Timberlake Cabinetry
Acquia DAM (Widen), including the Assets, Insights, and Portals applications.
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The Client
Timberlake cabinets are sold directly to major home builders through a network of builder service centers and distributors.
The Situation
The Timberlake sales team relies on their marketing department for sales materials that communicate the value of their products. New content is continually produced for a growing number of annual product launches.
The Challenge
The limited search functionality in their existing content management system (CMS) made it difficult for the sales representatives to find the content they needed, and they resorted to asking the marketing team to locate files for them. C.J. Fitzgerald, a marketing specialist at Timberlake, said his team was fielding dozens of file requests every week.
The Solution
The marketing team realized this workflow was inefficient and unsustainable. In 2013, they began researching digital asset management (DAM) systems and in late 2014, they implemented Acquia DAM.
Robust metadata structure
With Acquia’s guidance, C.J. and his team developed a metadata structure to power the system’s search functionality. “It’s absolutely vital to focus on how to organize your assets before uploading them and going through implementation,” C.J. said. “We took a lot of time to focus on how to categorize and keyword, and set a structure that was sustainable.” Now, Timberlake DAM users can find and download any asset they need, easily.
Positive user experience
To encourage system adoption, the Timberlake team focused on creating a familiar and intuitive user experience. They branded the system’s dashboard, or homepage, to match their corporate identity and gave their users multiple ways to search — through keywords, categories, and portals. “Your users will be focused on the experience, so you want to make that as positive as possible,” C.J. shared.
User training
Timberlake developed a multifaceted training program to nurture ongoing user engagement. The program is part of the company’s new employee orientation and is complemented by a series of short videos and tutorials that C.J. created. These on-demand training videos help ensure success for users when one-on-one or in-person training isn’t possible.
The Results
Asset control
Acquia DAM gives Timberlake a central source of truth for all of their marketing content. The permission structure allows C.J. and his team to control what content users can access, and ensure that only the most current, on-brand assets are being downloaded and distributed.
Enhanced productivity
Self-serve access to content allows the creative team to spend far less time responding to image requests and more time on creative work. It also allows the sales team to have instant and efficient access to the content they need, when they need it. In addition, the Insights app gives the marketing team valuable information on asset usage, to help make effective, data-driven decisions around content creation and distribution.
A model for success
The implementation and rollout of Acquia DAM has become a model for success within the Timberlake organization. “[Acquia DAM] has heightened the status of our team, as other internal brands have seen the success of our DAM system and mirrored the structure. And executives have acknowledged the success of our implementation as a positive move forward,” C.J. says.
