CELUM
Revolutionizing Marketing and Brand Management Technology

Unlike CRM or ERP systems with structured data, the currency of media, entertainment and marketing professionals are images, graphics, video, and other rich content. Today’s CIO is not only drowning in these file types, but also finding it difficult to manage or control the explosion of one-off applications to handle them. From cloud-based file sharing sites and loose hard drives, to a maze of hierarchical file folders, and even email systems, the options are confusing and endless. Users are required to navigate multiple repositories, and creative teams are constantly adding new apps or sites to solve the irksome workflow or media management issues and add it to an already burgeoning arsenal. “Media and marketing processes, product content, and digital asset management require a different solution. CELUM is the solution where powerful media management technology meets user-centered workflow,” says Dan McGraw, Managing Director for CELUM North America.

Headquartered in Linz, Austria, CELUM provides a centralized system to manage, find, share, and control the unwieldy streams of digital content. At first glance, the system offers a flexible, customizable HTML5 interface, a powerful search, project and archival collections, omni-channel media distribution and a scalable architecture. The latest release, CELUM5.10, can be deployed on-premise, privately hosted, or in the cloud to help customers manage all of their digital assets, even if it’s for an entire global enterprise.

“There is a huge difference between departmental digital asset storage and sharing, and enterprise digital asset management,” McGraw explains. “Even with an ever-expanding selection of storage and sharing applications, many organizations are plagued by growing costs, multiple asset repositories, and excessively manual processes. From a strategic standpoint, Enterprise Digital Asset Management (DAM) can improve nearly every department including legal, HR, operations, sales, and production. Without this awareness, CIOs can fall into two traps.”

The first trap is to approach DAM as a typical IT problem. The second is for CIOs to abandon all hope that creative teams’ workflows and files can’t be managed. They yield to the uncontrolled proliferation of silos.

To solve the “DAM problem,” McGraw encourages CIOs and executives to look at the situation differently. DAM is not an IT problem but a business strategy. This “media crisis” can be curbed with a unified strategy and a configurable enterprise class platform. This can simplify media management bottlenecks by streamlining work processes, visibility and administration. Proper governance also addresses the operational, financial, and technical challenges within proper forums. “Most importantly, media centric technology platforms like CELUM can mitigate manual processes in a user-friendly approach to automate an organization’s ‘Media Supply Chain’,” points out McGraw.

It’s a business platform that delivers on the growing media management and strategies CIOs need today

The company emphasizes user experience as a key success factor, which goes beyond a good interface. CELUM has demonstrated its ability to support media supply chains beyond media and entertainment. Over 700 companies rely on CELUM to manage marketing and creative media in many industries. According to the company, the problems faced by a manufacturing firm or retailer can be similar to that of a movie studio. “Without a robust media management platform, organizations find themselves paying creative, smart, and talented staff to perform scavenger hunts for media files in various places, answering questions about versions or approval status, moving files around, and many other manual, time consuming efforts. These hidden costs pull the CIO, creative teams, and even companies down into an erosion of profit. We solve these problems,” explains McGraw. “The ROI can be compelling.”

From a business perspective, CELUM provides far more than improved storage or sharing of assets. “It’s a business platform that delivers on the growing media management and strategies CIOs need today. It’s the answer that CIOs as well as marketing and creative teams have been waiting,” concludes McGraw.