Project life-cycle management for publishers with DAM

Sanoma Pro uses WoodWing Assets - our Digital Asset Management system - to strategically manage the photos, videos, illustrations and more that bring learning to life for their readers. But they also needed project management software to support their demanding editorial workflow.

During the webinar, Tuomo Suominen – Development Manager at Sanoma Pro - explained the bespoke integrations they developed to increase productivity, reduce manual work, eliminate production bottlenecks, and keep control of staff costs. He was joined by Samuli Jokipaltio of Smartium, a WoodWing Partner that supported Sanoma Pro with their software implementation and integration, solving significant production challenges.

Using DAM in educational publishing

Between new titles and reprints, Sanoma Pro’s 80+ editorial staff publish around 700 print publications per year, as well as developing and maintaining a growing library of digital content.

All of this multichannel content requires videos, photos, illustrations, animations, diagrams, maps and more, so Sanoma Pro have been using WoodWing Assets for digital asset management for 10+ years.

The system allows all contributors - both internal and external - to work from a centralized repository of digital assets, giving them quick and easy access to up-to-date files and relevant metadata.

In recent years, Sanoma Pro realised their editorial processes would benefit from the same centralized, single system approach.

They wanted to harness digital technology to improve project management, communication and collaboration. This was especially important given the number of external agencies, authors and freelancers involved in the content creation process.

When Sanoma Pro approached Smartium for guidance on project management software - understanding the fundamental importance of digital asset management to their creative processes - integration with WoodWing Assets was a top priority.

Smartium has been a WoodWing partner for over 18 years and a Wrike partner for three - gaining 500+ Wrike users in that time - so they were ideally placed to provide expert guidance to the educational publisher.

We have been using WoodWing Assets for over 10 years for digital asset management and in 2018, selected Wrike as a solution to schedule and monitor publishing projects […] The development and production and approval and deployment of digital assets like photos, photo images, illustrations, diagrams, maps, videos, audio animations are at the core of all of our publishing projects, so it was a top priority for us to link Wrike projects with the digital assets in WoodWing assets.

Tuomo Suominen, Development Manager at Sanoma Pro

As experts in the functions and flexibility of both software products, Smartium were able to propose a custom solution that combined the digital asset management capability of Assets and the project management tools of Wrike.

Through this integration, we’ve allowed relatively few people to perform a large number of tasks, to reduce errors, and to become very productive.

Samuli Jokipaltio, Smartium

CHALLENGE 1

Optimizing publishing workflows with project management software

With 700 editions annually, effective project management is essential for Sanoma Pro’s busy editorial team. Publishing new titles, reprints and online content, the editorial team had set workflows for each type of project – their project blueprints - but they wanted a single place to schedule, monitor and collaborate on them. Integrating WoodWing Assets and Wrike offered that ability.

Project set-up is the first step in the life of any new publication. Sanoma Pro need a way to kickstart their production projects quickly and easily, providing internal and external contributors with everything they require to get to work.

Smartium worked with Sanoma Pro to develop a custom integration between Wrike and WoodWing Assets. With this integration, Sanoma Pro copy and paste project details into a custom form in Wrike.

This triggers the creation of a corresponding folder in WoodWing Assets, where project managers can simply drag-and-drop all of the images, illustrations, videos etc that are needed for the project.

A share link is created and inserted into the project details in Wrike. This allows any user with permission to access the project in Wrike to also access the related digital assets in WoodWing Assets, without external contributors needing their own login to WoodWing Assets.

Result:

• A centralised space for collaborating on projects
• Easy access to all project assets for internal and external contributors
• Maximum project visibility and transparency

Listen to Suominen describe the integration between WoodWing Assets, Wrike and Excel:

CHALLENGE 2

Automating repetitive tasks and reducing human error

Whilst this worked well initially, it soon became clear that manually copy-pasting project information into Wrike was unsustainable. Sanoma’s 700 editions per year include major peaks in Spring and Autumn, where hundreds of projects need creating and completing in bulk.

Sanoma’s Tuomo Suominen estimated the current project creation method would take tens of thousands of manual actions per year - and all for a single staff member. Not only was this undesirable in terms of physically performing repetitive manual tasks, but it would also cause bottlenecks in the process and put the business at risk of manual data entry errors.

I estimated that creating 700 projects annually requires almost 50,000 manual copy-paste operations. And I was anticipating early retirement building carpal tunnel syndrome with this workflow. It was very ripe for automation.

Tuomo Suominen, Smartium

Hear Suominen describe the pressing need for automation: