How the Cloud is Helping Retail Marketers

You’re at the office, it’s 6 p.m. on Friday night and your direct marketing team is scrambling to find an image before a 7 p.m. print deadline. On top of this, your online team has a midnight deadline and they’re frantically searching all the disks and drives in your office trying to find a video that your advertising team created two years ago. Then your PR team calls to see if you know where the latest headshots of the executive team are. Wouldn’t it be nice if all your media assets were located and organized in one central place where all your teams could easily access them?

The traditional digital management industry has been providing solutions to the retail marketing industry for years, but those solutions have been too expensive for most and quite limiting in nature for many. Over the last 12 months, however, the cloud has created an entirely new digital asset management solution, one that:

• dramatically reduces the cost of using a digital asset management system by completely eliminating the need to purchase and maintain the necessary software and IT infrastructure;
• enables users to access their assets from any computer or browser, no matter whether they are;
• effortlessly scales to meet the needs of any size business in any industry, with any amount of assets and users; and
• automatically indexes, versions and backs up every file to ensure it’s never accidently deleted, overwritten or misplaced.

4 Things Cloud Computing Can Do for Retail Marketers
1. Increase productivity. Files can always be quickly found, reformatted and resized as needed for print, online and mobile marketing campaigns.

2. Maintain brand consistency. Storing all your digital assets in one central location and giving your teams access ensures everyone will always use the latest “approved” version of each asset.

3. Increase collaboration. Everyone on your team, both local and international, as well as the agencies, printers and suppliers you work with can easily access the necessary assets they need to quickly and efficiently meet deadlines.

4. Reduce costs. If you currently don’t have a digital asset management system, the cost savings will come from operational efficiencies such as increased productivity and collaboration amongst all your teams and suppliers. If you’re already using a digital asset management system, moving to a cloud-based system will reduce the cost and eliminate the headache of maintaining the software and IT infrastructure.

A Cloud Checklist
If you’re serious about improving productivity and reducing costs, the following is a list of steps you should take to see how cloud computing can help you:

• Take inventory of the systems you use, then decide which would benefit from moving to the cloud. Resource-intense systems such as those used for digital asset management, customer relationship management, online communication and back-up are the first that come to mind.
• Review the cloud solutions that are available (a Google search is the easiest way to find them). I highly suggest sticking with applications built on Amazon, Google and Microsoft’s cloud platforms.
• Migrate noncritical systems first. As you get more comfortable with the cloud, move more systems over.
• Encourage your IT team to embrace the cloud. Find new ways to leverage its massive potential.

Businesses of all sizes and industries should take a close look at the cloud and how it can help improve and grow their operations.

David MacLaren is the founder, president and CEO of VRX Studios and MediaValet. David can be reached at david.maclaren@mediavalet.com.