My Bio

Matthew GonneringI'm Matthew Gonnering. In a 10-minute conversation that is supposed to be 2-minutes, you will clearly see I am a rambling marketer. The madness comes from my passion for marketing and why global domination is actually a reasonable goal with the right resources.

I have a fancy executive title for visionary purposes but getting in the marketing trenches is where I revolutionize change.

My goal is to help marketing teams create sustainable change within their departments leveraging internal champions to influence stakeholders and let them take all the credit.

Caution before reading: My highly competitive spirit may offend the avoiders and compromisers.

Follow me at http://twitter.com/mgonnering.

Widen’s Approach to Digital Asset Management

Wednesday, June 9, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
We realize all customers need assistance when it comes to the ongoing success of their Digital Asset Management implementation. Watch the video to learn more about Widen’s approach to digital asset management as a service.




In the video, I discuss how the most successful digital asset management deployments start with a very candid conversation to identify the objectives for managing and distributing digital assets. Then, we’ll work with you to create a long-term vision for what’s to be accomplished. We do not manage projects in terms of feature by feature requests. Our mission is to understand your objectives and work with you to create a plan by leveraging our expertise in the DAM space.

How are you going to prove that DAM is going to work for your company? What are you going to do to provide a very clear ROI to your management team? As we’ve done for many successful DAM deployments, we will paint a clear, long-term picture of how our product direction aligns with your vision, while executing in the short term to get the brand under control by centralizing all digital media assets used by the marketing organization. With Widen being a DAM Software as a Service (SaaS) provider, you get the benefit of being on a platform with over one hundred other customers sharing in the same universal functionality to achieve the purposes of meeting their long-term vision.

Widen still recognizes there are certain cases where customers have unique requirements and workflows requiring additional functionality and, oftentimes, customization. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. How do we handle those cases? We still start those customers at the basic brand management level because that platform is consistent with the DAM needs for all customers and users. If requirements are unique and a different level of customization is required to meet specific needs, then we will break you away from the pack of all the other customers on the same universal functionality. We know what works and what doesn’t in DAM and it’s our mission to provide you with the service and technology that proves ongoing success.

Digital Asset Management SaaSisfaction Gauntlet

Thursday, June 3, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
Digital Asset Management SaaSisfaction GauntletThrowdown 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!

Hosted DAM vs. SaaS DAM

Friday, May 21, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering

At the Henry Stewart digital asset management conference in New York and realized there is some confusion over hosted DAM and software as a service DAM. I attended the vendor round-up for SaaS providers of digital asset management systems and shot the video below.

 

Digital Asset Management Analogies – Tool Shed

Wednesday, April 14, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
Widen continues the Digital Asset Management education series of "DAM Analogies” with “DAM is like a tool shed.” In this video, shot outside the Widen headquarters in Madison, I talk about how DAM is an essential tool for marketing and sales teams. Widen marketing and sales teams use a SaaS pack of tools from leading providers including Salesforce.com, Google, ExactTarget, Compendium, Success Factors and our own Widen DAM software. Equally, DAM is like a tool shed because it houses other marketing and sales tools in the form of digital media - images, videos, brochures and other materials – used to assist with marketing campaigns and sales activities. Like a tool shed, DAM allows you to organize your tools and provide access to anyone who needs them to execute marketing programs.


Digital Asset Management Analogies – Rotting Eggs

Friday, April 9, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
We continue the offbeat Digital Asset Management education series of "DAM analogies on the beanbag" with this timely one on “Rotting Eggs.” In this analogy, we relate DAM to the Easter Bunny and finding Easter eggs. Like eggs that are left hidden behind the couch or some corner somewhere, lost digital assets are left rotting away without any opportunity to realize a return on the investments made in producing the asset.


