| Colliers - A Media Asset Management Case Study |
The hypothesis upon which to build a business case utilising the onison Digital Asset Management Application Service (DAM) is based upon the usage of the Collier’s real estate Corporation, whose business intends to expand and achieve a positive result. As the business grows so will the use of marketing assets, particularly the use of images. However, the ability of Colliers to cost effectively manage these assets becomes increasingly difficult. The existing Colliers digital asset management process is labour intensive and is not scalable to the demands of the increased business. These processes will increasingly need to be automated as much as possible.
Company Overview
Colliers is a full service, global real estate company. With offices and clients world wide, Colliers is responsible for the management and distribution of thousands of property images, corporate marketing materials and other real estate related digital assets.
Each office is currently managing independent, growing in-house databases of over 48,000 digital images, administering and distributing them to global clients and customers.
Business Issue
Due to the sheer volume of these assets, day-to-day tasks associated with their administration, distribution and management have placed an unsustainable burden on the existing Colliers resources.
Human resources in the marketing, administration and information technology departments of the Colliers organization are dedicating a great deal of time and effort to the ongoing support of these digital assets.
The majority of these tasks are non-technical, labour intensive, repetitive and tedious. Corporate resources, dedicated to these tasks, would be better spent on revenue-generating projects and initiatives.
The management of Collier’s digital assets consists of two main labour intensive tasks:
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The manipulation, resizing and reformatting of individual image files.
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The retrieval and distribution of these images to stakeholders
The existing digital asset IT infrastructure is a decentralized local network based system. Project collaboration and distribution of image files results in massive file duplication across many systems. This takes up a large amount of system storage space and makes versioning and control over these assets unmanageable.
The reality of the situation is that this issue is only going to increase in magnitude. On the assumption that Colliers is successful in their business objectives, the use of these images will grow. The problem is that the existing method of managing the assets is not scalable. Therefore, success in Colliers business activities will add an upward spiralling cost, detracting from the hard fought revenue margins.
Business Objective
Colliers must be able to achieve growth, revenue and profitability objectives. Policies, procedures, and systems supporting this must be scalable to allow growth without increasing costs and subsequently reducing profitability margins.
Specifically, as Colliers business continues to grow, so does the proliferation of the use of digital images and the inherent issues associated with this as described previously. The business objective is to reduce the costs to manage these assets.
onison Proposal
onison has invested extensive resources into the development of a web-based digital asset management system that relieves the burden placed upon corporate infrastructure and resources to support these valuable assets.
onison is successfully providing this service to over 11,000 users from large global enterprises such as Novartis, Clariant, Rieter, Givaudan, Georg Fisher, Nike, etc.
The result is a revolutionary application that removes the time consuming and tedious tasks associated with managing digital assets. It also addresses the technical issues associated with storage and distribution.
Highlights of the ImageDirector system are as follows:
- Centralized repository of digital assets for easy control, distribution, versioning and file management
- Web-based for easy access.
- Digital images and files can be uploaded, searched, retrieved, viewed, downloaded, and organized from any location at any time of day.
- Highly secure with controlled user privileges and access rights.
- Unlimited number of users.
- Secure, scalable, hosted, application with system redundancy and complete database back-up and recovery.
- Images are automatically resized and reformatted to corporate specifications.
Most importantly, ImageDirector would enable valuable Collier resources to focus their efforts on strategic, revenue producing initiatives, while providing controlled worldwide access to real estate images, logos, presentations, etc. Time consuming, labour intensive tasks are handled by the ImageDirector system and image storage duplication is virtually eliminated.
As ImageDirector is a hosted application service, all issues related to storage, bandwidth and infrastructure are managed by onison Corporation. Technology infrastructure expenditures are greatly reduced and costs are use-based monthly operating charges.
In essence, Colliers can now achieve all growth and revenue objectives without incurring an increase in manpower and technology investments.
Business Case
The business case for this proposal is based upon the analysis of the existing Colliers processes and the comparison of these tasks to the ImageDirector automated processes. This comparison will help determine the value of utilizing the onison digital assets management application, and ultimately justify the adoption of the use of this system by Colliers.
Workflow Oriented Cost Analysis
In order that we provide an accurate business case for the use of a DAM, a "from the ground up" automation strategy called "activity-task automation" must analyze small, oft repeated actions of key knowledge workers- in this case the Colliers Vancouver office marketing department.
