Enterprise Digital Asset Management

How does a company founded in 1948 get into digital asset management software?

Friday, September 3, 2010 by Jake Athey

Old Article, Common Question: How does a company founded in 1948 get into digital asset management software?

It’s a confused look or baffled pause we get every time someone evaluating our digital asset management services asks “How long have you been around?” and we respond with an answer that starts or ends with “…60 years!”

In the mid 1990s, as a 40-some year old family-owned company creating and manipulating large volumes of massive image and page files with our prepress operations, Widen created a problem for our customers by not having a means to easily manage, access and distribute these “digital assets” from different locations across the country. Hence, Widen began the R&D department for what would later be known as Digital Asset Management software.

Widen never thought of providing software that would be left up to the customer’s IT department to install, maintain and support. We’ve always been delivering software as a service provider—placing an emphasis on the Service aspects. The Marketing and Creative people we worked with did not want that then, they don’t want that now, and more common nowadays—IT departments don’t want that either. C’mon IT, why would you want to be taken off supporting your core business applications to devote resources to Marketing with such a specialized and ever-changing demand?

Read the WisBusiness.com article “Gonnering: Widen Enterprises thrives through tech transitions” from March 31, 2009 to learn more about the evolution of Widen’s service offering to marketing and creative groups. Or, check out Widen’s History to learn how it all began—starting in 1948 as Widen Engraving, Co. Check out the historical photos of Widen Engraving Co. at Facebook.com/Widen.

Widen Media Collective Summer 5.5 Release

Tuesday, July 20, 2010 by Widen Marketing

Widen Enterprises has released Widen Media Collective® Version 5.5 with its Summer 2010 update to the flagship Software as a Service product for digital asset management (DAM).

Watch the video to learn about the new features and updates with the Widen Collective 5.5 Release.

Updates to the core Digital Asset Management application include search improvements with exact phrase search, stemming support for singular versus plural metatags and the ability to exclude full text search of Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF documents. The search results sort by “file format” function has been added to group assets of the same file type. Video Asset Management improvements were made to include FFMPEG video transcoding for faster video processing and automatic alternate still previews for embed links videos.

The Dynamic Media Building ad and brochure template building application included updates to allow text blocks to have different font and font colors based on end user selections during the build process. This allows one template to be uploaded with the flexibility for different branding. End users can also upload their own image (if the template allows) during the build process.

Updates to Project Collaboration include the ability to Add Notes on image projects. Notes can be added any place on an image. Multiple notes can be added by all users on the route and are reviewed by the owner(s) of the project. All notes added to or removed from the image are tracked with Project Details.

For more specific information about the Widen Media Collective and 5.5 release visit: http://www.widencollective.com.

Digital Asset Management Software Reviews

Friday, July 16, 2010 by Jake Athey

No doubt, reading digital asset management software reviews and experiences from other DAM users is an important step in the vendor evaluation process. Our goal is to provide a clear link to the customer reviews provided by Widen Digital Asset Management customers.

The Widen Media Collective is among the top reviewed products on the Digital Asset Management Software Directory by Capterra. View all Digital Asset Management Software Tools listed by Capterra.

Capterra Digital Asset Management Software Directory

Read all Widen Digital Asset Management Software Reviews on Capterra.com

If you are a Widen customer administrator, we invite you to submit a Widen Collective v5.5 Review on Capterra.

See what other digital asset management customers are saying and watch Widen Customer Interviews.

Contact us and we’ll send you a collection of exclusive resources (including third-party articles and whitepapers) to assist in your DAM research process.

More Digital Asset Management Software Reviews & Research Resources:

VocabControl Blog Post: Procuring a Digital Asset Management system
CMSWire Article: Poll Results: Usability is Top Digital Asset Management (DAM) Challenge
Enterprise Information Watch DAM Channel: Digital Asset Management blog posts
DigitalAssetManagement.com Resource Site: Authoring An RFP

Digital Asset Management for Marketing

Tuesday, July 6, 2010 by Jake Athey

Digital Asset Management technologies have become essential to efficient and effective marketing operations in 2010 and beyond. DAM is linked to having a direct impact over the top marketing priorities for 2010.

Anderson Analytics recently performed a study that measured, among other things, the importance of various marketing trends to top marketing executives such as Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs). The “Marketing Trends Report 2010” survey was completed between January 11, 2010 and February 8, 2010 by respondents who are members of Marketing Executives Networking Group, hold a position of Vice President or higher and have a minimum base salary of $160,000. The survey showed that the top priorities of the executives are: Marketing ROI, Customer Retention, Brand Loyalty, Positioning/Differentiation, Branding, Customer Satisfaction and Social Media.

Slide 14 of the 2010 Marketing Trends Study by Anderson Analytics showing the top marketing buzzwords or trends most important to marketing executives. View the full PowerPoint on SlideShare

It's interesting to note that Digital Asset Management (DAM) can have an important impact on each of these priorities specified by the top marketing executives themselves. DAM software addresses these priorities by providing a central repository for digital media files and a set of tools to store, manage the approval of, find and convert these files to increase their value in the marketing process. DAM systems also make complete or selected subsets of the organization's digital media resources easily available to authorized users such as sales representatives, channel members, the media, etc. These capabilities can have a far-ranging impact on the marketing organization and the enterprise as a whole.

Download the white paper to learn more about how Digital Asset Management can assist with:

Increasing return on marketing investments
Raising customer retention rates
Improving brand loyalty and brand consistency
Positioning and differentiating products
Increasing customer satisfaction

Download: How Digital Asset Management Can Help Achieve Top Marketing Priorities

Digital Asset Management SaaSisfaction Gauntlet

Thursday, June 3, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering

Throwdown with Bobby Flay, SmackDown from WWE, and now the SaaSisfaction Gauntlet from Widen.

