CASE STUDY
Martech Solution and Operational Guidance
Cella Tapped to Implement Adobe Experience Manager for Healthcare System
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The Problem: A leading healthcare system engaged Cella by Randstad Digital (Cella) to conduct a comprehensive Creative Operations Assessment of their organization which revealed significant challenges in the management of digital assets within their marketing and creative departments. It identified a critical gap in their use of purpose-built technology for Digital Asset Management (DAM) and revealed significant risks, from inefficient operations to risk of asset loss and more. The client needed guidance on how to select and implement the tool that would work best for their highly-complex structure.
The Solution: Cella was able to help our client by identifying and addressing the risks their urgent need for a robust DAM solution. We began by gathering and summarizing their requirements, conducting thorough vendor assessments and providing tailored recommendations based on the findings. This detailed evaluation ultimately led to their selection and successful implementation of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) assets. To ensure a seamless transition and optimization, Cella also designed a new taxonomy that aligned with the client’s evolving needs, providing a more intuitive structure for asset management. In addition, we conducted a complex clean-up of their existing assets, removing outdated or redundant files, and migrated their entire asset library to AEM with minimal disruption. This comprehensive approach not only addressed their immediate challenges but also set the foundation for a scalable, future-proof DAM system.
The Results: Our experts recognized that this martech solution would equip our client with the necessary information to make informed procurement decisions. AEM was chosen for its advanced AI capabilities, metadata enrichment features and its seamless integration with existing Adobe products within the client’s tech stack, making it a robust choice for enhancing their content management processes. This strategic move positioned our healthcare client to streamline its current operations and scale its content management practices to align with future growth, ensuring long-term success.
Knowing our team of consulting professionals take a client-centric approach, our healthcare system client engaged Cella by Randstad Digital (Cella) to conduct a comprehensive Creative Operations Assessment to evaluate their creative and marketing martech systems. The assessment revealed significant challenges in the management of digital assets within their marketing and creative departments. They were relying on offline storage solutions, including external hard drives and shared drives, which lacked formalized processes for standardization, metadata application and efficient searchability. Cella’s commitment to creating scalable martech solutions informed our process every step of the way.
The Problem: Identifying the Gap
Cella’s custom assessment identified a critical gap in our client’s use of purpose-built technology for Digital Asset Management (DAM). Their creative and marketing departments relied on a fragmented approach to asset storage, using external hard drives and shared drives without any formalized system for managing digital assets. This lack of a centralized DAM solution posed several significant risks to their organization:
Operational Inefficiency: The absence of a standardized system for organizing and retrieving assets resulted in a time-consuming and inefficient process. Teams struggled to find the right assets quickly, often resorting to recreating content that already existed, which wasted valuable resources and slowed down project timelines.
Inconsistent Asset Management: Without a formal DAM in place, there was no consistent approach to applying metadata, managing asset versions, or tracking rights and permissions. This inconsistency increased the risk of using outdated or unauthorized assets, which could lead to brand inconsistency and potential legal issues.
Limited Searchability: The reliance on manual file naming conventions and legacy knowledge of folder structures made it extremely difficult to search for and locate specific assets. This hindered the team’s ability to effectively reuse and repurpose content, limiting the overall value derived from their digital assets.
Risk of Asset Loss: Storing assets on external drives and shared servers without a robust backup and disaster recovery plan posed a serious risk of asset loss. In the event of hardware failure, data corruption, or unauthorized access, the healthcare system could potentially lose irreplaceable digital assets, including valuable creative content and critical marketing materials.
Scalability Challenges: As the organization’s marketing and creative needs continued to grow, the lack of a purpose-built DAM system would only exacerbate these challenges. The existing methods were not scalable, making it increasingly difficult to manage and leverage the expanding volume of digital assets.
By assessing, identifying and addressing these risks, Cella was able to help the client recognize the urgent need for a robust DAM solution, ultimately leading to the selection and implementation of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets.
The Solution: Tool Assessment, Vendor Recommendation and Implementation
Not long after, the client re-engaged Cella to guide them through a tool selection process to find the most suitable DAM solution. This process involved gathering and summarizing the client's requirements, conducting vendor assessments and making recommendations. The final deliverable equipped them with the necessary information to make informed procurement decisions.
