Brand Management Solutions

For many years, Brand Management has been one of Canto's most successful markets for good reason: the value, security and efficiency provided by Cumulus is a natural fit for an industry that relies on asset security and distribution control.

Based on the input of Brand Management professionals, Canto developed BrandAssistant which tightly integrates Cumulus into QuarkXPress to help keep Brand Management workflows working, and managing, with all the convenience and security they need.

Operating Systems Don't Work

Most of Canto's Brand Management customers came to us reeling from the mishaps caused by their former asset management medium: the operating system. Either an image got out that wasn't approved, or release dates were missed because files were lost and had to be recreated. It happens all the time when operating systems are relied upon to do something they were never designed to do.

Operating systems go only so far with regard to access permissions. They offer permissions for the file's creator, a single group and the rest of the world. This permissions concept might have made sense when it was first developed back in 1969, but back in 1969 there was no such thing as a "digital asset." Today, almost 40 years later, digital files have value. They have histories and they have futures. And Brand Managers need a reliable means of tracking it all—across offices, across operating systems, and across the planet.

The risks and limitations posed by the use of operating systems for asset storage are many:

Access Problems     Operating systems either enable an employee to access to an asset or they don't—it's a "yes" or "no" proposition that typically requires a system administrator when changes are needed. This means hours or even days of downtime until workers can access the files they need.

The flip side of this problem is even worse: a file is erroneously made available to those who shouldn't have access. Therein lies the most common (and dangerous) nightmare caused by operating systems: inadvertent asset distribution. But this is one nightmare Cumulus and BrandAssistant users easily avoid.

Cumulus features a modern, flexible permissions scheme that's easy to administer and can be based on the real-time status of a given asset. This means that a file isn't made available to layout artists until the art director approves it for layout. Likewise, the final layout (and all the assets it contains) never see the ink of the print house until the art director and client say so. Access permissions in Cumulus are determined based on workflow, not inflexible "yes" or "no" options.

Try setting up an advanced, "live" permissions model like that using an operating system.

Collaboration Nightmares    Globe-spanning Brand Managers need to offer employees and clients asset access from anywhere. It's possible to put a file server out on the Internet and give everyone access to it, but do you really want to? This not only puts your valuable assets within the reach of hackers, it also requires you to deal with the networking differences between operating systems.

Convenience was the was goal, but the reality is anything but: your Mac users complain they can't connect to the Windows Server. And your networked Windows users are now sharing more viruses than assets.

And what about your account managers? They need to showcase your team's portfolio, while often armed with nothing more than a Web browser. Cumulus and BrandAssistant make it easy. Even better, they'll be showing only what's approved for distribution.

Try sharing files with this much control using an operating system.

Finding Files    To find a file on an operating system, you need to know its name, file size, modification date or other information along those lines. So what happens when you need to find an airplane image the Sydney Marketing Group used in some brochure produced two years ago? Using an operating system, you have nothing to go by. The file probably isn't even online anymore. But with BrandAssistant and Cumulus systems, you can easily find any file, even if it has been taken offline.

And you can find files using the information you do know, such as a client's name or a keyword. You can also quickly navigate through your Cumulus category structure of projects and find files that way. When you find it—a process that will take you a few moments, not hours or days—you can immediately see which projects the file has been used in since, whether or not you have the rights to use it again, how much it'll cost you to re-license it and, yes, you can even see its name, file size and modification date.

In fact, these examples of "metadata" are the tip of the iceberg of possibilities. You can define as many metadata fields as your workflow needs. You can edit the metadata at any time, and even add new fields as needed. Best of all, the ability to do all of these things—finding a file, seeing its metadata, editing that metadata, adding new fields, etc.—is governed by each user's permissions.

Try finding "mystery" files like this using an operating system.

Benefits You Never Even Imagined

Once the everyday problems of the "old way" of doing things are conquered, Canto's Brand Management customers often discover new business opportunities their Cumulus systems make available to them:

Client Approval Express    If your firm is like most, the process of getting client approvals involves CD burning, overnight couriers and countless follow-up emails and phone calls to ensure approvals happen on schedule. If you need signed copies back from clients, you can easily add another week to the process.

You already know the time that's wasted in this process, but many companies don't factor in the costs: overnight couriers, production delays, etc. Cumulus enables you to conduct client reviews online. With a simple email, you can direct clients to the files you want them to see. They connect using a Web browser, see what they need to see, and they can approve it all within moments. No CDs, no couriers and no painful delays. Cumulus can even send an email notification to clients (or internal managers) automatically when an asset needs their attention.

Asset Hosting Revenue   Step One is offering clients access to their asset for review. Step Two is charging clients for access to their archives, which you host. Once projects are complete, clients will come back to you for copies or additional production runs. Using the Cumulus Web Access clients in conjunction with e-commerce solutions, you can provide an easy-access archive for your clients that's profitable to you. Clients get what they need the moment they need it, you further cement your relationship with clients by being the sole "source" of their own assets, and your files generate revenue for your business simply by doing the very same thing they're doing now: sitting in storage.

It's Never Too Late

There's no "bad time" to turn your workflow to a streamlined, DAM-savvy Cumulus workflow. Installation is easy, and it requires no downtime. In fact, you don't even need to move any files. Cumulus is simply added as an access medium to the files, and you can add access restrictions and workflow enhancements as you need, thereby reducing training costs and requirements.

What's most important is that you get Cumulus or BrandAssistant into your workflow as soon as possible. The sooner your assets are under the watchful eye of Cumulus, the sooner you'll know that your assets are safe, available to those who need them, and always ready to.