View companion video here »

As I dig deeper into the capabilities of Open Text Media Management 7.0 (please refer to Part 2 - "Keeping Things Organized While Adding New Projects" and Part 1 - “Classifying Digital Assets in Three Dimensions for a Marketing Campaign”), I am fascinated with how digitally savvy organizations can use it to develop content-centric applications that improve operations, reduce costs, and mitigate risks. With this latest release, Open Text ensures that essential content related to managing digital assets is readily at hand and seamlessly shared among members of a creative team. Marketing departments, branding managers, agencies, and other groups that depend on rich media for their livelihood, can quickly capture content related to critical tasks and structure the sequence of steps to manage business processes.

METADATA, FOLDERS, AND WORKFLOW

With Media Management 7.0, it is easy to organize and manage assets using metadata and folders, and then launch a workflow that drives a business process. I can annotate assets with relevant content, and find helpful hits about the range of permissible choices. Customized with familiar terms and actions, there is a natural flow to the work I do.

Media Management 7.0 combines flexibility with structure to support the enterprise context of an organization that is building its business on rich media. Trained business analysts can tailor the definitions of assets and folders to match the tasks and activities of creative professionals within an enterprise. Skilled administrators can also define the workflow steps for a business process that is specific to their areas of operation.

Thus I simply annotate assets, file them in relevant folders, and invoke a predefined workflow when I complete my task. The Open Text system leverages the content within a shared repository to ensure that the work gets done, and that my results automatically flow to the next step in the process.

SELECTING ASSETS WHILE MANAGING BUSINESS RISKS

Let me highlight the power of Media Management 7.0 by focusing on a familiar business situa-tion – managing the rights and restrictions for photos in a marketing campaign. As the photo editor in a dynamic organization, I juggle the selection of assets for multiple marketing cam-paigns. Each campaign has its own themes and funding sources. I rely on the Open Text system to help me keep track of the innumerable operational details and channel my activities. My organization also mitigates its business risk by defining a process to verify the rights, permissions, and usage guidelines when incorporating the photos into a marketing campaign.

Turning to the test drive, which is available as a companion online video, my job is to recom-mend the assets for an upcoming marketing campaign about beach escapes and fun in the surf. My first task, selecting a photo from a gallery, is a point and click affair. As shown in Illustration 1, I can immediately annotate the photo with a range of relevant metadata, including rights, permissions, usage guidelines and expiration dates. Sometimes I pick the information from a drop-down list and other times I add terms as free text. I am very familiar with the criteria my organization uses to manage assets for marketing campaigns.

Figure 1: Illustration 1. As a photo editor, I can annotate an asset with metadata about rights and clearances, combining free text with terms in a drop-down list. A trained business analyst defines the fields and values for the content-centric application.  

 

As the photo editor, I enter the relevant fields into an online form, close the form, and drag the photo to the Beach Escapes folder. The metadata is linked to the asset.

Furthermore, all the photos I want the marketing manager to consider are collected within this folder. Media Management 7.0 maintains the business context for metadata – combining asset-level metadata with folder-level metadata. Thus, in addition to specific metadata about rights and restrictions, I can also quickly view key facts about the marketing campaign, such as its theme and target audience. Integral to the capabilities of Media Management 7.0 is inherited metadata – an asset inherits the metadata from the folder in which it is stored.

Finally I know that the marketing manager and other people in my organization are responsible for finalizing selections, securing the rights to use specific photos in the campaign, and checking usage guidelines. I can trigger the hand-off by selecting the relevant folder and launching the review and approval workflow. Media Management 7.0 then directs my completed task to the next step in the process.

The Consequences of a Content-centric Application

The end result is a content-centric application that makes it easy for me to do my job and for my organization to improve operations. With Media Management 7.0, I annotate, select, and sort photos for various marketing campaigns. I add relevant metadata to the fields of online forms and file photos in the appropriate folders. I follow a sequence of self-evident steps while the Open Text system maintains content in context to support the enterprise application.

Of course, my organization needs to invest the time and effort to define the business process up front, and to then to tailor the capabilities of Media Management 7.0 to expedite it. A trained business analyst needs to customize the forms, define the fields and values, and design the workflow steps using the tools this system provides.

Significantly, this modest investment yields substantial business results that fall right to the bottom line, thus improving the productivity of creative activities. My tasks are easily incorporated into a business process defined by how my organization expects to operate. Media Management 7.0 provides the environment to ensure that team members can work together to complete an essential business process that reduces the costs and increases the benefits of operating in the digital age.