Widen Media Collective

This is the fourth video in the series of Widen customer interviews with Jason Barinaga, Manager of eCommerce Initiatives, at Oceania Cruises, Inc. In this video, Jason talks about how “ease of use” for their external users – travel agents and media personnel – is of great significance for the success of their digital asset management solution. Internally, the Oceania Cruises graphics department takes on the responsibility of managing the system which includes uploading, categorizing and organizing brand assets. He talks about how the administrators of the Widen DAM tool find it very user friendly to upload assets, catalog and add meta-tags/descriptions, etc. The ability to create and manage various levels of access and permissions is critical to managing the different user roles as well.  Jason talks about the positive feedback their users have provided about the ease of use of the Widen Media Collective from a customer service and functionality standpoint in doing everything that they need it to do and provide. Watch the video to learn more about the importance of “ease of use” with digital asset management at Oceania Cruises.

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.

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.



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

Enthralled in the LeBron James buzz that is “The Decision,” Widen has been part of the “madness” that follows the announcement of the NBA's marquee free agent to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami HEAT.

The Widen digital sampling process and web-based digital asset management technologies allow the adidas Sports Licensed Division (SLD) and retailers of NBA jerseys and apparel to start selling LeBron James hot market products within 12 hours of the decision going public. Sources report that the LeBron James number 6 Miami HEAT jerseys are selling like hotcakes and are expected to produce record numbers within the first week.

The LeBron James jersey samples you see on e-commerce sites like FansEdge.com and ESPNShop.com were digitally created by Widen’s digital sampling premedia production team. This saves the adidas Sports Licensed Division time and costs of photographing the physical product samples and beats the need to mass produce the products before they can be sold. In cases like this where the jerseys and apparel are being marketed and sold within hours of “the decision” going public, Widen’s process and expertise plays a key role in meeting the hot market demands.

Here’s the breakdown of the steps for the LeBron James hot market orders surrounding the special telecast of "The Decision" on ESPN Thursday, July 8 at 9:00 PM Eastern time:

1.  Widen received digital sampling orders from the adidas SLD on Thursday 7/8/2010 for all scenarios to James’ decision.

2.  Widen prepared digital samples of the blank team jerseys (front and back) for each possibility including the Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami HEAT, New York Knicks, Chicago Bulls, New Jersey Nets and Los Angeles Clippers.

3. Widen digital sampling technicians added the player name (JAMES) and number (6) to the appropriate team blank (Miami HEAT) at 4:00AM CST on 7/9/2010.

4. The final digital samples were added to the adidas SLD Media Collective web-based digital asset management system and images were sent to the customers by 9:00AM CST on 7/9/2010 to be marketed and sold worldwide.





For more information about Widen apparel marketing technology and premedia services, check out the Widen Digital Sampling blog or download the DAM as SaaS 2.0 white paper  featuring a Reebok case study.

Names are a big deal with marketing and creative groups; especially when it comes to the everyday business systems and applications you depend on to do your job. Choosing a name for your digital asset management system is key to a successful deployment in building user adoption internally and externally. Not all users of your DAM system will understand what “Digital Asset Management” is, so it’s common to choose a different, more identifiable name. This post will help you understand how to go about naming your digital asset management tool and provide some helpful ways of building a short list of possible names.

Best practices in naming your Digital Asset Management System:

• Choose a name that fits the department or functional area leading the project – e.g. marketing communications, creative, public relations, sales, etc.
• Choose a name that fits the primary group(s) of users of the system – internal or external – e.g. marketing partners, sales channels, dealers, etc.
• Choose a name that fits the types of assets that are most common – e.g. images, photos, videos, and marketing materials. If it’s all of the above, use a more general term such as media or brand assets.
• Choose a name that fits your organization, brand(s) or mission. ** The most important best practice because your DAM solution is the single point of management and access to your brand assets.

Quick Tips – Be Creative, Realistic, Memorable and Simple:

• Be Creative – Names that are catchy and fun are easier to remember.
• Be Realistic – Names that fit the purpose of the system set clear expectations.
• Be Memorable – Names that are easy to remember improve frequency of use.
• Be Simple – KISS. (You all know what that means...) Confusion turns users away.