Upon Cella’s recommendation, our client selected Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets as their DAM platform. AEM was chosen for its advanced AI capabilities, metadata enrichment features, and its seamless integration with existing Adobe products within the client’s tech stack, making it a robust choice for enhancing their content management processes. The implementation process was highly customized to the client’s needs and included designing a future-state taxonomy and metadata schema to improve search functionality and enable better organization of assets. This foundational work ensured that assets were categorized in a way that reflected the client’s business goals, simplifying workflows and supporting cross-departmental collaboration.
Additionally, Cella developed and executed a comprehensive asset migration strategy, moving thousands of legacy assets from offline storage (external drives and shared servers) into the centralized AEM platform. During this migration, assets were enriched with new metadata, ensuring they were optimized for searchability and aligned with the newly established taxonomy standards.
To bring the entire process together, the client requested Cella’s expertise to implement AEM for their marketing department. The implementation focused on defining robust asset management workflows, creating a future-state taxonomy to enhance search functionality and migrating legacy content from offline storage to AEM.
The Results: Expectations and Outcomes
The implementation of AEM positioned the client to realize a significant transformation in their martech capabilities and asset management.
Improved Searchability and Findability: AEM’s advanced metadata enrichment and AI-powered search functionalities will allow users to quickly and accurately locate assets, reducing time spent searching and increasing productivity. This results in better use of existing assets, minimizing duplication of efforts and ensuring that high-quality content is consistently leveraged across campaigns.
Streamlined Distribution: The new system facilitates easier and more controlled distribution of assets to internal stakeholders and the website. With clearly defined workflows and permission settings, our client can ensure that the right content reaches the right audience at the right time, enhancing both internal collaboration and external brand consistency.
Enhanced Content Reuse and Asset Utilization: By centralizing all digital assets in AEM and applying standardized metadata, the client’s potential for enhanced content reuse is increased. Assets can be easily repurposed for new campaigns, reducing the need for creating new content from scratch and maximizing the return on investment for existing content. This, in turn, will improve overall asset utilization, ensuring that valuable creative resources are fully leveraged across the organization.
Integrated Architecture with AEM Sites: AEM Sites publishes our client’s website. By integrating AEM Assets as the DAM within this context, they benefit from a unified architecture that consolidates asset management and content management. This integration eliminates the potential for duplication and redundancy, ensuring that assets are managed consistently across all digital touchpoints, streamlining workflows, and enhancing operational efficiency.
Operational Efficiency and Governance: With AEM, our client will be able to adopt more operational rigor around asset management, leading to improved governance and compliance. The system’s built-in reporting and analytics will provide insights into asset usage, helping them to continuously optimize their content strategies and make data-driven decisions.
Continuing the Relationship
Our third engagement with the client involved implementation of their new project management tool to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of its Marketing team. Using our proven implementation model, our consulting experts ensured that the platform was strategically configured to meet their unique operational needs, streamlining workflows, driving long-term adoption, and maximizing return on investment (ROI).
Cella provided program management, vendor implementation oversight, change management guidance, and subject matter expertise to ensure a seamless implementation. Through discovery sessions, project plan validation, and workflow optimization, Cella aligned the platform with the clients’ complex business goals. In addition, information architecture and functional design recommendations helped refine system usability, while quality assurance and user acceptance testing (UAT) ensured the platform met success criteria. To support adoption and platform maturity, Cella also delivered knowledge transfer workshops and post-launch advisory services.
Beyond implementation, Cella worked closely with the client to optimize three critical workflow processes within Hive, simplifying operations, clarifying roles, and improving overall efficiency. Through tailored workshops, Cella captured detailed process mapping and future-state recommendations, providing the client with a scalable and effective work management system tailored to its evolving needs.
To build on this success, Cella has encouraged the client to further optimize its operations by leveraging automation, integrating its PM with AEM for streamlined asset management, and establishing a structured change management and training plan. Defining service level agreements (SLAs) and empowering key stakeholders as change advocates will further drive adoption and operational improvements.
The success of this initiative was made possible by the dedication and collaboration with the client’s key team members. Their commitment to collaboration and continuous improvement played a crucial role in ensuring a streamlined, scalable, and future-ready project management framework.
Cella’s Martech Expertise
Cella was selected among other Adobe solution partners by our client not only because of our expertise in martech products but also due to our deep understanding of creative and marketing operations. Unlike product-centric solution providers, Cella’s approach goes beyond technical implementation. We understand the nuanced needs of marketing and creative teams, ensuring that the technology not only functions optimally but also aligns perfectly with the specific operational goals and workflows of the business. This unique blend of expertise in both the operational and technological aspects of DAM made Cella the ideal partner for our client.