SaaSisfaction: The satisfaction levels of customers in a software world. My theory is that customers using software-as-a-service (SaaS) are happier with their overall experience than customers using installed software. I am throwing down the gauntlet and sharing our survey results from a recent set of questions that we asked our customers. This challenge is focused in the digital asset management industry.

For those not familiar with digital asset management technology, systems, and services: marketers need help managing and distributing images and video files – in a nutshell, that's what a digital asset management system does. Of course there is much more but we're keeping it simple here.

In the digital asset management market there are big enterprise players, small desktop providers and everything in between. The buying cycle involves analyst reports, vendor conversations, product demos, feature-by-feature comparisons, reference checks, credit checks, vaporware, future truths, pointless RFP's, overcommitments – but the ultimate question that remains unanswered in the buying cycle is what is my service experience going to be after I sign up? How can we allow a customer to experience what it's going to be like before commitment? You can capture some of this from the analysts, demos, and references but sharing customer satisfaction survey results allows customers to understand what their satisfaction level might be throughout the relationship.

Hence the SaaSisfaction Gauntlet. We invite all the competitors in the digital asset management space to actively participate. Some of these competitors are listed on the recent analyst report by Theresa Regli at The Real Story Group available on the Enterprise Information Watch DAM Stream. Other competitors are listed on the bottom right of one of the best blogs in the digital asset management community at DigitalAssetManagement.org.uk. By all the competitors, I mean big and small – from the Open Text and Autonomy acquisitions to North Plains, MediaBeacon, Celum, Wave, Xinet, and Canto. There are lots, these are only a few. Come one, come all to the SaaSisfaction Gauntlet for the digital asset management market.

Full Disclosure

In the interest of full disclosure, here are the details of how we ran our survey:

There were 7 questions and 18 clicks with a $25 Amazon gift card incentive for completion
We focused on the main contacts at each customer, amounting to 321 total invitations delivered
The invitations were sent via email in two stages, the first email was sent to all main contacts on 05/12/10 and the next email was sent on 05/27/10 to all those that did not reply to the first invite
We received 121 responses equating to a 37.7% response rate from 73 unique companies

The Survey Questions

A copy of the survey that you should use is located here: Download Survey Structure

We used SurveyMonkey.com with a Widen logo in the upper left. Substitute Widen for your organization's name and that's all the changes you need to make. The questions and structure are available at the aforementioned link in addition to the questions below:

1) Please rate your experience with <DAM Company> in the following areas: (4 options given: Excellent, Good, Adequate, Poor)

Responsiveness of our service teams
Communicating clearly and effectively
Keeping you informed of our progress
Collaborating with you and your team
Performance of systems/applications
Product functionality meets your expectations
Providing value for the money
Meeting overall project objectives

2) Overall, how do you rate the quality of <DAM Company> products and services? (4 options given: Excellent, Good, Adequate, Poor)

3) Would you recommend <DAM Company> to other organizations? (2 options given: yes or no)

4) What is your perception of the advancements in <DAM Company> technology (6 options given: Ahead of the Curve, Just About Right, Getting Better, Not Fast Enough, Stagnant, Behind the Times)

5) How likely is it that you will continue to use <DAM Company> in the future (5 options given: Certain, Very Likely, Somewhat Likely, Unlikely, Very Unlikely)

6) If you have any comments or suggestions regarding how <DAM Company> could improve the services or performance, please enter them in the box below. (1 option given: enter free form text)

7) To receive your $25 gift card from Amazon, please provide your information below and the gift certification will be emailed to you. (4 fields displayed: Name, Company, Email, Phone)

A Few Guidelines

Set up the survey using the same questions and incentive:

Share the results on your web site or blog post (I'm sure the digital asset management blogs will pick it up and post it for us as results come in)
Share the quantity of open ended responses for question #6 understanding that ideas from customers possess product advancement ideas that may be used for differentiation
Disclose your invitation methods, list quantities, response rate and unique companies responding
I'd like to say there is a minimum number of participants, let's say at least 50 unique companies represented but even if you have less than that, it's ok, the information will be revealed in your disclosure

Widen Results

We have already setup the questions, disclosed our methods, shared our response rate and participation, so now I invite you to see the results of the Widen customer satisfaction survey for free at widen.com. There is a form requesting your information so please provide complete contact info. I already understand competitors are interested in this information so there is no need to register as ABC company with a fake email address. With our web analytics we already know how many times you visit our pages and which pages you visit. So just use your real information.

Sign-up to receive the Widen SaaSisfaction Gauntlet Customer Survey Results

Looking forward to seeing how satisfied your customers are relative to Widen customers.

Good luck!

Support the Earthquake Relief Fund in Haiti

Monday, March 22, 2010 by Joy Hamel

It might not be headline news anymore and the light of the cameras has started to fade, but the need for help is still a reality. A few weeks back everyone at Widen received an email from Reed Widen, our President and Chairman of the Board for Widen Enterprises. The email was about the relief efforts that the What If? Foundation was undertaking to make sure that the people and children of Haiti were getting the help they needed in a time of disaster. They still need help. Below is an excerpt from the What If? Foundation website.

Earthquake Relief from What If? Foundation

For ten years, we’ve been in partnership with members of the St. Clare’s community in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to provide desperately needed meals to children (and adults whenever possible). Over the years, through incredibly difficult times – an economic embargo, coup d’etat, and hurricanes – the meals have kept flowing. We received word on Friday, January 15th, that the courageous and devoted cooks and community leaders we work with are safe and that the rectory building where the food program takes place did not collapse.

LATEST UPDATE

Posted on Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Dear Friends,

I’m writing to share with you a link to some extraordinary photos. They were taken by photojournalist René Merino during his recent trip to Port-au-Prince. René visited the food program at St. Clare’s, so be sure to look for these pictures towards the bottom of the page. Click here to go to his photo website.

It’s hard to believe the month of March has arrived and that seven weeks have passed since the January 12th earthquake in Haiti.

I am excited to let you know that our partners at St. Clare’s just launched a special education program for children that takes place every afternoon before the food program meals are served. With schools closed in Port-au-Prince and no date set for their reopening, this two-hour gathering is treasured by the hundreds of kids who attend. Members of the education staff are teaching the children songs, providing materials for arts and crafts, and leading group discussions. Lavarice Gaudin, our earthquake relief coordinator, told me the teachers choose one subject a day to explore with the children. Topics have included the earthquake and related fears, courage, service to others, life skills and values. The history of the food program is also shared as Lavarice feels it’s important for the children to know where the meals come from and who is involved in making them happen. That includes all of you who provide the funding through the What If? Foundation and the extraordinary cooks who work many hours/day in the rectory kitchen.

I continue to be inspired by the vision, resilience, and faith of our partners in Port-au-Prince. With everything they’ve been through since the earthquake, they have doubled the size of the food program, created educational opportunities to keep students engaged, and have provided an environment of healing, hope, and progress.

Piti piti na rive! Little by little we will arrive,

Margaret Trost

If you would like more information on the What If? Foundation and their efforts please visit http://whatiffoundation.org/

xx joy

Step 1 – Admit you have a DAM problem. Step 2 – Seek help.

Monday, March 22, 2010 by Jake Athey

I’ll be the first to admit… Digital Asset Management is not that sexy. As a marketing guy, it’s hard to get excited about databases. However, the content stored in a DAM system is another story… Of all the content types, digital assets—particularly images and videos—got to be the sexiest! Consider the growth and popularity of online video... Gartner Predicts 25% of content in the workforce to be images, audio or video by 2013.

I understand… you have a limited marketing budget so you’d rather spend that budget on things like social media, search engine optimization, video players and other “cool things.” Isn’t that convenient… Digital Asset Management is the backbone of your marketing efforts because it allows you to better find, manage and repurpose these assets that are the lifeblood of your marketing and promotion campaigns. Social media, digital asset optimization, and video marketing programs all use digital assets as a core part of the marketing message.

If you’re not sure you need DAM, then you may want to read my last post (Why we don’t need DAM…). I apologize for the overabundant use of sarcasm. Yes, small to medium-sized businesses need DAM just as much as marketing teams at Fortune 500 enterprises. And yes, there are still mid-market digital asset management solutions out there… few and far between… but they’re out there.

Step 1 – Admit you have a DAM problem. Step 2 – Seek help.

Now, more on making the case for digital asset management software in your marketing operations. Reference the recent eMarketer article “Marketers Buzz About ROI” that discusses the Marketing priorities for 2010. Many US marketing executives were planning to increase budgets this year as they were much more optimistic about the economic outlook in February 2010 than in 2009 when the recession was in full swing. However, that doesn’t come without scrutiny because the number one priority is focusing on ROI.

Priority #1: Increase Marketing Return on Investment —according to the “Marketing Trends Report 2010” from Anderson Analytics and the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG).

Chart from "Marketing Trends Report 2010." Source: eMarketer

Priority #1 as it relates to DAM—explained. You’ve made investments in the creation of digital media—photo shoots, retouching, video shoots, editing, stock and rights-managed photography purchases, etc. You’ve made investments in assembling the destination points for your digital media—websites, blogs, social networks, advertising, promotions and print. Now, it’s time to invest in a digital asset management product that will help you realize a maximum return on those investments by getting greater use out of your digital assets. DAM tools make those assets easy to find, distribute, reuse and repurpose while also allowing you to track, compare and measure their value.

Priority #2, 3, 4 & 5 will be introduced and explained in later posts. However, point 3 and 5 deal with brand loyalty and branding—another reason why companies invest in DAM technologies.

Focus on Marketing ROI – Reference the 2009 AberdeenGroup DAM Benchmark Report. Best-In-Class companies are using Digital Asset Management systems to improve efficiency, increase brand consistency and improve return on marketing investments. See the key charts from the report in the blog post for “The Marketers Guide to Justifying Investments in Digital Asset Management.”

AberdeenGroup found that best-in-class companies centralizing access to digital assets are two times more likely to use a DAM system for the marketing functions. These same best-in-class companies reported a 23% year over year reduction in time to market and an 18% increase in average return on marketing investments. On the other hand, time to market increased by 11% for DAM laggards and average return on marketing investment fell by 17%.

Top 3 Reasons Companies Invest in DAM. Source: Aberdeen Group, May 2009

Download the whitepaper "Why Digital Asset Management Should Be Your First Technology Investment for 2010" to learn more about how DAM adopters achieve substantial return on investment including reducing time to market, improving the performance of marketing campaigns, reducing marketing costs and improving brand consistency.

The Bottom Line

DAM is not all that sexy, but you can’t ignore the fact that you need it to power your marketing operations and improve marketing ROI. In today’s distributed marketing environment, shared drives, FTP, CDs/DVDs and tape libraries won’t cut it. Your marketing partners need instant access to your digital assets and you must be able to find, reuse and repurpose assets multiple times and in multiple locations. Marketers don’t just rely on one channel anymore. We are all multi-channel marketers and publishers. To do more with less, be a more productive marketer and get more out of the investments in creating and distributing assets, you need an asset management system.

Step 1 – Admit you have a DAM problem. Step 2 – Seek help.

Lucky for you, Widen provides DAM as Software as a Service provider, which means YOU GET HELP. With 100% DAM SaaS, you keep on marketing – no IT resources necessary. SaaS includes: guided implementation, shared best practices, help desk available when you need it, admin and end-user training, promotional support, automatic upgrades, ongoing maintenance and technical support. Learn more about Widen DAM SaaS.

The 5 Things I Learned from Customers

Sunday, March 14, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering

One of the best things about my job is that I get to talk to customers. And since we have been good at talking to customers, we keep getting more customers. So….really, it is not just talking to customers that I like, it is taking the conversations I have with customers and putting them into action.