Two and three word combinations work best in achieving the goal of being Creative, Realistic, Memorable and Simple. Typically, you will want to attach your organization or brand name to the front of the two-word or three-word name for your DAM system. For example, “Widen Video Library” or “Widen Brand Asset Portal.”


Chart for Picking a Two-Word Name for your DAM System:

Asset Type Descriptor	System Type Descriptor
Brand	Bank
Creative	Collection
Digital	Database
Image	Resource
Marketing	Tool
Media	Library
Photo	Toolkit
Video	Source
	Gallery
	Portal
	Collective
	System
	Center

Sample Two-word Names (Not including the Customer/Brand name):
Creative Library, Digital Gallery, Digital Toolkit, Image Library, Marketing Library, Marketing Toolbox, Media Database, Media Library, Media Source, Partner Portal

Sample Three-word Names (Not including the Customer/Brand name):
Brand Asset Library, Creative Resource Bank, Digital Image Gallery, Digital Media Library, Image Management System, Marketing Resource Center, Video Asset Library



The Widen Media Collective® Brand Name

Media Collective® is the trademarked name for the Widen digital asset management software suite and serves as the default name for Widen customer DAM systems unless you choose your own. Generally, the name will appear in the title of the web-based DAM system, login screen and header within the application. The standard web address is https://customer.widencollective.com.

What if we want a vanity web address?

There is no cost to select a custom name, however additional charges may apply for maintaining a custom vanity URL. Here’s an explanation of the vanity web address options:

Vanity Web Address Redirect: Organizations not wishing to use the standard web address of https://customer.widencollective.com may opt for a vanity web address that is redirected to the standard address. For example, you can direct users to http://WidenMediaCollective.com and they will be redirected to https://demo.widencollective.com when they arrive on the page.

Vanity Web Address: Organizations not wishing to use the standard web address of https://customer.widencollective.com may opt for a vanity web address that is NOT redirected to the standard address. For example, you can direct users to https://WidenMediaCollective.com and that will remain the core part of the URL string throughout their use of the system.

CMSWire recently posted an interesting poll about Digital Asset Management. For those commissioning DAM projects, “What is your biggest Digital Asset Management challenge?”

The answer options to the poll question include:

• Taxonomy/Metadata development
• Selecting a vendor or product
• Building the business case or defining ROI
• The usability of the system
• User adoption of the system

A comment to the poll provides a good summary of the poll results after 2 days of data collection… “Usability of the system, User adoption of the system, and Taxonomy/Metadata development fall out as 1, 2 and 3…”

This poll couldn’t be more timely as two key areas for DAM development and enhancement in 2010 at Widen are Usability (UI) and Analytics.




Let’s talk “Usability”

Usability for a web based DAM system means that a user who logs in three or four times per year should know exactly what to do to find and retrieve an asset based on experiences working with other common web applications. In Widen’s world of DAM, clients generally have a few different groups of users. There are the power users or Admins who usually represent the smallest group in number but use the full features of the DAM system – ingestion through distribution. There’s typically another tier of regular users that use the DAM library with some regularity, but for more common purposes of finding and retrieving digital assets. Then, there are the hundreds or thousands of users that only login a handful of times each year. It’s that long tail of “once in awhile” users that the system should cater to in terms of ease-of-use. Other bells and whistles for more advanced users should exist, but shouldn’t over-complicate the UI, nor be too overbearing for the general purposes of the system—ingest, collaborate, manage, find, retrieve and distribute assets.

To provide a Widen customer example of user adoption, Steelcase—the global office furniture leader—had over 9,000 logins within the first two months of going live with their DAM solution. Interestingly, Widen serves five of the top 15 office furniture manufacturers. This type of user adoption drives the demand for DAM throughout the supply chain. While CMS Watch, an analyst firm who talks to DAM customers, reported that Widen has a “clean, well-designed user interface that appeals to business users,” we still recognize the magnitude of usability and opportunities for improvements in UI design.


Diving Deeper into DAM Data with “Analytics”

An Analytics application speaks directly to the business case for DAM endorsers and senior leaders who look at how DAM supports top-line revenue growth or impacts the bottom line. Digital Asset Management ROI is measured in a number of ways with hard dollar and soft dollar savings. Common buckets for measuring DAM ROI include: how DAM improves processes, how DAM reduces costs, how DAM increases revenues, how DAM adds new profit centers, and how DAM protects the brand. The time to realizing a DAM ROI is predominantly driven by two things – user adoption and subsequently asset usage and asset repurposing. Leveraging tracking, reporting and analytics tools offers more intelligence and thus greater ability to measure and prove ROI. For that reason, Widen developed four key ratios that help customers watch and evaluate adoption and success:

• Digital Asset Activity Ratio: A comparison between the quantity of assets that have been ordered and the amount of assets stored in the DAM system. This ratio provides insight into the relationship between download activity and all the assets stored in the digital asset library.

• Repurposing Ratio: A comparison between the active digital assets and the quantity of assets ordered. This provides insight into the amount of content repurposing that is taking place over a period of time. Repurposing continues to be a key component of digital asset management value.

• User Activity Ratio: A comparison between the total number of logins and the quantity of users that have logged in provides information about visitation frequency. This metric also provides insight into how frequently users visit to browse or check back on new branded materials.

• Digital Asset Consumption Ratio: Comparing the quantity of files ordered to the users that logged into the system provides information on the amount of data being consumed by each user over a specific time period.

The ratios are further explained in the Business Management article “What Those DAM Statistics Can Tell You.”

So we’ve touched on the metrics for monitoring ROI once DAM is deployed, but how do we build the business case?


Finding It All While Saving A Bundle

If you’re unsure of the costs that come with unmanaged data, consider these factors, and then apply them to your own organization.

• Companies spend an average of $8,200 per person per year on file management activities. These include searching, verification, organization, backup, and security.
• Creative professionals spend an average of one out of every 10 hours of their time on file management. Their prime activity: searching.
• The average creative person looks for a media file 83 times a week and fails to find it 35% of the time.

A digital asset management solution could help alleviate some of these costs. According to findings from GISTICS Research, a DAM solution can cut the amount of time spent on file management by more than 85%. And rather than failing to find a file 35% of the time, users will not find something only 5% of the time.

SOURCE: GISTICS


Visit the DigitalAssetManagement.com ROI calculator for more assistance in putting together a DAM ROI.


Our thanks to all customers who continue to provide feedback and ideas for making the Widen Media Collective more valuable and enjoyable. Widen customers can expect more specific communications to come in the next few months about the User Interface (UI) enhancements and new Analytics application.

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.

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



Is now the right time for you to implement Digital Asset Management programs?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you want all the latest and greatest news and updates about Widen digital asset management programs and premedia services?  Become a Fan of Widen on Facebook.

The Widen Facebook fan page provides a central location for everything “Widen” with links to all of the latest articles, news, blogs, videos, photos and more.

Become a fan of Widen on Facebook and join in on the conversations.



Introduction to the main features of the Widen Facebook Fan Page:

The Wall – View a log of the latest article placements, mentions in trade publications, press releases, blogs and member commentary.  Some of the more notable recent postings include links to Widen articles in Adotas, ebizQ, DM News, Corporate Media News, Multichannel Merchant and the American Marketing Association’s Marketing Power.com. You can also find Widen quotes and client successes in recent trade publications including KMWorld, Processor.com and Big Picture Magazine. 

Info – Catch a glimpse of Widen with a short company overview, mission and product snapshot.

A sample of the Widen Product snapshot:

Widen Media Collective - A web-based digital asset management software application for creating, managing and distributing photos, videos, marketing materials and other digital media.

Premedia Services - photography, color retouching, digital sampling, catalog production, color management and wide format printing.

Photos – Check out Widen photo albums including Widen magazine covers from the premedia open house, Widen company kickball, black and white historical images of Widen Engraving Co., and portfolios of Widen Digital Sampling, Color Markups and Color Retouching.

Videos – Watch Widen’s latest photoshop magic premedia viral videos and get 1-on-1 with Widen’s CEO and other subject matter experts.

Other areas of interest on the Widen Facebook page include RSS feeds of all the latest blogs covering  Widen’s areas of expertise, links to other industry resources, and favorite pages linking to the fan pages of Widen Customers.

To learn more, become a Fan of Widen on Facebook.

