Chuckwalla: Taking DAM Beyond The Enterprise
Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Digital Asset Management (DAM) has become one of the digital content delivery industry's most familiar buzz phrases. Coming out of the enterprise database management space, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Chuckwalla, Inc. is developing DAM technology that manages rich content across multiple communications channels.

"What DAM has done for a number of industries is establish a difference between elements stored in a database that have value and those that do not. An asset has value," says Jon Lewis, vice president of sales & marketing for Chuckwalla.

"There are three sets of tools in the digital asset management space," Lewis continues. "There are desktop products, workflow tools, and enterprise models that are client server based." Chuckwalla develops products for the entire enterprise. "Because digital content comes in multiple formats, we have to be agnostic to all content," he says. "That's the only way to ensure that once an asset has been created it can be used over and over again."

One of the biggest problems content-owning companies and even major corporations face according to Lewis is the inability to locate specific materials once they have been created. "No one ever loses an asset," says Lewis, "but they often can't find one when they need it. And that's what asset management is all about: being able to find what you need, when and how you need it."

Building The Brand

Being able to build brand name recognition and maintaining the quality and consistency of that brand at reasonable cost has become a mainstay for most corporate enterprises these days. Whether an asset is a full movie, a character within that movie, a logo, or even a corporate name, that asset has value only if it is easily recognizable and used consistently in product design, sales and marketing programs and throughout all corporate communications.

Creating Structure

Based on Microsoft NET architecture, Lewis explains that Chuckwalla DAM products can be used to layer services. "Because of Microsoft's notion of the Web server, multiple services can be placed on top of our asset management system. They can be integrated," Lewis says. Once the assets have been tagged and identified, other tools such as digital rights management (DRM) can be applied.

Chuckwalla's products are not customized for each situation. "We sell off-the-shelf," says Lewis, "but we're as close as you can get to custom-made." Lewis claims that the ability to layer operations one on top of the other provides the integration needed to come as close to custom-made as possible. It's the savings in cost that often justifies the product when it comes to calculating ROI (return on investment), he says.

Markets Converge

It has been said repeatedly that the worlds of IT and rich media are coming closer together. Where enterprise management considerations were once focused on text, graphics and still photos, video, audio, animation and multimedia elements are now a mainstay of global communications.

Chuckwalla began its operations in 1992 with a focus on publishing and printing process management. Today, the company includes Web, wireless and other multi-channel environments in its client portfolio.

One such client, CNET, had major problems with lost content and was finding content reproduction a time-consuming and costly concern. CNET is a collection of Internet news services and Web sites about technology, home computing, and e-commerce issues. Communication among photographers, creatives, Web designers and producers was paramount to the success of CNET's businesses and its bottom line. Without a repository to store, organize and access content including photos, video, audio and other files, CNET had the daunting task of licensing and creating voluminous amounts of rich content for its numerous Web and news properties. To that end, all rich content needed to be easily and quickly created and accessible for use and reuse with rights and permissions attached.

As the primary repository, Chuckwalla enabled CNET to keep content current, provide instant accessibility, and also protect licensing rights and permissions. By reducing both the costs associated with the production and the reproduction of replacing lost content and the misuse of licensed materials, CNET's immediate benefits included the ability to enhance properties, promote creative collaboration and generate near- and long-term cost savings.

Among the Fortune 500 companies, Black & Decker, a global manufacturer of power tools and accessories, hardware and home improvement products, with products and services marketed in more than 100 countries and manufacturing operations in 11 countries, keeping brand consistency across the diverse areas was essential.

For Black & Decker, the ability to reach the market first, combined with consistent multi-channel branding emphasizing its corporate image across the retail, catalogue and Internet channels, was critical to the company's long-term business success.

Black & Decker turned to Chuckwalla for help with its multi-channel branding challenge. By creating a centralized repository to collaborate on content for products, Black & Decker was able to reach distributors, salespeople, catalog, Web and retailers in its 100-country market with content that only needed to be produced once.

"These case studies say it all," explains Lewis. "More companies are operating globally and the competition is heating up. By identifying what your assets are and managing them properly, you can keep ahead, no matter what the business."