This task example focuses on the number of minutes of effort required when locating, rendering and distributing an image.
| Corporate Marketing Department Activity |
Manual Process |
Autom. Process |
ImageDirector Activity |
|
Raw image received via e-mail or downloaded from camera to server. |
3 |
1 |
Raw image is uploaded via browser to system. |
| Image is manipulated to adjust colour, balance and cropping. |
4 |
4 |
Same |
|
Image is resized and reformatted for low res. and high res. use and uploaded to server. |
5 |
1 |
Image is automatically resized and reformatted upon upload to system. Additional sizes and formats can be created by users of the system. |
| Image is located via “Explorer��? search function, utilizing file menus. |
5 |
1 |
ImageDirector multiple search function of file name, short name, category, file type, keywords, description, notes, customer ID and file ID reduces time to identify the correct image. |
| Individual images must be opened, viewed and the correct image retrieved. |
5 |
1 |
Thumbnail previews and text descriptions ensure correct image downloads. |
| Deliver image. Multiple copies may reside on numerous desktops and locations creating many duplicate files. |
5 |
1 |
Thumbnail link e-mail notification. No need for permanent file storage on individual systems. |
| Minute Total* |
27 |
9 |
Labour reduced by 67% utilising ImageDirector |
*Figures based upon analysis of onison customer’s marketing activities and comparison conducted after implementation of ImageDirector system.
Currently 25% of Colliers marketing department efforts are spent on image related tasks in each office location. The use of ImageDirector would see a reduction in this number from 25 % to 8.5 % of allocated departmental time.
Based upon this comparison, it is apparent that significant cost savings can be recognized by the automation of managing digital assets. For example, a company such as Colliers with an image library upload of approximately 5,000 images per year could see a saving of 1500 man hours of labour per year.
Return On Investment Calculation
Based upon the above workflow analysis, the use of ImageDirector by the Colliers marketing and communications resources would recognize a cost saving shown by the example below:
- 5,000 images x 27 minutes/image = 135,000 minutes or 2250 manpower hours/year
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2,250 manpower hours x $50 per hour (corporate cost) = $112,500.00
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$112,500.00 x 67% reduction in labour represents a savings in one year of $75,375.00, or $6281.00 per month.
ImageDirector monthly cost estimate includes:
- Initial Set-up Fee: Colliers branded ImageDirector standard edition US$ 999.00
- Monthly Hosting Fee: Hosted Application and Storage of approximately 50,000 digital images with 50GB Storage space and data transfer per month: US$ 1248.50
- First Year Costs: US$ 15,981.00
Time to realize return on investment = US$ 15,981/ 6281 = 2.5 months
Based upon these calculations Colliers will see a return of a one year investment in less than 3 months. Cost savings to the end of the year will total US $59,394 and from that point on more than $60,000 each year per office location.
It should be noted that Collier’s technology, hardware and network infrastructure costs such as servers, storage, maintenance and administration were not included in this ROI calculation. As these resources tend to be shared, the issues associated with determining their exact cost has proven to be very difficult and complex. However, it is safe to say these costs will only continue to grow as Colliers use of images increases and that significant savings in this area of expenditure would also be recognized through the adoption of ImageDirector.
Business Case Summary
The preceding information gathered during the analysis of the Colliers digital assets indicates that the current in-house management of these assets is not sustainable under the existing conditions and infrastructure. Substantial investment into human and technology resources will be required to meet the demands placed upon the marketing, administration and information technology departments, assuming Colliers be success in achieving their corporate growth objectives.
Adoption of the onison solution will provide scalability, increased functionality and capabilities, reduced dependence on internal resources and decreased costs. This will enable Colliers to achieve their revenue goals without any reduction in profit margin.
Future Applications and Opportunities
ImageDirector is designed to be completely scalable and adaptable to any user in a global corporation. Therefore, it is completely conceivable that in the future, other offices, departments and divisions within Colliers would wish to take advantage of the functionality of the ImageDirector application.
The beauty of this system is that once a set-up has been implemented, expanding the use of the system is simply a matter of adding additional groups and users.
Future applications for Colliers can include:
- Setting up other offices and divisions in a matter of minutes.
- Expanding the types of files to be accessed and shared to include logos, maps, presentations, documents, etc.
- Presentations can be accessed globally, slide by slide, and new presentations compiled as needed.
- Application functionality can be replicated across the globe instantly so that increased efficiencies can be recognized through the use of the system.
This business case has proven that significant savings and efficiencies can be recognized by the Colliers Corporation.
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