Widen recently published a new “Brand Standards” document in efforts to maintain a consistent face to the marketplace. This exercise has been quite a grueling process as we work to gather, catalog and manage all of our logos and templates to enforce consistent use of our branding. (Go figure, a Digital Asset Management company has many of the same frustrations as the customers we serve!)

Like many organizations, the most public facing and prominent marketing touch point is the corporate website. We launched a new website in Q1 of this year and just recently updated our brand standards document that is three years removed from the last major update. (I’m sure you can relate!) Besides our website, we have several other forms of digital media channels that we try to maintain consistent with our corporate brand—landing pages, blogs, social networking pages, print collateral and corporate documents.   

The part of this process that became particularly complicated was managing all the different versions of our logos… 

Widen has 35 different logos from 13 different styles of the Widen logo:

1. 3-D Reflected versions
2. Flat versions
3. Black & White 3-D Reflected versions
4. Black & White Flat versions
5. 3-D Reflected versions with the tagline “Empower Your Digital Media”
6. Flat versions with the tagline “Empower Your Digital Media”
7. Black & White 3-D Reflected versions with the tagline “Empower Your Digital Media”
8. Black & White Flat versions with the tagline “Empower Your Digital Media”
9. 3-D Circle W Icons
10. Powered by Widen stamps for customer sites
11. Widen Media Collective product stamps
12. Widen Appliance product stamps
13. Widen for Appexchange logos for our Salesforce.com apps

Portfolio View of the Widen Logo Library

As users of our own digital asset management tools we can control which formats are convertible and what conversion options are to be configured within our DAM SaaS application. Most of the 13 different styles have RGB (for web or print conversion), CMYK (for print only) and PMS (for print only) versions so that’s why we total 35 different logos. There are 4 "for print only" logos that can be downloaded only as the CMYK or PMS file in the original .ai file format, meaning there is no conversion.

The RGB versions hold the integrity of the file the best—particularly with the reflected red 3-D Circle W that has several different colors in it. The RGB files can be converted to any file format for print or web use. Conversion options include: JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and EPS (configurable to each client’s specifications). Therefore, instead of having on file and keeping track of more than 52 additional logos in different file formats, we only need to keep track of the 13 master logos that can be converted to any format using Photoshop conversions on-demand within our own Widen Media Collective DAM system.

Logo Conversion Options Configured Specific to the Widen Corporate Internal DAM System

Are there any other marketing people that can relate to the vast challenges in managing a logo library?  We’d love to hear your story!
 

DEAR DR. DAM:  I’m Eddy, the director of corporate marketing with a large engineering, consulting and construction company and I’m working with our I.T. business analyst to find a solution to our current digital image management process—which is doomed.  We’re leading an initiative to find a better digital media management system to manage and share images and marketing collateral.  We have nine different locations throughout the US and we’re in dire need of a more organized approach to share approved imagery with our marketing and engineering folks around the world.  We’re losing a lot of time and money chasing our tails with materials that we don’t even know exactly where they are. 

Our corporate marketing team wants to be able to drive brand consistency while doing a better job of capitalizing on the money spent on purchased images we know exist somewhere, but cannot locate.  Right now, we’re just using a shared network drive and it demands a lot of our designer’s time to fulfill requests for images.  We are also having issues with our marketing collateral containing outdated info and need to develop a more accurate process for customizing brochures with different pieces of information.  We currently use another enterprise software vendor for content management and looked into the DAM plug-in but that would cost us $100K+, which is out of the question.  We want a hosted digital asset management system because we don’t want to deal with our own internal servers anymore.  Please point us in the right direction.

DEAR ENGINEER A NEW DAM EDDY:  Looking toward a hosted DAM is a smart alternative, particularly in these times.  There are no major expenditures on hardware or expensive upgrades/add-ons to purchase.  The Widen hosted digital asset management system provides you with your own branded web portal to drive your corporate branding initiative.  Plus, you’ll get free software upgrades on a quarterly basis for as long as you’re a customer.  Your designers will enjoy more time to concentrate on what they set out to do because your agents will be able to fulfill their own requests.  No more purchased images will fall through the cracks as a new DAM system will greatly help you improve organization and accountability.  The Widen Media Collective includes a project collaboration module to route images and documents for comment and approval tracking.  And, the media building app will help your users produce custom marketing collateral using images and content fit for the situation.  You’ll enjoy the ability to run usage reports and see where your users are and what’s being downloaded.  Get ready for a change because you’ll start realizing an ROI within a few short months.  

