Open Text And Timberland
- 1. 1 | Customer Success Open Text Optimizes Media Management at Timberland Digital Asset Management System Saves Time, Improves Media Re-Use, and Reduces Risk quarters in the United States, Timberland offices span North “Images were put onto DVDs and on shared drives, which America, the United Kingdom, and Asia. would then get archived to CD after about two years,” says Timberland implements media management software from Dimou. “We would save all of our images according to year, Open Text to manage their digital assets and all types of rich so there was a bit of a file system, but it was manual and media including, brand and company logos, digital photos, only internal.” “Before implementing the media management promotional images, catalogs, photographs, video, ad layouts, software from Open Text we were at a risk of concept designs, and more. The system enables Timberland Sharing knowledge across the enterprise losing the entire original collection of physical to centralize their collection in a secure repository for global There were obvious shortcomings to this storage system—in media in a disaster. That was one of the use. The company can set user privileges and release dates particular usage rights. “The internal design team was aware reasons we looked for a software solution on content and control usage rights and restrictions based of the usage rights, knowing what to use in an ad, a direct that could manage and maintain our assets on the assignment of roles and asset groups. mail, or an in-store graphic. Externally this information was in a safer place.” harder to track down. Before switching to Open Text, there The challenges of global consistency was no way to keep the usage rights and other information According to Victoria Dimou, the Creative Director Art and about an asset with the actual asset. Now everyone with Copy Group at Timberland, and an early adopter of Open Text’s access to the system can quickly and easily review the digital asset management system, one of Timberland’s greatest information,” says Dimou. challenges was global consistency. “Making sure that everyone “There was also the possibility of design teams in different was aware of what assets were available across the globe regions duplicating efforts. The gallery view provided a visual Timberland is a global leader in the design, engineering, was an issue,” she says. “Another was keeping track of those snapshot of the recent projects and photography available and marketing of premium-quality footwear, apparel, and assets. For instance, images on CD or DVD had a tendency on Gear Box (the name they branded their digital media accessories for consumers who value the outdoors and to get misplaced. Other issues were the duplication of assets, repository), thereby eliminating the risk,” she says. their time in it. Timberland markets products under the ensuring that usage was understood globally, and finding a “Some other beneficial features are the image conversion and Timberland®, Timberland PRO®, Mountain Athletics®, storage place that was big enough to house all assets.” contact sheet creation. Three custom one-step downloads SmartWool ®, Timberland Boot Company™, Howies ®, and IPATH ® brands. With head- Before introducing Open Text media management, Timberland allow the user to convert and export an image, eliminating had no formal company process for storing their digital assets. the need for proprietary image software for each desktop.
- 2. 2 | Customer Success The contact sheet feature enables the user to create a custom sessions,” says Dimou. “We now send out a monthly Gear contact sheet of their selected assets. This downloads as an Box newsletter to keep them engaged. Once a system has Acrobat® PDF,” says Dimou. Customer been around a while, it’s vital everyone know about changes and upgrades. We also encourage the users to provide Open Text system creates Industry feedback on the system and how it is working for them.” a central place for valuable images When Timberland implemented digital asset management Digital asset management system software from the former Artesia (today an Open Text media Business Challenges generates measurable efficiencies management software solution) in early 2006, it was with a What do Timberland users like most about the Open Text goal to create a central place for everybody in the company, system? Dimou says, “One-touch, one-click downloads. all over the world, to find images. Quick keyword search. Contact Sheet. Simple navigation. “During the implementation process, the Timberland team took Sets and Collections. All over the internet.” a scoring grid and categorized their must-haves and nice- Tracy Legge, Digital Asset Manager at Timberland, explains to-haves,” says Ravi Vyapuri, IT Application Architect at why users like the personal sets and public sets feature that Timberland, who was directly involved in the implementation Business Solution the software offers. “They like to share images with other process. “We met as a core team (assembled from the relevant people in their groups. For instance, someone from marketing departments) and wrote down all of the features that were can go in and create a set of images for other users to have most important to everyone.” Business Benefits easy access to. Accessing the images on the Internet is more Certainly usability was important,” says Dimou. “And because convenient for users than logging onto the company network. we are Mac-based, it was critical that the solution we selected Having those assets as thumbnails provides a visual snapshot worked on Mac and PC. Archiving images was important, but of the contents.” being able to search those images via keyword was critical. Overall, Open Text’s digital asset management solution has Open Text has a robust search engine, indexing asset contents improved productivity and collaboration across the enterprise. as well as the metadata input.” “In the future, there are plans to implement the work flow Timberland looked at several vendors, but was most impressed function to further enhance this,” says Dimou. with the Open Text digital asset management software. Legge adds, “The system saves time as well. The images are “It satisfied the key requirements not only of marketing, but of in Gear Box, and users can get them right away as opposed the broader enterprise—product development, licensing, to FedExing a disk that could take two to three days inter- apparel, corporate communications, and e-commerce,” says nationally. Before, we might have burned 20 disks a day for Dimou. “Open Text’s ability to handle different file types, such Today, Timberland has almost 400 users on Gear Box. distribution. Now the need to burn disks and shipping as INDD, AVI, WMV was a notable benefit. We also liked the “We provided WebEx training sessions and sent out a expenses has been eliminated, not to mention the ability to upload assets in bulk form from the product customized training guide to all Gear Box users. We also time saved.” management repository.” offered training videos for those who couldn’t make the training
- 3. 3 | Customer Success Lessons learned from I think we did the right thing by not rolling out the system to Ravi concludes, “Now that the media management library is the implementation process everyone right away. And we will be able to better anticipate in place, it’s really a huge museum of all of our products. We issues that might come up during the next implementation.” weren’t able to store all of these physical assets in a room for Vyapuri says the implementation was a learning process. He people to look at, but now we have a place where people can adds, “I would advise other customers to keep in mind that Dimou agrees, “Before hand, it is a good idea to attend lectures or knowledge sessions about digital asset management.” see the evolution of our products over the years. And that every implementation requires a bit of a learning curve when creates a story of our past, and the promise of a future.” it comes to issues popping up that aren’t part of the plan. Legge adds, “The more information you have going into it, the better off you’ll be.” www.opentext.com Visit online.opentext.com for more information about Open Text solutions. Open Text is a publicly traded company on both NASDAQ (OTEX) and the TSX (OTC). Copyright © 2009 by Open Text Corporation. Trademarks or registered trademarks of Open Text Corporation. This list is not exhaustive. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved. 09DAMS0007EN