Managing the Chaos: How to work safely and efficiently from home
by Author Toby Martin
How does Digital Asset Management (DAM) support working from remote offices?
Among the companies that have had to react quickly and flexibly to the Covid-19 pandemic are many advertising agencies, designers, photographers, content creators, and publishing companies. All these people and companies depend on cooperation and exchange with one another and need personal interaction and brainstorming in order to be highly creative.
Within a few days, however, many employees were told: From now on, work will be done from home offices. This is noteworthy because although working from home has been increasingly in demand by employees in recent years, employers have often been very hesitant to allow work from home. This was due in part to concerns about whether employees have a highspeed Internet connection and access to the necessary tools from home. Another reason was certainly that many of the traditional processes made remote working more challenging.
Management and team leaders want and need to control processes directly and as efficiently as possible. Working across different time zones must also be possible in a networked and uninterrupted manner. And IT support should be available immediately in the case of problems. In the past, all this made the decision to work from home difficult.
When the new Covid-19 virus appeared, everything suddenly changed. In order to ensure that companies could continue to operate – at least in part – many employees could or had to work in their home office at short notice. Companies were faced with new challenges. First, the question arose as to whether employees had a sufficiently powerful Internet connection. How quickly can the necessary data be accessed? In this case, many companies certainly had to support their employees during the upgrading process. In addition, most employees do not have the necessary security standards: private firewalls are easier to penetrate, the software used for video conferencing can have vulnerabilities, and e-mails infected with malware could be opened accidentally. The company network can be infected within a very short time, which in the worst case can lead to enormous damage – including financial damage.
So how can a company design and implement secure Digital Workplace solutions in the shortest possible time? How can this be mastered without throwing the entire organization into chaos? Those who were already well-positioned digitally could become productive again more quickly and stay that way. Those companies that had „overslept“ digitization now had to react quickly, sometimes very hastily, and often without a real concept and well thought-out processes.
In order to ensure secure, mobile collaboration at short notice, the following steps should be considered:
- Make sure that employees can connect to an adequate bandwidth Internet service.
- Ideally, provide employees with company owned and well secured computers. If this is not possible, the private devices must be equipped with the necessary security features.
- Make it as easy as possible for the creative employees and provide the necessary organizational framework to enable them to remain creative.
- Use solutions in the cloud that can be implemented quickly and easily.
- Introduce collaboration tools for smooth collaboration.
- Provide easy and secure access to the data that is needed.
Solutions that accelerate workflows and allow for more creativity
So how can technology help people be more productive, encourage teamwork, and stay in touch? How can marketing departments improve workflows, comply with regulatory requirements, and deliver excellent results? After all, working remotely doesn’t necessarily mean falling into chaos. With good tools in the cloud, such as Extensis Portfolio and Font Management solutions, you can immediately start working as a team without interruption. These solutions are easy to manage and support the creative people in their daily work.
So how can Extensis help avoid chaos with its solutions?
With tools for managing and using digital assets according to team size, project and business needs, a customized approach to remote working can be put in place quite quickly.
- Fast commissioning of the DAM solution thanks to cloud use
Anyone who needs to react quickly to unforeseeable events – for example the Covid-19 pandemic, but also workload peaks – can scale quickly with the help of cloud solutions and also integrate external employees. Transparent licensing models help to maintain an overview and control over budgets at all times. - Optimal management of digital document inventories
The implementation of a DAM solution makes it possible to securely store and manage all of the countless digital assets on a central platform and to organize them logically in the different versions. - More efficient processes thanks to comprehensive functions
The larger the number of digital assets such as photos, audio files or videos, the greater the risk of not being able to find the assets you need quickly. However, if the files are tagged with extensive metadata, such as version, shares or permissions, they can be clearly identified and used more quickly. Functions for direct upload to various tools such as CMS or e-commerce systems accelerate the processes considerably. - Brand consistency and compliance through digital rights management
Automated rights management ensures compliance with regulations such as the DSGVO and their traceability at all times. Only current versions of the respective assets are used, obsolete files are no longer accessible. This also guarantees omni-channel brand consistency and facilitates global brand management in international agencies and companies across all national borders. - Increased efficiency for the entire content value chain
Powerful DAM systems offer media-neutral storage of millions of files and automated delivery to various communication channels such as websites, catalogues or print. This accelerates content creation, and approvals and publications are controlled quickly, clearly, securely, and reliably. - Straightforward collaboration releases creative energies
Many teams often waste time searching for the matching assets and lose productivity as a result. Those who work creatively want to implement their ideas quickly in order to share them with others and test them for viability. Uncomplicated processes and fast collaboration can spur creativity.
Conclusion
Now, with some distance to the partial lockdown in Germany and many other countries, we pause and consider how we can position ourselves better in the future, improve processes, and even promote the „home office“ working model as an integral part of a company. We evaluate which processes are viable and how workflows can be simplified for all parties involved. Above all, it is also about relieving the creative people of unnecessary organizational tasks so that they can concentrate fully on the development of creative content. This is one of the most important aspects. Those who are largely relieved of organizational tasks can give free rein to their ideas. Another important point is that there is more time for personal contacts – whether by telephone or video tools – so that „social distancing“ becomes more of a „physical distancing“. It is therefore time to rethink, simplify, and implement processes that unleash more creativity.
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About the author
Toby Martin has been the Chief Executive Officer of Extensis since August 2019. The software company, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, is a market leader in Digital Asset Management solutions and the leading provider of Font Management Software.
Aufmacherbild / Quelle / Lizenz
Photo by Luke Peters on Unsplash