As I investigate new possible brands and product avenues for Widen to go down, I inevitably end up studying our current flagship product, the Media Collective Digital Asset Management system, quite a bit. And having come from an enterprise-software sales background my mind is always going down the path of "what is the benefit to the customer, what is in it for them?"

In today's economic conditions most companies demand an ROI. Those projects that have a "this would be nice" benefit or even arguable soft costs are getting buried at the bottom of the stack while products and solutions that can reduce costs or even show an ROI are going straight to the top. And in a time of high unemployment employees have a vested interest in finding solutions to reduce their companies’ costs: the more a company can save, the better they can afford to pay their employees.

While we know there is an ROI associated with time it can be difficult to articulate to customers because there are too many soft costs... How much is your time worth? How much time could you save if you could find images faster? If you could protect your brand better how much is that worth to you?

All great talking points but in a world of black and white numbers sometimes that is not enough. Hard numbers and clear ROI are required.

To that effect, I came across some great statistics on DAM and how DAM can help various organizations reduce costs. The numbers come from GISTICS research, with some highlights below:

• An average of $8,200 per person per year is spent on file management activities which include searching, verification, organization, back-up and security.
• Creative professionals spend an average of 1 out of every 10 hours of their time on file management, mainly searching.
• The average creative person looks for a media file 83 times a week and fails to find it 35% of the time.
• Research shows that digital asset management solutions will drop that figure to 5%.

$8200 per year per person!!  How many people at your firm or organization deal with file management per year? How much does that add up to on a 1-year and 5-year basis?

And those numbers don't take into account the fact that when you are not searching for files/images you can be working on something else, possibly something billable. And the average person fails to find digital media over one-third of the time? How much productivity is lost there? And how much frustration is built up there? And with SaaS, hosted DAM you don't even have to worry about maintenance, servers, etc.

Add to that the fact that with a digital asset management solution you CAN protect your brand, that little thing you've invested thousands and millions into.

Digital Asset Management has always made sense and always had clear benefits and process efficiencies. But as the economy continues to struggle it is also becoming more and more clear that there is ROI to be achieved as well.

Widen is continually working to build strong partnerships with third party vendors who provide technologies and services that are complementary to our own digital asset management programs.  By partnering with industry leading vendors we can expand into new markets and bring more features and functionality to our own Widen Media Collective customers.  It’s a win win for everyone.  Through strategic partnerships and the technologies that they bring to the table, Widen can help our customers build out entire media workflow environments that go far beyond digital asset solutions.  One of the central messages I have tried to focus on in some of my previous blogs was that DAM systems should be the backbone to our customer’s larger marketing operations, brand and creative software technology environments.  So I thought it would be helpful to start a series of blogs highlighting some of our partner relationships and how our customers are using these external services and technologies to streamline and improve their internal media workflows.  Level III Services is one of those partners who immediately came to mind as a great place to start.   

Level III Services offers print on-demand and product fulfillment services that are second to none.  Their online suite of products leverages Widen’s hosted DAM platform to give customers instant access to their marketing materials from anywhere in the world.  Need to manage a large inventory of marketing literature or products online?  Need to ship the latest brochure to the event for your biggest customer and need it there tomorrow?  Tired of drowning in extra materials and cost because your printer requires you to adhere to large print runs instead of paying for just what you use and need?  Yeah, they do all that.  Level III Services saves their customers thousands by embracing the simple idea that less is more.  You can save money and the environment by producing only what you need, when you need it.  That sounds good to Widen and is one reason we think Level III is such a good neighbor.  Customers of Widen’s hosted DAM service have been paying for only what they use, rather than what they can install, for over 12 years.  For more info on Level III Services, visit www.level-3.com. 

Lots in store for Widen’s v5.3 Spring 09 Release!

