Adobe's Scene7 On-Demand
Digital asset management and so much more.
Nobody knows how difficult it can be to keep track of digital assets, such as product images and spec documents, more than online store owners. Depending on the number of products that you sell, and the various channels through which you sell them, you can end up with a multitude of files very quickly. Consider the following example.
You are a clothing retailer that sells upwards of 1000 products, each of which is available in 5 different colors. In order to compile your printed catalog, you are already looking at keeping track of 5000 high-resolution product photos. Someone is responsible for making sure that the designers working on the printed catalog have access to these images, and that they are updated to reflect the most recent product line that you are promoting.
Additionally, you have an online presence that you sell your products on as well. In order to showcase your 1000 products, you will now need low-resolution versions of each product photo, which means at least another 1000 images added to the mix (perhaps you only show a color swatch on the website, rather than a complete product image). Presumably, the same person that has to be sure that the print designers have the right assets now has another 1000 image assets to keep track of, and update when needed.
But wait, it gets even better. The web department has decided to implement a pan & zoom feature on the website, which means that a higher resolution image will be required for each product on the website. Enter another 1000 images that are higher resolution than the original web images but don't need to be the full resolution needed for print, as that would slow download times and jeopardize the online user experience. Oh yeah, and did we mention that each product needs to have a thumbnail image on the website so that visitors can see a small image of the products on the list pages. Boom, another 1000 images to deal with.
So now we are up to a minimum of 8000 image files of 1000 products (remember there are 5 colors of each product) that will need to be updated in the Spring when your products take on a new color scheme. Hopefully at this point, it is becoming painfully obvious what a daunting task it can be to manage digital assets.
Introducing Adobe's Scene7 On-Demand Service
It turns out that this is a common problem, and there are some impressively elegant solutions out there for decentralizing the management of digital assets. After all, in our example above we left out all of the other images that our company needs to have, the product spec sheets, sales documents, fonts and a whole lot more.
Each of these assets needs to be made available to our print department, our web department, our sales representatives and our dealers. Ideally, we would be able to store one copy of each asset that we need, and have derivative assets generated from that one (such as lower resolution images, etc).
This is where Adobe's Scene7 On-Demand service comes into play. Scene7 provides a way to consolidate your digital assets, decentralize your asset storage and so much more. You will need to look at their website in order to get the full picture, because there is much too much going on there to pack into one blog post. However, I thought I would outline some of the most intriguing features to me:
- Dynamic Imaging. In a nutshell, dynamic imaging gives you multiple rich media options for your products. For example, with texture swapping you can upload a high-resolution image of your product, and some color swatches that the product is available in. Scene7 takes care of the interface that lets your visitors click a color to see the image of your product in the color that they want. Sprinkle in other features like pan & zoom, dynamic sizing and 360 degree spin and you have some pretty serious options for displaying your products online or in print.
- eCatalogs. Already have a printed catalog? Scene7's eCatalogs feature lets you upload a multiple page PDF and easily configure it into an online interactive catalog.
- Product Configurators. By far and away the most impressive option in my mind is the product configurators, which allow someone to configure and preview products online before they make their purchase. Definitely check this one out for more information, as they make a lot of options available. One that stands out to me is the ability to apply a graphic element to a textured, contoured surface and preview the results. Think along the lines of applying a custom logo to a coffee mug, or a piece of luggage.
- Targeted Email and Print. Once all of your assets are online, you have the ability to connect everything together with a data feed and generate targeted email and print campaigns. In some sense, this frees the marketing department of our example operation from their dependence on the print and web departments, which allows them to be more agile and flexible with marketing decisions.
- Asset Management. To me this is the real meat of this system. Aside from all of the bells and whistles associated with using assets that are in the system, the asset management system that Scene7 provides is something that can dramatically increase efficiency and maintainability with larger product lines. A few features worth mentioning are the ability for secure, third-party uploads, batch processing of images and asset searching. Scene7 makes it easy to keep track of your digital assets and also to distribute them to dealers, sales representatives, creative agencies or anyone else that might need them.
Let's be clear, however, that Scene7 is not a small-business oriented service. As an example, some of the companies that use the system are Amazon.com, Coldwater Creek, Puma and Quixtar (used to be Amway). However, the goal of every online business owner, whether small or monstrous, is to grow and become more efficient.
I'm not suggesting that Scene7 is a good fit for everyone out there, but I am suggesting that they are addressing a problem that is common to all online stores. Understanding the challenges with digital asset management is (to me) the first step in the process. Just wrapping your head around the potential bird's nest that can occur over time is important enough.
5 Comments
afw says:
Great info! I actually struggle with this process every day. I will check out Scene 7, but as you said, I need a solution more geared to small/medium business that can grow with me.
HAve you found anything like this?
Brian Getting says:
I'm not aware of any other options that are as robust as Scene7, however, there are plenty of options for de-centralizing assets. One example is Amazon's S3 Service, which is basically like hard drive hosting. Rather than paying for a full hosting service, you only pay for hard drive space and bandwidth that you use, which is a nice option.
I'd be interested in hearing if anyone else has any experience with other options, particularly ones that are within reach of small to medium business and provide some good functionality.
alloyd says:
If you are looking for a solution for ecommerce you should also take a look at the Fluid Retail product suite (http://www.fluid.com/products/fluid_experience) by Fluid (http://www.fluid.com). It is geared specifically for ecommerce, helping retailers merchandise their site better. Like Scene 7, it includes the same zoom, multiple views and color change and the ability to store all your photos and output them in whatever format you require automatically. But it also includes other interactive merchandising capabilities like video and lifestyle merchandising (http://flog.fluid.com/2008/08/27/catalogers-delight/).
For small businesses we have an offering called Fluid Lite that is just the asset management and zoom, rotation and color change functionality. If you are on Yahoo Stores, Netsuite Commerce, or Amazon Webstores we can set you up with a partner that will get you up and running very cost effectively for a limited budget. Yahoo Stores users can sign up today at http://fastpivotsoftware.com/.
And for the more adventurous of you, you can add Fluid Social to take the same interactive product displays and let shoppers add them as widgets to their iGoogle or blog pages (http://www.fluid.com/products/fluid_social and in use on JanSport).
Definitely worth a look if you are considering Scene7.
Cédric says:
Hi Brian : "Let's be clear, however, that Scene7 is not a small-business oriented service." I'm afraid I have to contradict this comment, which is probably based on fact that not all customer's are listed on Scene7 webpages maybe.
Scene7 is based on a SaaS model with a very flexible offering that address SMBs as well as the largest eCommerce websites. The robust infrastructure can indeed support companies from Amazon all the way to Zillow, including all sort of companies that deliver only a 6 figures turn-over for now.
For the simpler needs, specific packages are available and deliver dynamic imaging or eCatalog features for a very affordable price. So you may start small and grow fast with Scene7 supporting your business all the way.
Btw, since it's hosted services using web service API, you may reconsider your ecommerce platform and website design anytime, migration of your media is no longer required : just use the URLs to access your assets. And Scene7 provides dozens of viewers that you can customize and use directly into your web pages.
Check www.scene7.com and their new SPS 4.0 platform for the latest update.
stephanie says:
Interesting information ! Do you know the average price of such solutions as scene7 or the "fluid" presented in comment ? Thanks for the hints