Some customer conversations highlight the simple things whereas others recommend changes to process or product. Our customers have valuable insight into how we can continue to help them and throughout my conversations I have learned five key things:

We have great customers
We get to work with some of the most reputable brands in the world in addition to the rising stars in the small and medium size business world. It is an honor to help these organizations and their marketing and creative teams with digital asset management. These teams have exceptional insight into the management of their DAM system because it is the library for everything they work for; the brand. They love it and they want to advance it just like we do. We strongly believe our customer base is the most educated and well versed digital asset management team across the industry.

Our employees are awesome
Customers are referencing employees and telling me stories about how they benchmark other technology deployments against the Widen experience. In a recent case, the customer told me they were implementing another marketing system and they asked the supplier why they couldn’t be more like the people at Widen. We have great employees and they go out of the way for our customers – and the customers recognize it. We have expertise that match up precisely with customer teams to ensure customers receive value with every interaction.

The product is powerful
Widen digital asset management technology typically starts at the workgroup level to serve the immediate demands of marketing personnel. After successful experiences at that level, the decision to scale to the enterprise is an easy one because of the Widen product configuration. Whether it is thousands of additional users, terabytes of data, or brands spread throughout the world, the product is powerful enough to scale to meet the enterprise demand.

When we say service, we really mean it
It is people talking to people. It is digital asset management teams at Widen holding the hands of the customer implementation team. We are sharing in the risk of the success because we are a software-as-a-service organization. Customers trust us because we have earned that trust. They trust us to engage their user community and educate them on digital asset management. They need our expertise to help them manage their images and video files throughout the relationship and we do not let them down. Our project management and help desk teams are positioned to proactively address the demands of our customers. Widen customers understand what the last “S” in SaaS really means.

Our teams manage expectations very well
In response to the question, did you experience any disconnects between the selling process and the use of the Widen digital asset management system, the response is absolutely not. Our sales and marketing teams manage expectations early in the process to ensure that customer expectations and our product and service combination is a good match. Dissatisfied customers lie in the gap between what was promised and what was actually delivered and our teams are deliberate in our process to make sure each customer experience is exceptional.

Why is it that IT departments want Digital Asset Management solutions that are installed on-site?

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Jake Athey

Why is it that IT departments want Digital Asset Management solutions that are installed on-site? Is it because they own it? Is it because they can customize it? Is it because they want their assets behind their firewall? These are all valid questions. DAM SaaS providers and SaaS adopters deal with these questions all of the time. There are answers to these questions, but the DAM project owners should ask these questions back to their IT managers as well.

The truth is you don’t own the installed software. You only own it if it’s a home grown solution and many large companies are finding that their home grown solutions, after years of development, do not compare to modern-day DAM solutions. Many home grown solutions don’t embrace the feature set, ease of use, and scalability of today’s enterprise-class DAM solutions. If you’re thinking an installed solution belongs to you, you’re not entirely correct. You don’t own the code. If you want to customize it, you must ensure the parts to customize fit with what your needs are and that you have the competency to customize it.

You’re still subject to the release cycles, support and professional services offered by the installed provider. There’s a certain level of expertise it takes to implement and maintain DAM software and many IT departments are not staffed with “DAM experts.” Consider the competencies of IT and the competencies required for a DAM implementation, ongoing maintenance and expansion. In most organizations, the IT team’s time is filled in maintaining the other business critical systems. Does DAM carry that high of a priority with IT?

Installed or SaaS, You Still Own Your Digital Assets

Whether you deploy an installed solution or work with a hosted provider, you still own the assets. It’s just a matter of where they live. Of course with an installed solution, they live behind your firewall. With a SaaS solution, your assets live in the hosted provider’s secure data center or the cloud. This is much like banking… you keep your money in a bank because you trust they can do a better job managing it than you can. Certainly, there are good reasons to have asset libraries on the client site. That’s why Widen introduced the Appliance. With the Widen Appliance, companies have replicated assets on-site to support internal creative operations and business continuity planning in the event of catastrophe causing the internet to go down.

One of the many reasons companies – big, medium and small – choose to work with a SaaS provider is because the hosted DAM provider has a better infrastructure to support a widespread network of internal and external users. A hosted provider can often offer greater scalability of the infrastructure. This includes scalability to scale resources up as the demand increases and scale the resources down when so much storage and bandwidth is not required. Scalable SaaS DAM deployments can be more cost-effective as they support a true pay for what you use model.

Online Digital Asset Management Solutions for Online Digital Assets

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Jake Athey

We had a prospective client share their DAM story with us last week and their needs matched up very closely with what Widen could provide in a hosted Digital Asset Management solution. They needed a central repository for images and videos, easy to use, easy to find assets, multiple levels of control and access, and asset tracking and usage reporting.

However, after learning the Widen online digital asset management solution matched up very well to the needs of this particular client, they came back to us saying that their IT department would only consider solutions installed on-site. Regrettably, Widen is a 100% DAM SaaS provider and delivers web-based DAM solutions where the asset libraries are hosted in Widen’s data center.

Do they want the internet installed too?

I thought it was interesting that this particular client’s IT team would only consider an installed solution since they’ve been unable to maintain the current system. This is something we hear all of the time. Ironically, most of their digital assets – images and videos – end up online. Do they want the internet installed too? If the destination for your digital assets is to be online, then wouldn’t it make sense for the digital asset management solution to be online as well?

A recent Forrester ECM (Enterprise Content Management) report by analyst Stephen Powers shows that more interest was seen in SaaS products (than on-premise or open source), with 43% of the respondents expressing interest in SaaS WCM and 39% in SaaS DAM. “Because content stored in these systems are often public-facing, organizations were less concerned with sharing the content outside the firewall,” reports Powers.

