The issue with international collaboration

Working globally is great for growing businesses but it brings new challenges. If you manage to bridge that geographical divide then—as we’ ve discussed on Bizibl previously—you can boost your marketing campaigns, drive sales, and power-up your partners.

People situated thousands of miles away from a central marketing team face extra barriers when accessing resources or requesting edits, especially when they’re up against deadlines and don’t have design or marketing resources on-site. Say your colleagues or partners abroad have a quick question about your campaign assets, but know it will take a whole 15 hours for you to respond, they’ll understandably take matters into their own hands. This can lead to people producing assets locally which may not be brand compliant, a pattern with detrimental consequences for fledgling global brands.

How can you overcome these challenges? One solution could be leaning into the distance. “I wake at 4:30 am to focus on my Asian businesses first thing in the morning and then my businesses in the UK and Europe in the afternoon before concentrating on the US markets in the evening,” says UK entrepreneur and investor, Raj Dhonota. This is fine at the individual level, but multiply it by 1,000 employees and the result would be seriously overworked and under-motivated teams.

Another innovative idea comes from the £50bn Australian tech firm, Atlassian, located across 13 countries. An advocate of remote working but not time-zone turmoil, the company divided the globe into a small number of ‘collaboration zones,’ ensuring each team is within the same zone. It’s a neat idea, but near-impossible logistically for an established global company to implement.

There is a simpler, quicker option for making the right assets available to the right people at the time that suits them—and it’s powered by a digital asset management platform.

Defy distance with a DAM platform

A digital asset management platform (DAM) is a convenient way to take control of your content and eliminate the operational inefficiencies global teams face.

So how does it work, exactly? A DAM combines everything you need to manage and distribute your brand’s images, videos, and other digital assets into a single platform. You can manage all of your brand’s content in a central location, while giving people direct access to the approved brand assets they need to work efficiently. 

With a DAM solution like Canto, you can: 

• Create curated content collections for different audiences, so people can access approved brand assets directly instead of requesting them from other teams. 

• Make sure people are using the most up-to-date and on-brand content — and easily take outdated content out of circulation. 

• Enhance brand consistency, with creative teams around the world drawing from the same brand assets. 

• Use templates to lock in key design elements, so approved end users can swap out copy and images – no InDesign skills required.

• Avoid duplicate work. Teams can see if the content they need has already been created in another region, so they can reuse existing content instead of recreating it from scratch. 

This means instant access instead of questions and requests, local agility, and clarity that the content is approved and on-brand – all the while protecting your global brand consistency and security of campaign assets. And AI-powered visual search means discovering the right assets doesn’t take hours, but is fast and intuitive.

A DAM platform doesn’t just enable you to organise, manage and share your photography, media files, and other digital assets from one central source of truth. It also helps as your company grows and new locations come on board, empowering you with useful functions like intuitive access permissions, download presets, and sharing tools.

Case study: Skanska connects the right people with the right content across every business unit

The construction and project development giant Skanska, which boasts more than 30,000 people across 11 countries in Europe and North America, relies on Canto to organise its expansive collection of project images and documents, and boost its bid and marketing content.

When it comes to content, this multi-divisional and international organisation has managed to unify Skanska’s business units, and narrow the gap between teams and time zones.

“Canto makes it really easy to promote brand images that we want people to use – high quality images approved for external marketing,” says Sandra Rocklind who oversees Skanska’s content management. “Most of the content is open for everyone at Skanska to use, no matter where it was created. We get to see some nice images from other business units that we wouldn’t have seen before.” 

Case study: Maserati MSG Racing fulfils content requests twice as fast

Canto is also the DAM solution used by Maserati MSG Racing in the fast-paced world of Formula E, which can produce a thousand photos per race weekend across North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. 

By using Canto, it’s not only Maserati MSG Racing’s team who can access the content library from anywhere in the world. The platform enables official race photographers to upload images in real time, international media outlets to access shots on race-day, and official race partners to download images for their own marketing.

“Now, it’s really easy to go in and access pre-approved assets like imagery, press releases, and news articles. We don’t need to handle those requests over email anymore,” says Jules Jackson, Maserati MSG Racing’s Digital Marketing Specialist. 

Case study: Logitrans enables sales reps around the world

Using a DAM platform to create a global content hub can also help overcome different cultural expectations, skillsets, and even language barriers across the globe. For example, Danish manufacturer Logitrans has factories in both Denmark and China, additional offices in Germany and the US, and exports to 55 countries. 

Logitrans cleverly uses Canto’s DAM platform to create language-specific portals as well as dealer-specific portals, all of which makes distributing content worldwide easier. Logitrans staff and dealers simply log into the system, choose their language, and are routed into the right portal for them.

“We have portals for French, English, German, and Chinese, and one for the US with different branding because it’s a different brand in the US,” explains Sanne Bruhn-Hansen, Marketing Coordinator at Logitrans. 

With faster access to compelling visuals, Logitrans sales teams can connect customers with the customised solutions they’re looking for more effectively, closing deals they would otherwise have lost. 

“It’s the perfect proof of the impact we thought this was going to have,” says Logitrans CIO Anders Grønbech.