Digital Asset Management Analogies – Getting Organized

Thursday, April 1, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
When we talk with people about digital asset management, we’re often using techy jargon and fluffy marketing-speak to help marketing and IT teams understand the value of using digital media management systems for their images and videos. This time around, we’ve decided to relate DAM software technologies to everyday encounters and common conveniences. This video kicks off a new series on “DAM Analogies from the Widen CEO on the Beanbag” (for those that follow my tweets @mgonnering we recently made a purchase from Awesomesack.com) focusing on “getting organized.”

In this analogy, I relate getting organized with your images, videos and marketing materials in a DAM system to the use of storage bins and totes for all your stuff in your basement. Check it out and stay tuned for more DAM analogies. Leave a comment or tweet @mgonnering to provide your best DAM analogy.


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.

Digital Asset Management Governance: What Sets Widen Apart?

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
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.


 

Keys to a Successful Digital Asset Management Implementation

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
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.


 

Digital Asset Management Workflow Tools

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
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.


 

The Widen Appliance - A Hybrid Approach to Digital Asset Management

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
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.


 

The Digital Asset Management User Experience

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
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.


 

Why Are Widen Customers So Loyal?

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
Widen helps companies get more value from their digital assets. We don’t do that only by providing cool, usable technology. We help companies get more value because we have the service commitments and service teams in place to ensure success. Watch the video to learn more about how Widen ensures success beyond implementation.


 

Digital Asset Management Best Practices and Ratios

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
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.”


 

What Differentiates Widen Digital Asset Management? Service and Expertise

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
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.


 

Widen's Aggressive Release Schedule with Digital Asset Management Upgrades

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering
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.


 

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.


 

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.
 
 
 

CMO Council on Marketing Supply Chain

Monday, November 16, 2009 by Matthew Gonnering
The CMO Council released information today regarding marketers lagging in optimizing their supply chains.  Digital asset management is mentioned as something that 30.1% of the respondents have already embarked on as part of their online strategy.  The lack of visibility is one element of the challenge where Widen DAM SaaS has provided insight to CMO's.

As part of the relationship with Widen, we are providing customers with visibility into the critical measurements of Digital Asset Management programs.  These critical measurements include the repurposing ratio, a way of monitoring how frequently digital assets are reused in the marketplace.  These statistics provide CMO's with a higher level understanding of their digital media assets and how they can leverage more value from them.

Mike Perez, Vice President of NVISION, also makes a reference to SaaS by stating the following: "Marketers are clearly recognizing that they can gain significant efficiencies and cost-savings, which will allow them to re-direct spend and resources to more gainful programs. But to do this, they need the right information systems, process controls, knowledge, expertise and physical infrastructure to implement process improvements and better handle procurement, warehousing and just-in-time delivery of marketing materials worldwide. Often this is a competency that can be more cost-effectively outsourced."

That quote strings together beautiful words.....gain efficiencies, cost-savings, invest in better programs, need the right I.S., JIT marketing materials worldwide, more cost-effectively outsourced.  It all fits the value of Widen digital asset management with a high-powered service model and 62 years of business operations at the core.


The CMO Council press release, also available below, can be found here: 
Marketers Lag in Optimizing Global Supply Chains; Big Opportunities Exist to Reduce Cost, Improve Yield and Increase Accountability


PALO ALTO, CA -- 11/16/09 -- Nearly two-thirds of senior marketers have never undertaken a comprehensive audit of the costs and processes that contribute to their marketing supply chain and most admit their resources and suppliers are poorly integrated across global networks, reports the Chief Marketing Office (CMO) Council.

The milestone "Define Where to Streamline" study (www.marketingsupplychain.org/report) provides a comprehensive assessment of how well marketers are managing, controlling and introducing sustainability practices across increasingly complex global supply chains. These include hundreds or thousands of printers, exhibit and merchandise suppliers, warehouse and fulfillment operations, communications agencies, media channels, independent contractors, as well as creative and digital service providers.

