XINET - Digital Asset Management: Customer Case Studies

ARNOLD WORLDWIDE SAVES TIME WITH XINET WEBNATIVE SUITE

Arnold Worldwide is an award-winning full-service advertising agency that caters to a wide variety of clients including McDonalds, Volvo, Citizens Bank, and Jack Daniels.

Evan Shore
Arnold Worldwide

Arnold found that as it grew, the agency needed a new, more robust file server and a way to manage digital assets easily. As the agency started to move toward high-resolution work, it wanted to be able to quickly work with large high-resolution files, be able to print them, and set up actions such as print queues. After an extensive evaluation of different Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions, Arnold turned to Xinet® WebNative® Suite.

“Xinet appealed to us because it was a true dynamic asset management system that really provided the specific tools we were looking for that link into the creative applications and allow us to open up the work to everyone,” said Evan Shore, vice president and creative systems manager at Arnold. “We evaluated other out-of-the-box solutions and Xinet was our choice because it was dynamic and had links to the page layout programs where you can take advantage of the drag and drop from your Web browser to the QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign document, and the OPI capabilities of being able to swap out high-res and low-res OPI on the fly.”

“The whole installation solved a whole array of problems that we were having. Rather than just going out and buying a server, we went out and bought a server, a DAM solution, an OPI solution and a solution that enables us to create print queues and PDF workflow as well.”
With the Xinet solution, Arnold is able to search across live work and archives, which saves the agency a lot of time and manpower. Art directors are able to search on the tagged assets and find what they’re looking for immediately. In the past, Arnold had to burn CDs of all the work, and now it’s all done on the fly. The agency also found that the Xinet solution helped break down a lot of boundaries that occurred between departments and positions.

Copywriters can now look at creative work that they couldn’t before because they didn’t have the application on their desktop to do so; an account service person can look at work and have self-service to PDFs whereas before, a creative person would have to find it and e-mail it. Additionally, Arnold has a volume that’s shared out to its clients; files are posted for approval and clients can log on whenever necessary to view the work. WebNative Suite has given everyone access to the work and the ability to get a timely updates on a job.

“Arnold has an archive of all the agency work. Every time a print ad is done, we are supplied a PDF X-1a file by our vendor, and we have a library of all that. Xinet comes in handy if I’m an account service person or an account manager and I need to get a PDF of a job that we did last year for a certain client; I can go in and download the PDF. If I’m in the new business department and I’m putting together a new PowerPoint presentation and I need a JPEG of the ad we did last year, I can do a search, and using Custom Image Order, create a 72 dpi JPEG. If I work in the Print studio and I’m working on a leave-behind for the same pitch and I need to get the thing printed, I can request a PDF or an EPS file at 300 dpi. The Xinet system allows everyone in the agency, depending on their role, to convert the files on the fly to fit their specific needs without needing any other programs,” said Shore.

Arnold also utilizes the Xinet WebNative Video Support plug-in in a unique way. The agency is one of the few advertising agencies using DVD SelectNet and Xinet Authorized Integrator, NAPC, developed a plug-in to integrate WebNative and DVD SelectNet so that using WebNative, Arnold can take videos, put them in a shopping cart, hit submit and get a DVD that plays on a DVD player. It is a time saver for the agency because previously, the AV department would have to get the video files, burn them by hand onto a DVD, and print out a label. Now it’s as easy as doing a search, finding the clips, put them in the desired sequence, adding them in the shopping cart, and hitting submit.

Adds Shore, “Xinet WebNative Suite is versatile, reliable and constantly being upgraded. It remains competitive with the other systems out there and we’ve been pleased with our decision to implement the solution.”