Consider the use and destination of your digital assets in defining your goals and needs with a DAM system. In a large organization with multiple divisions in multiple locations, an installed solution isn’t always the best option. Consider all internal and external users? Will the installed solution be the single point of reference for everyone in the organization? Will everyone adopt the solution or will people still work in the same siloed environments their used to? One of the main goals for deploying a DAM solution should be making it easy for users to access the system, enjoy using it and make it easy to get want they need so they will come back again.

What Qualifies Widen in the Digital Asset Management Space?

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering

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.

Digital Asset Management User Roles and Permissions

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 by Widen Marketing

One of the many purposes of a Digital Asset Management system is to provide controlled access to an organization’s library of approved digital assets. Note the key word here is controlled! There are many types of marketing software systems that provide some sort of repository services for centralized storage of documents, images, and other files. However, only a true DAM system should suffice in a sophisticated marketing environment where you want to deliver tiered levels of control for the collaboration, management, and distribution of digital assets. In Widen’s world of DAM, tiered levels of control are managed via Roles and Permissions.

Without Roles and Permissions, you may as well post everything you own to a public-facing website for the whole world to access. In a web-based DAM system, every a user has a secure login which authenticates them into a Role with a predefined set of permissions.

Roles and Permissions determine 'who' has 'what' level of access to 'which' assets and 'how' the user can interact with the assets.

Roles and Permissions allow…

The marketing team to prepare a campaign that will launch in six months.
The product team to produce training materials for a product that doesn’t hit the market until next year.
The regional field reps to only access current collateral and promotions created for them.
The marketing team to ensure assets for products that have been taken off the market are not accessible by the sales teams and partners.

Digital Asset Management User Roles and Permissions

This table illustrates a sample Roles & Permissions structure for a Widen web-based
digital asset management system. The Permissions do not reflect Widen’s full permissions
set, but are intended to reflect variable levels of access and control.

Although it can be a very complicated aspect of DAM to administrate, Roles & Permissions can be as simple as can be for a four-person workgroup or as complex as a multi-national enterprise with several departments, divisions, brands and channels for access and control. Maintaining the Role & Permissions structure is critical when rolling out updates and a key point in selecting the right partner. More than that, working with Roles & Permissions that allow for adaptability, flexibility and scalability with ease is vital to the ongoing success of your DAM system.

Read the article in E-Commerce Times: Whose Fingers Are in Your DAM?

Contact Us to learn more or to see the Roles & Permissions structure in Widen’s online DAM system.

The Digital Marketing Shift – Part 2: Why SaaS Digital Asset Management is the Most Cost-Effective Deployment Option for Marketers

Friday, January 29, 2010 by Jake Athey

Digital Marketing and Digital Asset Management

Marketers shifting or integrating digital marketing strategies cannot ignore the importance of using DAM solutions to control and distribute approved digital media to authorized users. Digital media consumers demand the same amount of quality and consistency in the content they consume as they would offline media; they just might face more noise with the overabundance in clutter of messages. The brands that deliver quality content, including imagery and interactivity, are those that get noticed and drive brand awareness. Getting noticed in a digital marketing world holds tremendous value because of the opportunities for consumers to engage with marketers and other consumers in two-way communications. In the social web, satisfied consumers can serve as brand advocates whereas dissatisfied consumers can bring a brand down.

Like Digital Marketing is more cost-effective than traditional marketing channels, Software as a Service (SaaS) DAM is the most cost-effective way to manage digital media assets.

The explosion of digital content, including diverse content types such as rich media, forces organizations to invest in digital asset management tools to maximize the value of those assets by keeping them in a centralized location accessible for multiple purposes. That centralized location should be a SaaS DAM solution that enables the content to be most easily accessed by those that need it, when they need it. Those that need access to a digital asset library include multiple internal departments, partners, agencies, sales channels, and the media.

What are the Core Benefits of SaaS DAM Over Installed Solutions?

Speed to implementation inside 30-90 days versus 6-9 months
Low monthly subscription and minimal startup costs make it easier to budget
Flexibility, adaptability and scalability to grow and change with client needs

What’s the big deal about DAM SaaS?

A recent Forrester ECM (Enterprise Content Management) report by analyst Stephen Powers shows that more interest was seen in SaaS products (than on-premise or open source), with 43% of the respondents expressing interest in SaaS WCM and 39% in SaaS DAM. “Because content stored in these systems are often public-facing, organizations were less concerned with sharing the content outside the firewall,” reports Powers. That’s a new way of looking at it... (at least for a SaaS provider)!

The content stored in a rich media management system (images, videos, ads, brochures, etc.) was developed with the intention to be public facing at some point in time—oftentimes serving advertising and marketing communications purposes—so it should be easy to access (and control). SaaS DAM solutions make it easy to access digital assets anytime, anywhere while offering the security controls to protect rights and release/expiration dates.

Powers reports other reasons that installed content management solutions often fail or fail to meet expectations include poor content strategy and a lack of IT and business alignment. SaaS solutions make up for that because it is the responsibility of the SaaS provider to share best practices, contribute to content strategy and help manage change in order for the system to survive beyond the implementation phases. Remember, SaaS providers are required to meet the client’s needs every month and repeat it on an ongoing basis in order to earn the ongoing business. Moreover, SaaS solutions cut out much of the internal IT resources necessary to implement and maintain the solution because the IT resources, for the most part, are provided by the SaaS provider.

Download Whitepaper: Why DAM Should Be Your First Technology Investment for 2010

Free Digital Asset Management System Access

Friday, January 8, 2010 by Jake Athey

New in 2010, Widen is offering free Digital Asset Management system access for up to 90 days to companies and organizations researching DAM or needing a hosted DAM solution. Try it for a special project, campaign, product launch, trade show or event! Request VIP Access to the Widen DAM demo system.

