Challenge
With a growing product range, large sales team, and global customer base, Charlie’s Holdings was starting to experience friction around digital asset management. They were using DropBox to store and share digital assets. But this was becoming a serious time-sink due to its limited functionality. Designers and creatives sometimes struggled to locate digital assets internally, causing production delays and issues with version control. This was compounded by the need to field requests from external parties - like distributors - for marketing collateral that they simply couldn’t locate in DropBox’s folder structure. This was sapping time from Charlie Holding’s busy creatives, frustrating their customers, and costing the business money.
Having used DAM systems in previous roles, Creative Director Ryan Bellerose knew they needed a better way to organize assets internally and distribute them externally. And ideally, it needed to reflect Charlie Holding’s brand character and values.
It is very important for us to have every element of our business presented in the best way possible. Using Dropbox is a little utilitarian. There’s no personality to it. It just offers simple file structure organization. We wanted to create brand portals that had a website look-and-feel, and delivered a better customer experience.
Ryan Bellerose, Creative Director, Charlie’s Holdings, Inc
Also vital to Bellerose’s vision was the ability to search for digital assets, to save his team precious time. ‘The biggest time sucker was communication between internal teams and external customers. We used to spend a lot of time finding files, transferring files, creating duplicate versions of files… A designer might get a request for a file from a salesperson, then refer the query to the marketing coordinator, and it could keep going up the chain. That’s a huge amount of wasted time.’
With WoodWing Swivle, customers can easily access and download the assets they need directly - all via a branded, easy-to-use portal. ‘The graphical user interface is key,’ says Bellerose. ‘It really helps usability and contributes to our aims to reduce customer queries. Distributors can search and self-serve, instead of using us as search engines’ he jokes. ‘WoodWing Swivle is a bridge between internal and external entities. That equates to time and dollars saved’.
Implementation
Creative Director Ryan Bellerose had used several enterprise-size Digital Asset Management solutions in previous roles but knew Charlie’s Holdings didn’t need that level of functionality, complexity, or expense. For their current needs, they prioritized finding a DAM that was ‘easy, accessible, and affordable. He feels they found that with WoodWing Swivle.
‘WoodWing are short-changing themselves,’ says jovial Bellerose. ‘The value we derive from the product far outweighs the cost’. The business has built separate branded portals for their distinct brands and are considering localized portals for different geographic markets in the future.
This saves time by providing self-service access to brand assets - reducing the burden on the creative team - but there are other benefits too. Because they can build multiple portals using the same system, designers can easily work across different brands without any learning curve between different systems. This makes it quicker and easier to deploy employees where they’re needed.
The portals also work as a sales tool, allowing the sales team to quickly activate brand alliances by giving distributors immediate access to sales materials, as well as a streamlined customer-centric experience with the business. Whilst Charlie’s Holdings marketing is mainly executed via digital media, the business is comfortable knowing that - should they choose to expand into print media like catalogs - WoodWing Swivle can also integrate with Adobe Indesign for print production.
I appreciate the fact WoodWing Swivle has never sold me anything. They don’t push bolt-ons or extra functionality we don’t need. Their customer service team area solution-focused, not sales-focused. They’ve helped us navigate different challenges as we’ve grown and evolved.
Ryan Bellerose, Creative Director, Charlie’s Holdings, Inc
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