Everything you need to know about inMotion + Canto Cumulus digital asset management
inMotion’s creative work management solution now integrates with Canto‘s industry leading Cumulus digital asset management solution. Canto is a leading provider of digital asset management (DAM) solutions. Over 2,500 customers worldwide rely on Canto Cumulus and the expertise of Canto Professional Services to efficiently secure and repurpose digital assets. We asked Leslie Weller, Canto’s Director of Marketing, to share what she’s excited about in the new Canto + inMotion integration.
1. Please briefly describe your company and Digital Asset Management.
Canto is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year in 2015, and we’ve been focused on developing digital asset management technology since before the term was invented. To be honest, the term digital asset management or DAM is still gaining broad awareness and understanding. People share files, and lose files, and stash them in online drives and throughout corporate networks and intranets – then scratch their heads and email and instant message each other to try and find exactly what they need. The solution to this problem is simple – it’s digital asset management. But just because it’s simple, doesn’t mean it’s easy. Effective digital asset management requires extensive buy-in, discipline and changing the way people operate. DAM is not just about the technology, but about getting people to think of their digital content as valuable pieces of property (quite literally, digital assets) that need to be categorized, indexed and made accessible from anywhere, at anytime.
2. What is currently the biggest challenge in the Digital Asset Management and Asset Collaboration environments?
Demand. Demand for visually rich content is insatiable. This puts pressure on creative and marketing teams to create and curate content in higher volumes, faster than ever. And with the number and pace of producing digital assets accelerating, if there is no DAM in place, nor governance, the problem of displaced files gets compounded each month, week and day that goes by. Life without DAM adds cost (recreating files, wasted time searching). Kills productivity. Not to mention loses your competitive edge over those who have their digital asset act together.
Tools that help today’s distributed workforces – comprised of agencies, contractors and remote workers – collaborate in a transparent, systematic and fast way are well-suited to address this challenge.
3. What is your job at Canto?
As the Director of Marketing, I work very hard to make sure every digital marketer, every art director, every archivist, every brand manager, IT analyst – basically everyone who could benefit from DAM – knows that Cumulus is a powerful, enterprise DAM platform that very well may be the right system for their organization. Raising awareness for Cumulus and generating new business is my top charge. But I also work with current customers, industry experts and our product team to seek out ways to ever-improve the customer experience.
4. Why did Canto choose to partner with inMotionNow?
Early in my career I heard that “deals drive partnerships”. It’s true. And fortunately, there is strong interest from customers on both sides. Canto’s customers want to integrate Cumulus with inMotion – giving them solid task management, collaboration, workflow, approval capabilities and more. And inMotionNow’s customers are asking for DAM capabilities like metadata handling, search, versioning, etc. while working through important creative work management projects. Not only are our objectives and technologies aligned, but there also seems to be good cultural fit between our two organizations, so that’s always a nice bonus!
5. How do Digital Asset Management and Creative Work Management complement each other – in particular Cumulus and inMotion?
Integrating Creative Work Management and Digital Asset Management couldn’t be more natural. Especially given the fact that today’s DAM systems have transitioned from previously ‘archive-only / finished-assets only’ tools to one where ‘works-in-progress’ are now tracked, reviewed, updated, approved and pushed out for production. So the combination of Cumulus and inMotion makes perfect sense. We’ve made it so you don’t have to download large image and video files from one system, just to upload into the other. You can seamlessly access all of your content in Cumulus directly from inMotion – put it into an online proofing workflow with full collaboration and audit tracking – once approved, it gets synced back into Cumulus, so every content stakeholder has instant, immediate access to the latest file from whatever device they are on.
6. What form of integration has been chosen? What are the benefits?
From the Project Details page within inMotion, project team members can access a screen that displays all the files stored within Cumulus for a specific project. If no files exist, team members can easily create a new folder within inMotion that syncs to a category in Cumulus. Uploading files to either the inMotion project folder or Cumulus category automatically syncs the files, making them accessible from both systems.
Additionally, when it’s time for peers, clients, and stakeholders to review content, files stored in Cumulus can be automatically uploaded directly via inMotion’s online proofing tool. In as few as two clicks, assets can be added to a proof and are ready to be routed. Reviewers can mark-up the file with feedback and designers get automatically notified when it’s time to take action.
With this integration, marketing and creative teams can focus on getting things done. Projects get done faster because everyone has the files they need when they need them, and proofs can be created quickly and routed for approval. And, at the completion of a project, files are automatically synced and archived with all the details needed for future reuse.
7. Can you describe which Canto customers can take advantage of and use the integration?
Cumulus customers who want to have a fast, transparent workflow system for proofing, reviewing and tracking the status of tasks could certainly take advantage of the Cumulus and inMotion integration. The systems compliment each other well technically and from the users’ perspective. We’re looking forward to unveiling the integration in a joint webinar with a live demo on Tuesday, November 17, 2015 at 10am PT / 1pm ET. inMotionNow blog readers are definitely welcome to join us, and may register here.
About Canto
Canto is committed to digital asset management software and services that solve customer challenges. Canto was founded in 1990 and was instrumental in establishing the DAM industry. Today, over 2,500 customers worldwide rely on Canto’s flagship technology, Cumulus and the expertise of Canto Professional Services, to efficiently secure and repurpose digital assets. In 2014, Canto launched Flight, a cloud-based solution for basic digital asset management needs. Canto is based in San Francisco (USA), Berlin and Giessen (Germany) with a global partner network. Industry analysts recognize Canto as a top DAM vendor for customer satisfaction and price performance.