Widen has spent over 13 years developing and supporting web-based digital asset management solutions to marketers of all sizes – from Fortune 500 enterprises to small and medium-sized businesses, agencies and non-profits. In that time, Widen has offered the opportunity for individuals and teams to experiment, test and trial live online digital asset management systems in live production environments, real-time marketing workflows, and sales channel relationships.

Widen is rolling out the red carpet by providing free digital asset management system access to Widen's live online digital asset library for up to 90 days. You and your users get the same basic functionality as Widen DAM clients within Widen's Digital Asset Management demo site.

Free Digital Asset Management System access includes the following capabilities:

Setup your own personalized role and permissions
Upload your own digital media – hi-res images, videos, audio, PDFs, Word, PowerPoint, InDesign, etc.
Add your own metadata – descriptions, tags and automatically captured file info
Download or send media with on-the-fly file conversions to print and web formats
Create additional users
Create custom system messages and user announcements

As a Software as a Service (SaaS) provider, Widen DAM solutions are 100% web-based and designed for creative and marketing workflows. No software downloads or installs, no IT support required, and no specialized skills needed. Widen SaaS solutions scale to meet the demand for unlimited simultaneous users and unlimited asset uploads and downloads. Training and support is provided entirely by Widen. Ownership of Widen DAM SaaS solutions can be afforded with a low monthly subscription. Widen clients get their own branded web-based DAM solution and personalized URL, plus the ability to administrate their system with custom metadata structures and output types. Contact Us for more information about Widen DAM SaaS products and pricing.

For basic demo access to search and order stock assets, register for the Widen Guest Pass.

Notice: Widen's Free Digital Asset Management System Access does not provide users with a fixed permanent solution, but is intended to provide those investigating DAM solutions with a no-cost, no-commitment resource for evaluating Digital Asset Management technology and support to answer questions along the way.

Not your Grandpa's Digital Asset Management System

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 by Mark Norris

Digital Asset Management for Lemonade Stands aka SMBs

Digital Asset Management has long been the domain of the large enterprise – those companies that have front page stories on Time Magazine or companies whose owners make the Forbes 500 richest list 5 years running. But, is all that changing?

Is the DAM system that we know and love morphing into a tool that is useful to not only the PepsiCo's of the world, but also that little lemonade stand down the street? And more importantly, is DAM software entering the price range of that lemonade stand?

In this multi-part series of blog posts, we’ll look at the growth of DAM in the small- to medium- sized business space… from the why’s to the how’s and everything in between.

This first article, "Not your Grandpa's Digital Asset Management System," focuses on the why, as in "why is DAM growing in popularity among smaller size companies?" What is driving that growth?

Research shows there are four main drivers today in the SMB (small- to medium-sized businesses) space for Digital Asset Management programs:

Number of Files -- There is no indication that the number of digital files SMB companies create, manage and store will decrease in the foreseeable future. In fact, all signs point to extreme growth in this category over the next 5 years (and beyond). The IDC (EMC, 2009) estimates that “the digital universe will double every 18 months.” Internally, we estimated that our own company (with a marketing department of five) used approximately 47 gigs of video in the past year – a several times increase over the prior year and a number that we expect to increase by several more factors over the coming years.

Video Growth -- As SMB companies realize the benefits of video (customer testimonials, product demonstrations, training, marketing, etc.) the need to manage, control and distribute these files to the necessary parties will inherently increase as well. According to CMSWire, “organizations are looking for lighter-weight solutions (than [current] video management products) to manage their video assets. We see this as more and more websites offer videos and allow user-generated content in the form of video.” Furthermore, over 65% of companies using online videos and that number is expected to continue increasing (VideoBloom, 2009). This increase in video will also mean an increase in the amount of bandwidth required to serve the video – a requirement that many SMBs may struggle with.

Project Collaboration -- A long-time hot topic in the world of DAM, the advances of web 2.0 “is another trend that is moving DAM away from being more than a basic repository” (Mosher, 2009). According to Eric Barroca of Nuxeo, “users want to work together on developing this type of content, so features such as tagging, annotation for documents, pictures and video, collaborative filtering and viewing assets via a web interface are key to building a better repository of digital assets.”

Lower Cost to Entry -- With many DAM solutions still in the 6-figure range and most SaaS solutions in the 15-25k range, many SMBs struggle to justify an enterprise DAM. According to Frost & Sullivan (Frost & Sullivan, 2007) a lower-cost SaaS model “is expected to help the market grow significantly by luring price sensitive customers to adopt DAM technology.”

So the momentum is building… the need is building… But, how is the DAM industry responding to meet this need?

In the next article we’ll look at the DAM industry as a whole and in particular, how it is addressing this growing need.

Widen Media Collective Winter 5.4 Release

Tuesday, December 15, 2009 by Widen Marketing

Widen Enterprises has released Widen Media Collective® Version 5.4 with its winter 2009 update to the flagship Software as a Service product for digital asset management (DAM).

Over 180 technical enhancements were made to improve usability, reliability, scalability and security with the Widen Media Collective. Nearly forty customer-suggested features were incorporated into the winter update offering improved support across various creative and marketing workflows for creating, managing and distributing digital media and brand assets.

Upgrades to the core Web-based Digital Asset Management application include: asset uploader improvements for faster file processing, additional search functionality for more focused search results and video player enhancements. Dynamic Media Building, a template-based ad and brochure building application, has been enhanced to include a new layout engine for more flexibility during the initial template design and end user media customization processes. The upgrade allows for more advanced text handling, including: dynamic text reflow when variable text is used, copy fitting for reducing text size based on specific formatting instructions, block flexing for automatic resizing and repositioning of design elements, and rule-based block control to automatically populate template blocks.

The most significant advancement with Widen’s winter release is the launch of Source Controller version 1.0 for the Widen Appliance. Advancing from its previous beta state, the Widen Appliance and Source Controller provide a hardware/software combination that enables internal staff to access and modify digital assets on their own network and automatically update these changes in the Widen Collective hosted platform. Internal designers, marketing staff, and administrators find files in the browser-based Source Controller application and then check these files out into their own local workspace. When changes are made to a file, it can be checked back in to update the asset in Source Controller and made globally available to the client’s external audiences.

