A Single Image Library for 40 Offices and Over 2,000 Employees at Dewberry

Before OpenAsset, it was a very cumbersome process. To save space, we were uploading only low-res versions of our high quality photography into SharePoint. We also had to upload detailed information about the photo and project. Marketing team members would email the communications team to request high-res photos for proposals. This cumbersome process encouraged people to create their own stashes of images locally. We have offices across the U.S. and each marketing person and project manager had their own images, nobody had access to our entire photography catalog.

OpenAsset reached out to us and offered to demo the system. We ended up realizing that it would be a great solution. We then did some research on other DAM systems but we thought OpenAsset best met the needs of our industry.

The data migration was easy and went smoothly. I worked with our account manager to implement OpenAsset and integrate it with Deltek Vision. We did this all at the same time because we knew it would be important to have all of our images tagged with Vision info. This actually ended up making it a lot easier for people to find out project information via OpenAsset’s search than it is to find info in Deltek Vision.

We had internal meetings to discuss the process, determine how to organize the library, and what we wanted to include in the library. We got everyone on board with the notion that if we are to implement a DAM, people needed to give up their local image stashes.

We used OpenAsset’s data migration to get the bulk of the communications images uploaded to the library. We then instructed people throughout the company to upload their local images to the library, and eliminate their local stores.

Connecting with Deltek Vision has been great, because we no longer have to manually update the photos by copying/pasting information from Vision into OpenAsset.

It’s actually a lot easier to search in OpenAsset than it is in Vision. For example, if I need to get a project’s description, I find it easier to look the project up in OpenAsset and get to the description that way rather than trying to go into Vision. In OpenAsset you can start typing in either the project number or the name of the project and the search bar will auto-populate some options for you to find what you’re looking for. Whereas with Vision, if you don’t know the exact name in the right order, the project won’t show up.

The communications team has higher levels of access than everyone else, so we can see unapproved photos and delete photos. Everyone else has the ability to upload and tag images, so they all feel responsible for their own images.

We wrote up a guide that instructs our users on how to upload photos, tag appropriately with keywords, and indicate whether it can be used externally. It’s not uncommon for our photographer to upload somewhere around 100 – 200 photos per month. We also have a process for safety-checking construction photos.

We also have a YouTube channel, so we upload all of our videos from that channel to OpenAsset as well. This way if people are going to conferences where they may not have access to wifi to show a video from YouTube about one of our projects or our people, users can download videos from OpenAsset to place into their presentations directly.

Everyone is really happy with OpenAsset. Not just our marketing team, but our technical users are as well because you no longer have to send out 5mb files, you can just send a link to directly what they want.

Our proposals teams frequently use the album feature, to easily decide which photos to use. Everyone on the team can add and remove photos from the album without having to email around large files or trying to track down who has what image.

I spend a couple hours every day in InDesign, so I love being able to drag and drop images from OpenAsset into the program, so the links are never broken. If I’m looking at an InDesign file, it’s also easy to see what the image is and where it lives in OpenAsset.

Kimberly McVicker

COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

Laurie Strickland
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING