In this stage of the Solution Lifecycle, a few users have emerged as “very satisfied, arm-waving, walking-talking, brand-fan who advocates” of a particular product or services, and will (if asked) support, train, and inspire other customers to follow in his or her footsteps. Before these would-be-evangelists can move, however, they must “work through” several essential questions:

Communications and interactions
What are types of communication and interactions really make a difference in motivating others to adopt this new technology or service?

• Regular, well-announced teleconference Q&A roundtables
• In-depth interviews that document the journey from chaos to success
• Detailed process benchmarks documenting productivity gains and cost savings
• Industry awards for innovation in DAM
• Small-group insight-sharing sessions among industry peers

What else have you found in your experience?

MM: Vince, as the lead consultant on the project, would you give a quick survey of how this works?

VDP: First the graphic artist ingests the newly created ad into Cumulus. When they are ready to have the ad reviewed, they simply select the Publish to PDF option from a custom Moksa-created menu. This triggers a process that sends the ad through an approval process that first creates a PDF of the file and then publishes it to a Web catalog. An email is then generated by the system, addressed to appropriate sales and clients needing to approve the ad. The email contains a link that logs the user into the Web catalog, and places them right at the ad review screen. Here it can be approved or edit comments can be collected for modification requirements. If edits are necessary, the comments will be collected and forwarded to the graphic designer, together with a link to the original InDesign document, via email. This loop may continue until the ad is approved.

JK: The digital revolution has certainly streamlined the process and truly benefits our customers by getting them what they need faster, and giving them more time to make any necessary changes that they may need.

MM: Taking that a step further—let’s get away from print and talk about interactive and video for a moment. Everyone seems to be very excited about the potential for video. In the past, I guess you’d have to have a client come in to do the presentation or work hard to get an artist to go out and visit the client.

JK: We are shooting several videos. And we’re doing a bunch of Flash ads for the Newsday.com website. Again, we put those Flash ads and videos into the Cumulus digital asset management system and when a sales rep is out on the road visiting a client, they could use the Web browser to tap into the system. They could then download the video and show it right at the client’s place of business. Or they could show the Flash ad and say, “This is what your cube ad would look like on Newsday.com.” Very exciting thing!

I think it gives us an advantage over the competition.

In this stage of the Solution Lifecycle, a few users have emerged as “very satisfied, arm-waving, walking-talking, brand-fan who advocates” of a particular product or services, and will (if asked) support, train, and inspire other customers to follow in his or her footsteps. Before these would-be-evangelists can move, however, they must “work through” several essential questions:

Big story needed

What dream or big story does this product or service enable me to tell?

• We can now spend more time doing our creative work and less time on logistics
• We are able to execute our marketing campaigns more effectively and efficiently
• We got up and running with a digital asset management solution in a matter of days. It was painless.
• We are doing a much better job of staying on brand, more of the time, around the globe
• I can rest at night knowing that we have considerably lowered the risk of copyright infringement

What else have you found in your experience?

MM: You talked about how publishing in general and newspapers in particular continue to undergo significant structural changes to their business models and sources of revenue. Could you expand upon some of those changes and how digital technology continues to provide a platform for innovating and driving some of those changes or addressing some of those market forces?

JK: Sure. Historically, when we would work an ad that would appear in print, it would be very common to work the ad, make paper proofs, and have the sales rep—the account executive—swing by and pick up the proof to take out to the client.

Through digital technology, we have taken that to the next level. Using a system like Canto Cumulus, we can work through the ad and publish it. Then instead of us having to make paper proofs and have a sales rep swing by to pick that up and take it to the client, the sales assistant who’s in the building can log into the Cumulus system via a Web client. They can search on the client name and look at the proof themselves. From there, we can email it to the client or the account exec—whoever wants it.

In this stage of the Solution Lifecycle, most customers have a successfully deployed, stable DAM system. Before they can move, they must “work through” several essential questions:

Support services needed
What types of support services do many customers need to expand the breadth or depth of your solution?

• Basic and Advanced Training Programs
• Implementation Support
• Integration Consulting
• Metadata model definition
• Bulk asset management

MM: Could you describe a little more of what goes on in terms of ad operations—both in terms of the clients and the advertisers that you serve and the kinds of ads that your operations produce?

JK: We serve any and all advertisers. If we have a small business on Long Island and they need help building their ad, they don’t have to pay an agency. We certainly will do that for them. It’s part of the price of the ad. Then we’ll do campaigns and we’ll put together presentations for someone like Target—which we did last year.

We literally go from the small local retailers all the way up. We’ll do work for the national folks if they want us to get involved with helping them.

We have a full creative staff, and any creative needs of the company on the advertising side are handled by that group. Then we have a full production staff. So they’ll handle any of the production needs that arise when customers send in their digital files.

In this stage of the Solution Lifecycle, most customers have a successfully deployed, stable DAM system. Before they can move, they must “work through” several essential questions:

I.T. issues
What types of technical or IT issues emerge, hindering fuller expansion of your solution?

• System does not support certain file formats required by a specific group
• System integration with other enterprise systems
• Asset integration with other systems
• Insufficient bandwidth and storage
• Use of old browsers

What else have you found in your experience?