“Source Controller provides an attractive browser-based user interface and integration direct to the desktop for internal users working within creative applications,” says Edward Chwae, Director of Research and Development at Widen Enterprises. “Besides providing benefits of streamlining creative workflows and making the benefits of DAM more entrenched with those workflows, the Widen Appliance provides for a fully replicated set of assets at the client’s location to support disaster recovery and business continuity plans.”

The Widen Appliance bridges the gap between hosted and installed software by offering Widen-managed services on the client site with replicated data to seamlessly serve the internal and external demand for assets. File management and synchronization between the Widen Appliance and Widen Collective hosted service are automatic, which keeps administration to a minimum for improved efficiency and helps clients better manage the obsolescence of assets for improved brand consistency.

For more specific information about the Widen Media Collective and 5.4 release visit: http://www.widencollective.com.

The Rise of Video in the Enterprise

Friday, December 11, 2009 by Matthew Gonnering

The video asset is a rising star when it comes to improving marketing performance and bringing a brand message to the market. More and more, companies are investing in the creation, management and distribution of video assets.

Watch the video to learn more about our take on video in the enterprise.

Widen wholly embraces the complexities of understanding the make-up and management of video files. To make sure that we understood the video environment, we launched a video studio at Widen to assist with our own marketing initiatives and gain an in depth understanding of video workflows. Our marketing team deployed video production as an element of our marketing strategy not only to get the benefit of driving brand awareness and revenue, but also to help the organization and other customers understand video workflows.

Widen makes moves to embrace marketing's need to distribute video to their target markets now and into the future. Current Widen video asset management functionality includes automatic preview generation, transcoding on-the-fly to different formats, and embed links. There are two distinct advantages to embed links with every asset that is entered into the Widen digital asset management system – (1) the concept of one internet, one file and (2) scalable infrastructure.

Embed links allow users to simply take an embed code that's preset to a specific size and then embed that in another website or thousands of websites. When a video is expired or you want to change that video out to a more updated version, you change it in one place – the digital asset management system – and every other website using that embed link will automatically inherit the update.

The second benefit to embed links is a scalable infrastructure. Customers use Widen bandwidth, CDNs and scale power from our use of cloud computing resources. When you want to go from 1,000 views to 100,000 views or to one million views, we scale to meet that demand and scale it back down as needed.

Learn more about Widen’s Video Asset Management application.

2010 IPA Leadership Conference, 360-Degree Marketing Execution

Friday, December 11, 2009 by Widen Guest

Get a 360-degree view of the new trends and technologies shaping the future of cross-media communications at the 2010 IPA Leadership Conference, February 4-6, 2010 – Scottsdale, Arizona.

The IPA Leadership Conference, 360-Degree Marketing Execution, brings together brand owners and business leaders from creative, premedia and print communities to share experiences, strategies and knowledge of marketing execution and cross-media communications. Many of the most respected thought leaders in marketing will provide a 360-degree view of the trends and technologies shaping the future of cross-media communications.

Gain critical insight and valuable ideas on how your company can plan for success!

Registration and details online at www.ipa.org/leadership or download the complete program.

Keynote Presentations

Best Practices in this Brave New World of Marketing
Julie Roehm, former chief marketing officer, Walmart and DaimlerChrysler

Julie Roehm, a powerful, charismatic marketing visionary, is one of the most successful global marketing, new media, advertising and brand-building experts in the United States. Roehm will share her story from behind the scenes at the world’s most influential retailer to show how quickly the world is shifting and how marketers, agencies and service providers can plan for success in this brave new world. Always ahead of trends, Julie will provide you with extraordinary insight and ideas on how to succeed in the tumultuous world of marketing communications.

Lead Gen-to-Gen Y: Preparing for the New B2B Buyer
Liz Brohan, Co-CEO, Colman Brohan Davis (CBD) Marketing

Gen Y, the tech-savvy children of baby boomers, are fast becoming managers making purchase decisions about your products and services. Don’t market to them in the same old ways. The leader of one America’s largest integrated marketing agencies will reveal how Gen Y’s habits and characteristics are defining what’s new and what’s next in integrated marketing, lead generation and retention. You’ll gain new ideas about how to sell to this emerging buyer of media production and marketing services.

Facing the Future of Sales: How to Reach the CMO
Liz Miller, Vice President, Programs and Operations, CMO Council

The need for face-time with the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of both current and prospective clients has never been greater. With variable data, social networking, shifting marketing budgets and the ability of sales tracking, a CMO-meeting is a critical step in the sales process. Reaching and interacting with the CMO takes planning, a pinch of tact, and a whole lot of technique. The VP of operations for a worldwide organization of 5,000 CMOs, controlling more than $125 billion in annual marketing buys, will share how to communicate effectively with C-level executives.

Conference Themes

Marketing Execution Best Practices
Get a 360° view of marketing successes and failures that will help you execute breakthrough marketing programs.

New & Emerging Media
Learn how you can use new technologies to enable clients to make the transition from traditional to more personal and engaging marketing.

Fundamentals of the New Media Enterprise
Find out what it takes to reach marketing services buyers with the right message in this new world of cross-media communications.

Session Highlight: Interactive Discussions

Proven Marketing Execution Best Practices

Julie Roehm, Walmart & DaimlerChrysler
Margie Dehm, Sara Lee Corporation
Marriott Winchester, SGS International

Integrating Social Media with Cross Media

M.J. Anderson, Trekk Cross-Media
Jim Egan, Kerry Ingredients
Chris Walling, Brandfire Marketing Group

Profiting from New & Emerging Media

Liz Brohan, Colman Brohan Davis Marketing
Pam Ansley Evans, IBM

Innovative Procurement Models

Cheryl Kahanec, Sandy Alexander
Print Production Manager, GlaxoSmithKline
CJ Kornell, Arizona State University

Registration and details online at www.ipa.org/leadership or download the complete program.

