Aberdeen creates highly visual research reports that are packed with data relevant to the market segments they serve. Sarah and Joshua comb through research and make key findings easy to comprehend through a variety of mediums, which results in a lot of content.
“We focus on a deeper analysis and then provide insights to the market and various clients. These insights would be presented in a lot of different ways, like webinars, research reports, interactive visuals or briefings on the state of the market,” says Joshua.
When Sarah and Joshua started working at Aberdeen, the company stored almost all of its research in an internal system, which was challenging to work with due to insufficient searchability, structure and reporting features.
“The internal system for organizing our content didn’t have great searchability. It was also lacking the features that we needed to see which types of pieces were working and which analysts were uploading. Most content didn’t have any insight into the back end of things,” says Sarah.
Internally, everyone at Aberdeen needed quick access to the reports that the market insight analysts work to create. With most of the content stored on their old system, and some on individual computers, finding these valuable assets was nearly impossible.
“In the past, trying to find something was really difficult. Sometimes it would live in someone’s email that didn’t even work here anymore,” says Joshua.
“Sales and customer success teams didn’t know what content we had. So when someone came with a request, they had to then go through several different channels to try and find the piece they were looking for. We got a lot of questions like, ‘Do we have a report related to this topic?’ or ‘Do we even cover this area?’” says Sarah.
After countless bouts of dissatisfaction, the team decided that the internal storage system just wasn’t working. Their content library was massive and growing steadily, and they needed an easier way to manage it all.
Success for our team is making sure that the data for all of our surveys is easily accessible and that our analysts are able to find the data right away. With Canto they can get reports off to the client as quickly as possible to keep things flowing smoothly.
Sarah and Joshua led the project to search for a digital asset management (DAM) solution. They knew it was an investment in Aberdeen’s future, so they wanted to get as much feedback as possible before they made a final decision.
“Sarah and I did research into different products – what they offer, if they fit our criteria and the cost. Then we connected with various parts of the company, from client success managers to sales to our marketing and operations teams, to see how we could leverage this product across all parts of the company,” says Joshua.
Aberdeen now stores research reports, knowledge briefs, webinars, infographics and interactive content in their Canto library. With a centralized, easily searchable location for all assets, the Aberdeen team and external stakeholders are empowered to self-serve.
Getting organized
Aberdeen’s Canto library is organized into 12 albums for the 12 unique market segments they serve. From there, they rely heavily on custom metadata to ensure the assets are easily searchable for internal and external stakeholders.
“The metadata includes the analyst who wrote the piece, the client who it was originally written for, the research type as in a report, knowledge brief, webinar or infographic, and also recommended use, as in how our clients could use this throughout their marketing funnel,” says Sarah.
“And then the format of the document, if it’s public or private, file size and number of pages,” says Joshua.
Each piece that Aberdeen produces fits into two or more market segments, depending on the topic. Canto enables the team to put these pieces in different albums without duplicating the asset in their library.
Search and filtering
With over 20,000 digital assets in their library, Joshua is glad to have the advanced search and filtering options that Canto provides. It’s now easier than ever for the Aberdeen team to find the exact asset they are searching for.
“If someone reaches out and they’re looking for something in a general or specific topic, client success managers or salespeople can go into our internal research hub and type in those keywords to filter and provide the client or future prospect with what they’re looking for,” says Joshua.
Content sharing through Portals
Canto Portals play a huge role in how the team delivers content to Aberdeen colleagues, clients and prospects. Employees throughout the company have access to the private Canto Portal, known as the “Internal Research Hub”.
They’ve also set up a public Portal so that anyone can access and view research through the Aberdeen website. The team goes above and beyond and even makes custom Portals for their clients.
“We branded each Portal for each client. So if there is a new asset for a company that we do business with, we’ll upload it to their Portal and the client success manager will be notified,” says Joshua.
Sarah and Joshua conduct research (yes, research on research reports!) and collect data to gain insights on the assets that are performing well in both the private and public Portals. This data allows the team to optimize the content they produce in the future. To analyze performance, Sarah and Joshua don’t even have to leave their Canto accounts – they do all the reporting directly in Canto’s dashboard.
“In terms of the operations standpoint, with the dashboard I see what content and keywords are working, what’s not working, what type of content people want and what they’re downloading,” says Joshua.
Dedicated customer support
The Canto team has shown support every step of the way, from setting up Portal configurations to discussing the development of new features.
“The whole Canto team has really helped with our Portal organization and addition of features that are useful for us. They’ve just been really great in helping us with this unique use case,” says Sarah.
“Some of the newer features that have rolled out are things we’ve discussed with the Canto team in the past. It’s nice to see that these things are actually happening or they’re in the pipeline. The team is very receptive to our needs,” says Joshua.