The online audit of more than 300 senior marketers conducted by the CMO Council found marketers are inadequately positioned to introduce new efficiencies and waste reduction programs into their marketing ecosystems. The study is the first initiative in a sweeping program under the umbrella of a new think tank, the Marketing Supply Chain Institute, which is dedicated to examining the economics of spend in the marketing services sector. The study was conducted with the support of NVISION®, the Marketing Supply Chain Group of North America Corporation.

While only 25.2 percent of respondents have undertaken a comprehensive audit and analysis of costs and process efficiencies in their supply chain, the study found that roughly the same number -- 25.9 percent -- track obsolescence on marketing and event management consumables. However, just over 50 percent of the marketers audited acknowledge that ROI could be the greatest reward from an optimized supply chain as a streamlined process will likely speed time-to-market and time-to-value from marketing spend. These numbers reflect a lack of visibility into marketing supply chain operations and poor tracking and accountability of marketing materials and merchandise inventory, which often involve millions of printed items, including product packaging, corporate brochures, sales literature, premiums and point-of-sale display units.

"Auditing the effectiveness of producing, storing and shipping marketing consumables is the first step towards a more integrated, efficient and streamlined marketing supply chain," said Mike Perez, Vice President of NVISION. "Marketers are clearly recognizing that they can gain significant efficiencies and cost-savings, which will allow them to re-direct spend and resources to more gainful programs. But to do this, they need the right information systems, process controls, knowledge, expertise and physical infrastructure to implement process improvements and better handle procurement, warehousing and just-in-time delivery of marketing materials worldwide. Often this is a competency that can be more cost-effectively outsourced," he added.

Interestingly, the CMO Council study suggests that a trend toward greater sustainability and carbon footprint reductions may lead many marketers onto the right path for gaining a deeper understanding of their supplier network and value chain. More than two-thirds of respondents -- 63.6 percent -- said they are targeting print production, warehousing and delivery of marketing consumables and 37.1 percent said they were targeting transportation and logistics with an eye toward realizing sustainability gain and carbon footprint improvements. Delving into these areas will enable marketers to exact cost-savings and efficiency improvements from many of the greatest areas of spend within their marketing supply chains.

"The marketing supply chain is clearly not a strategic area of focus for many marketers, yet there are significant improvements that can be driven by change-minded executives willing to dig deeply into the operational side of the marketing function," noted Donovan Neale-May, the CMO Council's executive director. "You are going to see a much tighter linkage between the CMO, CFO and CPO (chief procurement officer) going forward and more involvement by the CIO to integrate back-end information from ERP systems to better synchronize marketing supply operations and partners."

Other key findings from the report include:

--  With 89 percent of companies indicating they are not generating real
    economies or efficiencies in their marketing supply chain process,
    marketers are further challenged as one third of respondents indicate they
    have no internal resource of expertise in supply chain management.  In
    fact, 47.8 percent of marketers surveyed indicate that marketing supply
    chain management is an evolving functional area that needs more attention
    or a discipline growing in importance of value.

--  30.4 percent of respondents said they weren't fully realizing the
    value and potential of the Internet and instead are managing partners
    through traditional means while 30.1 percent clearly have adopted an online
    approach, saying they were seeing major improvements in workflow,
    collaboration, content access and digital asset management.

--  Marketers acknowledge that a streamlined supply chain can improve go-
    to-market strategy and speed time-to-value from marketing spend, and play a
    critical role in managing the potential variance in customer experience.
    The delivery of accurate and relevant content, the uniformity of
    communication and consistency of message, and the timely provisioning of up-
    to-date sales and marketing messages and materials are the top three
    critical values an optimized marketing supply chain to go-to-market
    strategy.

--  Creative, once an area often left in the hands of agencies or
    advertising, may come under greater scrutiny as a significant number of
    marketers -- 40.5 percent -- identified creative design and development as
    an area in the marketing supply chain with the greatest potential for
    process, productivity and performance improvements.