Adobe® Experience Manager Assets (AEM Assets) allows a marketing organization to organize the digital files used to market the business. But the assets may not only be used by the marketing organization, but also by internal and external partners to the marketing organization. Internal partners may include field sales organizations and international subsidiaries. External partners may include distributors, dealers, and companies that co-market products with the business.
Your organization can provide these internal and external partners with the assets they need simply by granting the partners limited access to AEM Assets. But is that the best solution?
#1 Filter Out Irrelevant Assets
One consideration is the fact that internal and external partners do not need, or even want, access to ALL the marketing assets of a business. The respondents to a 2018 IDC study managed a median of 15,000 assets and a mean of over 250,000 assets, most of which would not be pertinent to external partners. A partner without AEM Assets experience may become completely lost when trying to search the ENTIRE digital asset management (DAM) repository.
#2 Improve the asset search accuracy
Another consideration is that a partner may inadvertently find the “wrong” asset. For example:
- The partner may locate and use an expired asset, such as an old logo that has been replaced by a newer one.
- The partner may locate and use an asset that the partner is not authorized to see, such as an asset prepared for a competitor of the partner.
If the partner uses the wrong asset, and the error is not discovered until late in the project implementation, then both the original company and the partner may spend significant money in rework costs. Rework errors discovered late in the implementation may cost 50 times as much (or more) to correct than errors discovered early in the implementation. Of course, if the error was never made in the first place, there would not have been any rework costs.
Use of the wrong asset may be even more costly if the error results in a legal breach of contract, with financial penalties. Even if no legal penalties are assessed, the mere cost to defend the company against such claims can be excessive; the Baltimore Ravens have spent 15 years battling in court over the use of another party’s copyrighted logo.
So how can a company ensure that it is providing the CORRECT assets to its internal and external partners? Rather than allowing partners to directly access AEM Assets, it may be preferable to instead provide partners access to a separate access portal. This portal can be outside of the corporate firewall and can provide the partners with access to a limited, approved subset of the company assets.
#3 Over 20% Content Velocity gains
A separate asset portal will not only ensure that partners can find their desired assets more quickly (offering a content velocity improvement of over 20%), but will also provide a guard to prevent partners from unintentionally using the wrong assets.
Two Assets Portal Solutions
AEM Assets supports two different asset portal solutions, both of which allow partners to access an approved subset of the company assets.
- AEM Assets Brand Portal is a licensed offering sold by Adobe. AEM Assets Brand Portal allows internal and external partners to download and upload a controlled set of assets via a self-service portal.
- Alternatively, a company may choose to use Asset Share Commons as its asset portal solution. Asset Share Commons is an open-source offering with no licensing costs, and with powerful configuration and customization capabilities.
For more detailed discussion on AEM platform please see Adobe Experience Manager Technology Guide.
If you would prefer to speak directly to an experienced AEM consultant on the topic of asset portals, KBWEB Consult has the experience to answer your questions and to guide you in deciding which asset portal solution is best for your company. Contact us for a free consultation.
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