Widen Media Collective administrators and users won’t want to miss the upcoming Widen Digital Asset Management v5.3 Spring 09 Release webinars.  It’s the easiest way to quickly get up to speed on what’s new.  Thanks to the feedback of our clients, Widen has incorporated some key modifications designed to streamline efficiencies in the Widen DAM SaaS application in our Spring 5.3 Release.  Highlights include: preferred time zone options, dependent metadata fields, asset zoom changes, and a new option for resolving conflicted assets for the file, metadata and permissions.  

Widen has also made some significant changes to the Widen Appliance - the on-site hardware/software configuration integrating hosted DAM with the desktop.  More details to come!

Watch your email for the latest release notes and webinar details.

You may have noticed that we just launched a new widen.com in the last few days.  You may miss the voice of Matthew Gonnering and his body double pointing out specific areas of interest on the old site so I want to take this opportunity to point out specific areas of the new site.

The Home Page – We’re proud to be working with a wide range of companies that are doing some tremendous things in the marketplace and applying our solutions and services in different ways, so we wanted to showcase our customer wall.  Be sure to check out the stories or watch the videos (look for the video camera icon in the top right of select images for InSinkErator, Motorola, ZDO, St. Mary’s and Sub-Zero and Wolf). 

Using Digital Asset Management – Digital Asset Management can be looked at as both a practice and a technology.  It is most effective if you deploy the right strategies as a practice and the right technologies as a solution fit for your organization.  The sub-sections to our Using DAM section highlight our seven different products under the Widen family of digital asset management solutions for marketing and creative people. 

• Find Digital Media – Core Digital Asset Management
• Access Assets On-Site – Widen Appliance client site extension
• Manage Videos – Video Asset Management
• Approve Photos – Backdrop Photography Approval System
• Route Projects – Project Collaboration
• Create Promotions – Dynamic Media Building
• Publish Catalogs – Catalog Publishing 

The Widen Media Collective is our suite of web based DAM solutions and the Widen Appliance is our on-site client extension.  Altogether, Widen brings you 100% DAM SaaS – the Software as a Service delivery model and software with service, as in Customer Service and Technical Support.  One of our most popular features that we’re highlighting and using on the new site is our Digital Asset Embed Links. 

Premedia Services - Next, we have an all new Premedia Services section that covers our premedia / prepress services offering.  If you’re confused about the meaning of “Premedia Services,” it’s likely because you’re used to the term “Pre-Press.”  However, “Premedia” (although it may be our own term vs. an industry term) truly represents the work we do here from photography to color retouching in preparing files to go to press or for the web and other electronic media channels.  Be sure to check out the portfolios of our sample work for digital photography, color retouching, digital sampling and catalog production.
 

The Widen Advantage - The third major addition to widen.com is an all new section on The Widen Advantage, which features Customer Interviews, Customer Service and Software as a Service sections.  What is the Widen Advantage?  As hard as it is to articulate on a website or blog, it comes down to a few main points related to serving the creative and marketing functions of creating, managing and distributing digital media: 

1. A foundation built upon 60 years of serving our customers in over 120 countries
2. A strong commitment to technology and innovation to achieve the goals of our customers
3. Software development resources and technology to  automate premedia processes,  providing quality work with fast turnarounds and competitive rates
4. Software as a Service with technology solutions proven over 16 years of internal testing and evolution as a result of customer feedback

Last, if you’re looking for a place with all  the right digital asset management resources in one place, our Resource Center has videos, whitepapers, analyst commentary, free trials, implementation info and key links to the WidenCollective.com product site and DigitalAssetManagement.com industry resource site.

Please be sure to check back soon to see our new sections on Industry Solutions, Solutions by Function, and Widen solutions for the Salesforce.com Appexchange – Digital Media Organizer and Marketing Template Creation.

My blogs have by called “fluffy” by co-workers … ironically by those who aren’t expected to blog.  Anyway be prepared for another fluffy blog … this time about throwing snow balls, the Polar Bear Plunge, and digital asset management. 

