When Point opened its doors in 2006, print management was growing rapidly internationally, but was a virtually unknown sector in South Africa. Today though, while the outsourcing of print procurement may still be in its infancy in this country, Point has steadfastly revolutionised the way forward-thinking companies are managing their print processes. Even more importantly, South African companies are saving 30% on their print budgets by outsourcing their print procurement.
From this base, and seeing the opportunity to further streamline the creative to material to print process, Point CEO, Gary Davies, is spearheading the launch of an extremely effective Digital Asset Management System.
A suitable system
Davies explains, “If you take into account the scope of brand collateral produced by most organisations, it’s easy to see how quickly a company can amass a library of thousands of digital assets. However, simply putting them all into one place doesn’t necessarily save time or money, as resources are still required to extricate the assets, especially when it comes to re-purposing them.
“For example, if a selection of digital assets is required to produce a new print-ready file, there is generally a scramble across a number of agencies and departments to get the assets to hand. Most digital assets used for this purpose have some intelligence associated with them, plus issues such as associated rights, time limit on usage and platforms on which they may be used. This process results in real hard and soft costs in retrieving the assets – from manpower to invoiced costs – and is a time consuming, costly and ineffective course of action.
Point identified a real need to develop a system that would streamline this process, to work efficiently in terms of time and cost. The Digital Asset Management (DAM) system does exactly that, effectively managing, organising and distributing digital assets from a central ‘storehouse’.”
In terms of the printing process, DAM enables a smooth transition from pre-flighting to printing, as assets are easily retrievable, made immediately ready for print with correctly-embedded fonts and CI usage, for example.
Ideally, a company’s marketing department would have access to the DAM system and, once this information is shared, any assets can be correctly re-purposed for any print job, without the traditionally-associated costs. This includes re-purposing adverts in various formats and via various delivery methods – a win for any corporate or agency.
The DAM benefits
DAM is an increasingly important tool for organisations that are serious about protecting their brand. It is offered via modular solutions to clients (companies and agencies) who utilse Point’s print procurement solutions.
The many benefits of DAM include:
- · Cost savings – companies can all but eliminate excessive asset retrieval and creation by enabling quick retrieval, re-purposing a redistribution of corporate approved assets.
- · Brand continuity – built-in control systems ensure that not only is the corporate CI and brand message consistent, but that very specific controls, such as restricted flighting times, approval processes, re-use in altered formats, etcetera, are adhered to.
- · Effective distribution to print – with an unaffected database of assets at hand, containing important metadata, it’s much simpler to quickly and easily find and create what is needed for print distribution. This avoids disconnected and inefficient printing processes.
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