. Gonnering’s presentation will introduce why Digital Asset Management (DAM) deserves ranking among other enterprise software acronyms—SFA,  CRM, ERP, etc. He will also talk about Widen’s DAM SaaS model and give way to the latest thought-leadership practices at Widen in making sense of key statistics and ratios branded as DAM Success Metrics.
 
SIIA OnDemand, produced by the Software & Information Industry Association, takes place October 28-30 in San Jose, CA and is the industry’s most comprehensive ISV conference for understanding the business drivers around SaaS and Cloud Computing.

SIIA OnDemand will focus on “Driving Revenue in a Recovering Economy” and features timely sessions covering social media and other demand generation techniques, lead nurturing automation, sales force optimization, and winning channel strategies. In addition, you’ll hear from the CEOs of a dozen innovative SaaS/Cloud companies, including ours!
 
Here’s the SIIA OnDemand keynote line-up:

• Lars Dalgaard, CEO of SuccessFactors (a recent SaaS IPO success story), will address how ISVs can benefit from “The New Era of Cloud Computing”
• Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite, will present “Navigating a Crowded Sky: Making Sense of the Cloud Platform Revolution”
• Michael Lock, Google Enterprise’s Director of Americas Sales & Operations, will share his top 5 lessons learned selling and marketing cloud-based computing.

For more info about the SIIA OnDemand Conference, check out these links: 

• SIIA OnDemand Home Page
• Current Attendee Roster
• Conference Agenda
• Registration Link

If you plan to attend, leave comment or Contact Us and we’ll provide you with a promo code to save $100!

If you’re unable to attend but interested in what Matthew has to say, please leave a comment or Contact Us and we can have a conversation or send the video and slide deck.

Watch the preview video from Matthew Gonnering, Widen CEO, on OnDemand DAM Software.

Watch the video previewing what I’ll talk about at the SIIA OnDemand Conference in San Jose later this week.  

Here’s what I’ll be talking about:

• Highlighting why Digital Asset Management deserves recognition among other enterprise software
• Why Widen is good at providing digital asset management software as a service
• How we differentiate in the market by emphasizing the last “S” in SaaS
• How Widen uses statistics to help clients understand usage, make comparisons and recommendations for improvement.

About SIIA OnDemand
SIIA OnDemand, produced by the Software & Information Industry Association, takes place October 28-30 in San Jose, CA and is the industry’s most comprehensive ISV conference for understanding the business drivers around SaaS and Cloud Computing. For more information, visit the SIIA OnDemand Home Page.

Watch the video compilation from several marketing professionals discuss their experiences with Widen Digital Asset Management Software as a Service (DAM SaaS).

This short video compilation includes three different customer interviews making a case for the SaaS deployment model for digital asset management programs. The first customer is Jim Scarlata, Senior Marketing Operations Manager for Knaack LLC. He speaks about why SaaS makes the most sense for companies with limited IT resources. He argues that DAM software is a subject area outside of the core competencies of Information Technology personnel responsible for critical business systems. Digital asset solutions reside more in the area of creative and marketing and should be handled by a company whose core competency is digital asset management workflow. Widen has 15+ years of experience in DAM software implementations across a variety of business models and vertical industries. Furthermore, Widen’s service-driven culture offers the consultation and suggestions to make the implementation go as smooth as possible.

The second customer is Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager at InSinkErator, and he states that he turned to Widen as a DAM SaaS provider because of two main promises—technological expertise to solve problems and the service commitment backing the technology. As a self-proclaimed “non-technical” person, Jim Magruder and his team at InSinkErator have both the technology and service experts to make life easier when it comes to managing brand assets and promotional materials.

The third customer is John Wernecke, Global Marketing Manager for Motorola Mobile Devices, and he talks about the rapid response from Widen support teams and how they go “above and beyond” with no questions asked. He explains that when there’s a problem, it’s quite simply “What happened? ... What were you doing when it happened? … And, we’ll fix it.

For the latest about Widen’s commitment to service when it comes to digital asset management software support, watch the video about Widen25.

“Widen25” is Widen’s response to a market-wide demand… Where’s the service?  The Digital Asset Management market requires a high degree of service and support for complex workflows and cutting-edge technologies. The Widen25 Collective Customer Support mantra is a commitment to response times for Widen’s help desk.  Twenty-five seconds from dial to the voice of Widen help desk personnel.  Twenty-five seconds from online chat initiation to Widen help desk response.  Twenty-five minutes from email inquiry to a Widen help desk reply. Widen’s two components to SaaS are “software” and “service.”  Cool technology to assist in creating, managing and distributing digital media backed by reliable and responsive service that is available to help get you up and running and be there when you have questions.

Watch the video interview to learn more about Widen25 broken into 3 segments: Why Widen25? What is Widen25? And What Widen25 means to DAM SaaS – Digital Asset Management Software as a Service.
 

“Widen25” is the new service mantra for Widen Collective digital asset management customers.

As a DAM Software as a Service provider, Widen has always believed that service is just as important as the technology, but now we are putting a number to it. Internally, Widen support has always had rapid response initiatives… Now we are shouting it. And by shouting it we have, in effect, upped the ante.

Watch the Widen25 Collective Support Promo Video
 

Widen25 is a commitment to response times within the various communications methods used by customers and the user community to request assistance from Widen support teams. During expanded Help Desk hours of 7 am to 7 pm CST, the 25 refers to the following three service commitments:

• 25 seconds from dial to the voice of Widen help desk personnel.
• 25 seconds from online chat initiation to Widen help desk response.
• 25 minutes from email inquiry to a Widen help desk reply.

How is it different than what we did before? Quite plainly, it’s a simple way to communicate what we have been doing already, but emphasizes what DAM SaaS customers can expect for chat, email, and phone support.

What is Widen doing differently? Customers now have direct toll free access to the Widen help desk staffed in Madison, WI through a dedicated support line. We’ve increased staffing levels, expanded help desk hours, implemented new processes to advance how we respond to support inquiries, and are recording support calls for team training and quality control purpose. 

We're not guaranteeing a service level... We're making a commitment to response times. Service is a top priority for Widen Digital Asset Management programs.

Widen customers and users of Widen systems are invited to contact the service team using any of the following methods: 

• Toll Free: 1-877-WIDEN25
• Online Chat support in the Help/Support section of each customer application
• Email: Widen25support@widen.com

Learn more about Widen25 Collective Customer Support