The Popularity of Video in Digital Asset Management

Thursday, December 10, 2009 by Al Falaschi

The growing popularity of video is well documented... There are a number of reports available. They explain the power and attractiveness of using video, specifically in the enterprise environment.

More than 65% of companies are using online video and that number is expected to continue increasing (VideoBloom, 2009). (Remember an earlier post, Gartner Predicts 25 Percent of Content in the Workforce to be Images, Audio or Video by 2013.) Online video is a key method of delivering and consuming information that educates, entertains, and/or inspires in ways that touch emotions static text on a page cannot achieve.

Director of research and design at Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab, Dr. BJ Fogg, writes that for a consumer to make a purchase, it requires a “behavior change.” Fogg’s behavior model talks about the convergence of three things that need to happen for the change to occur – a trigger, ability and a motivation. Motivation is strictly tied to “sensation.” Inherently, video combines the use of more human senses than most other traditional sales and marketing tools. Read more about the reason "why" video use is on the rise in business marketing.

How does that impact Digital Asset Management? Video is a digital asset. As its popularity grows, enterprises will struggle to manage the creation, storage, and distribution of it. Video files are exponentially larger than text documents. Multiple copies of a file in multiple locations use even more storage. Version control is nearly impossible since someone has to remember each file's location and update or renew it when a new one becomes available or when it expires. Plus, there isn’t always an easy way to search for the right video based on the content. Beyond that, an increase in video will also mean an increase in the amount of bandwidth required to serve the video – a requirement that many SMBs struggle with.

We can learn a lot just by looking at trends within Widen’s own organization and DAM software customer base. There are notable increases in not only the number of video assets being added to our DAM systems, but also in the rate of videos added per year. Due to the raw size of high resolution video, the percentage of the overall file size of our DAM taken up by video has grown extensively. Again, the rate of growth per year is also increasing as we choose to use video more and more for marketing, sales and customer service purposes.

From a sales and marketing standpoint, there are dramatic increases in the coverage of video as a topic in many of our sales calls, and in RFPs that we receive. There are a number of factors that are causing these increases. One is the growing popularity of video. Again, this is well documented. In addition, there is the entire social movement. For video, this requires organizations to not only produce video content, but to make it accessible and publish it to as many online video channels as possible.

An often unnoticed factor is the shift in video camcorder technology from “tape” to “tapeless.” Tape has been a crutch for video storage and backup for… well, for forever. With the new tapeless camcorders recording very high resolution files resulting in very large file sizes with no tape to put them on, suddenly, organizations are faced with storing, securing, backing up, and distributing files that are ten times the size of the files they are familiar with managing. And remember, it is GROWING!

Bottom line, the increasing demand for video will place demands on DAM software and digital asset hosting providers to make sure that video is handled seamlessly alongside all other assets.

Stats on video usage from VideoBloom's VIEW Index (Video-Enabled Web Index):
100 Web Sites Surveyed

In August of 2009, the VIEW main index for the 100 surveyed companies was 30-75-25, which indicates that 30% of the companies had video on their home page, 75% had video on their site, and 25% didn't use any video on their Web site.

41% of the 100 surveyed companies have placed their Web videos 1 click away from the home page.
25% of the surveyed companies have placed their Web videos deep into their Web sites, 3 clicks or more away from the home page.
25% use online video in an advanced manner: contextual integration of videos, variety of video players, call-to-action tied to the video.
32% offer a full-fledged "video center" comparable to a corporate TV channel.
21% give access to such video center directly from their home page (one click away).
12% display video ads for products on their site; 7% display video ads on their home page.
36% offer full-screen video option.
4% have video on auto-play (i.e. video starts as soon as the user lands on the page).
11% open video in a new browser Web page.
18% use a pop-up window to display video.

Video uses: 48% of the surveyed web sites use video for promotional purposes, 24% use it for informational purposes, 20% use it for demonstrative purposes, 6% use it to deliver news, 5% use it for entertainment purposes, 1% use it for other purposes and 0% use it for UGC (user generated content). (The percentages don’t add up to 75% because many sites use online video for several different purposes.)

Video formats: 61% use Flash video, 21% use Windows Media Player, 8% use QuickTime and 4% use Real Player. (The percentages don’t add up to 75% because some websites use more than one video format.)

The reason "why" video use is on the rise in business marketing.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009 by Al Falaschi

In light of a recent post that zappos.com reported a 6 to 30% increase in sales on items that are accompanied by a video, I wanted to talk about “why” that is. There are a number of research reports on the rise in popularity of online video publishing use within the enterprise. Aside from the obvious answer of “increased sales,” the question of “why” is not so easy to answer. That is probably because we first need to definine "how" it works.

I have been reading the research of Dr. BJ Fogg lately. He directs research and design at Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab. He writes that for a consumer to make a purchase, requires a “behavior change.” His behavior model talks about the convergence of three things that need to happen for the change to happen.

There needs to be a “trigger” (cue, prompt, call to action, request, etc.), the consumer must have the “ability” (financially, access, simplicity of UI, etc.), and they have to have “motivation.”

One of his key concepts within motivation is “sensation.” Video, by default, combines the use of more human senses than other tools used in traditional sales and marketing scenarios. The more senses you, as a marketer, can stimulate in your audience, the more emotion and sensation you can evoke, aiding in motivating your customers.

IMHO, I also feel that a video evoking emotion or motivation in a potential customer could also serve as the trigger. Two for one. That should help your ROI if you are looking at adding online video to your marketing efforts and needing a video asset management system.

Of course, as more businesses realize the power of video in their marketing campaigns…those videos will need to be managed in a Digital Asset Management system. Have you ever heard of Widen? ;)