Photo Approval Application

Guest Blog Post from Tim Vial, Widen Sales Representative

It’s a word we can’t escape, and it won’t be going away for awhile.  Recession.  Our budgets have become tighter, and yes I will admit that I have converted into a coupon cutter…

In these times you need to push harder in your marketing efforts to reach the same result. Now is not the time to cut marketing, but to increase it and rather be more effective. Whether in times like these or a booming economy, having the tools to be the most efficient are evident but right now it’s painfully clear, you need Digital Asset Management.

Now the task begins of deciding which way to go.  Having a decreased budget is yet another reason to run away from the installed software realm into the stable arms of a Software as a Service (Saas) provider.  Let’s just focus on cost right now.  An installed provider will charge you and average of $90,000 just to set you up.  We will leave all the costly upgrades, training, and maintenance out of the mix for now and just take that number.  With a hosted solution from Widen Enterprises, $90,000 would get you an average of 3-5 years of digital asset management services.  Again, I will leave out that with a hosted solution all the training, upgrades, and maintenance are included.  Think of all the upgrades you have missed in 5 years!

Marketing has seen the digital shift.  In an online survey of 400 senior marketing and media executives, 67% identified online video as a primary focus of their 2009 digital marketing campaigns, with 52% planning the launch of an online video project by the second quarter. Manage it with the Widen Media Collective complete with tools like Embed Links, video asset management, project collaboration, and image approval applications.  Reallocate that budget now and propel your marketing in 2010!

A couple weeks ago I met with a kitchen equipment and accessories manufacturer that was interested in improving their creative workflow.  They were struggling with image management internally – images were being lost, reworked, and the overall workflow was being hampered by extreme inefficiencies.  Art directors didn’t know which photos were approved or not, which photos had moved to premedia services, and frustration was high.  One of the art directors is friends with an Account Executive at Widen – and called him one day to ask if Widen had any type of photography organizational software.  The AE laughed because as the Art Director described what she needed – it was as if she was reading a product guide for Backdrop! 

Backdrop by Widen is a photography workflow management application that allows many tasks to be automated in the creative workflow process when dealing with photographers and images.  Photographers select a profile (or workflow) – upload images using a drag and drop applet which triggers emails to the reviewers (often times Art Directors) in that particular workflow.  This photography approval system organizes images, allows for approvals and reshoot requests, and provides for as much metadata information as needed – including EXIF and IPTC info.  All actions associated with an image (approval, reshoot, comments, discard) are time and date stamped along with WHO did that action to that particular image.

All of these features thrilled this manufacturer as they shoot with multiple photographers in several locations (Backdrop is web-based so people can use it from anywhere there is internet service).  In addition, the ability to comment directly on images in Backdrop meant that they didn’t have to try and describe comments via email.  Team members loved the accountability feature with time/date stamping and were excited about being able to associate metadata with images prior to them being released into their digital asset management application.  Overall, they realized that Backdrop would help them get organized and improve the efficiency of their workflow – which makes us at Widen so happy we could help!

It has been rumored all week that Apple will be releasing their highly anticipated software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone on March 6^th.  This is a massive move in opening the previously locked iPhone platform.  It’s well known that a high percentage of iPhones are hacked and running third party applications, but this would allow for the development of applications that could be loaded to the unit without voiding any warranties or having to “unlock” the phone from its exclusive carrier contract with AT&T.

While this is a rather standard practice for mobile carriers and mobile devices, digital asset management has allowed for open integration for quite some time.  By using SOAP and Widen’s API configuration, we have been able to integrate with other internal workflow applications, CRM applications and even failing foreign digital asset management systems that aren’t able to be abandoned by some clients.

The overall openness of Widen’s applications allow for a higher level of marketing execution, creative support and sales enablement.  This capacity has led to a partnership exclusively with Salesforce.com and has enabled several clients to work with their marketing assets in a familiar environment while also allowing for brand approved materials to be distributed in a timely fashion.

The iPhone SDK may not be exciting to non-users, but it should.  Revolutionary gadgets have constantly been the engine promoting change in technology related industries.  What this means is that your standard, clamshell phone could soon be enabled to read your Outlook calendar, send emails and even work with things like spreadsheets and PDFs. 

Digital asset management is no exception to this inspiration.  Workflow management and photo approval processes are all procedures that could benefit from being accessed from a mobile platform.  With a constant development and testing cycle, Widen will be able to keep up with a rapidly changing industry and serve clients at a higher level with a cutting-edge services and applications that will allow them to venture to territories previously unexplored and possibly even unimagined.