Chris Norris, Lead Developer at Widen Enterprises, is our resident renaissance man.  Developer.  Photographer.  Videographer.  Charity Supporter.  DAM user.  When he’s not slaving away on JAVA code at Widen, he’s shooting cool photographs around town and making the occasional video.  But he never truly escapes his job at Widen as he uses the Widen Media Collective for his personal photography and videos.  Take for example the latest video he shot detailing the extensive training he underwent preparing for the Polar Bear Plunge.  In case you haven’t heard of it, the Polar Bear Plunge involves hardy souls like Chris – jumping into the ridiculously icy waters of Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin to raise money for Special Olympics.  (for those of you in more temperate climates – it was minus 5 degrees Fahrenheit on my drive to work today)  To really show people what it takes to prepare for an event like this, Chris created this “training” video (and this is where many, many snowballs come into play). 
 

Now to bring all this together ... snowballs, Polar Bear Plunge, and DAM … After he finished his raw video, he uploaded it into Widen’s hosted digital asset management software.  What makes software as service sweet is the ability to access it wherever you may be … all you need is an internet connection.  So you don’t need to be tied to your desk at work hooking up with your company network  … you can be sitting on your couch at home watching Star Trek and uploading your raw video (showing people pelting you with snow balls) and your still shots to the media asset storage system any time day or night.  Once the uncut video footage was uploaded, Chris sent an order to his video editor in Portland, Oregon.  He didn’t have to worry about a huge file like this getting caught up in spam filters because his editor receives an email with a link (no attachment!) that goes to a pickup page where she can download the file.  Once the video is edited and complete, Chris gave his editor upload privileges and the finished video was uploaded to Widen’s video asset management application.  Chris (or anyone Chris decides to give privileges to) can login and view the video within our video hosting provider service without even having to download it.  And the other cool part is how Chris used embed links to transfer the video to different websites.  Instead of manually putting that video on 5 different websites, he used an embed link on those pages so every time a page loads that contains the video embed link the data is transferred from the Widen DAM to the various websites.  If Chris decides to update the video – all he has to do is upload the new video into DAM and – viola – all the websites that have that video via embed links are automatically updated with new video!  One change versus five!

So, one more fluffy blog post.  How many more left to go?

I have been asked to find digital images that we can display throughout our building.  Not being real familiar with the Widen Media Collective, I took it upon myself to try to do it on my own.  And lo and behold it is a pretty simple system to use.  I just typed in a specific keyword on each Collective site and was able to pull up amazing images.  We have many companies we work with and thousands of images, so it was pretty fun to get a little more comfortable with our digital asset management programs.  It was so very simple to order up an image and have it immediately sent to my inbox within seconds, so I was able to send it to our Graphic Designer for her to add the company logo to it and it was off to our prepress production department. 

I wanted to get an image from one of our newest customers for our internal Widen gallery so I went to the National Trust for Historic Preservation Media Collective site to see if there happened to be any images in their digital asset library and they already had several images up and ready to use.  So I chose one of their images and it will soon be on the wall near my desk.  It is so nice to walk through our company and see all of the images that we have produced and we store here at Widen.  My next project is to have a few products displayed here with an image created by our color production team once the product has been photographed in our photo studio.  It is just amazing how it all comes together and how it falls into place so simply.

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!

It’s on the news.  It’s in the papers.  You can’t escape it.  Recession.  Financial woes.  No money to spend.  What to do?

It's comforting to work for a company that actually HELPS other companies during financial stressful times like these.  We aren’t bill collectors.  We aren’t miracle workers.  We just happen to have something that most companies need especially during belt tightening times.  Widen Enterprises provides marketing departments, creatives, communications and others with a way to manage their digital files whether it's images, logos, or videos with a cost effective digital asset management solution.  You might say, “We don’t have any money in the budget right now for asset management software.”  And we understand that.

How do you fix this dilemma?  Reallocation.  Spend what you do have elsewhere.  And not only that… reallocate your resources to something that has a return on investment within a matter of months!  Really?  Yes!  All of our 72 software as service clients using our various software applications realize a return on investment in 12 months or less!!  Seriously!  How many other things can you spend money on and realize this same ROI?

Spend money where it will make the biggest impact!  The Widen Media Collective is a software as a service application that pays for itself.  Eliminate redundancy.  Reduce process time.  All while centralizing your marketing assets and making them easily accessible to those who need them.  Plus, by having an online digital asset management application – you save money by not having to burn CDs and overnight them - plus there are zero costs associated with additional hardware or infrastructure.

Enhance your brand when you need to the most.  You can't stop marketing... can you?