The Total Economic Impact™ Of Wedia’s DAM

Business Value Generated By Efficient Management Of Visuals

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that their organizations’ marketing teams became more efficient in managing visuals with Wedia’s DAM platform compared to with their previous platforms. Previously, they were required to manage a large number of visual variations to ensure that their brands maintain visual consistency across all the media, channels, and markets. One interviewee expressed: “Our marketing teams no longer need to spend all their time managing visuals. They can use this time to do other marketing tasks that provide more value.”

One interviewee reported that prior to using Wedia’s DAM platform, each of their organization’s 500 marketing FTEs previously spent 50% of their time managing visuals but that with Wedia, they only spend 5% of their time managing visuals.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• The composite has 400 marketing FTEs globally, and each uses Wedia’s DAM platform to manage visuals.
• Prior to using Wedia, marketing FTEs spent 30% of their time managing visuals. With Wedia, they only spend 5% of their time doing so.
• The average hourly rate for a marketing FTE is $15.
• Each FTE works 2,080 hours per year.

Risks. New business value generated with increased efficiency for marketing teams to manage visuals may vary based on:

• The number of marketing FTEs and the number of FTEs within the marketing teams who use the DAM software.
• The average amount of time marketing FTEs spent managing visuals prior to using Wedia’s DAM software, depending on the complexity of the prior platform.
• Existing internal processes/bureaucracy in the organization outside of the DAM software to manage visuals (e.g., lengthy processes to gain approval from certain stakeholders before being able to use visuals).
• The average hourly rate for a marketing FTE.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 25%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $2.9 million.

Reduced Asset Creation Cost Via Digital Rights Management And Templating

Evidence and data. Interviewees’ organizations were able to use Wedia’s DAM platform to avoid recreating assets, and they instead reused their assets from a single subsidiary in other big and global subsidiaries. Interviewees mentioned that in order to reuse their assets in other subsidiaries, they just had to negotiate rights and use a template to reuse assets. In turn, this cost much less than having to duplicate effort to recreate assets for each subsidiary individually.

• An interviewee explained that having the ability to negotiate rights to reuse assets instead of recreating assets helped their organization keep count of visuals that were already present and avoid a situation where the same subsidiaries across different countries only knew what they were producing in that particular country. They said, “This benefit is particularly helpful to our organization as we are starting to have more and more global subsidiaries.”
• For instance, one interviewee said their organization saved 20% cost for subsidiaries being able to reuse the same content. Even though the organization still used agencies for its visuals, the interviewee noted this advantage produced substantial cost savings. They said, “While you pay the agency once, many people can use the same visuals produced.”
• Full-blown use of such functionality over time could lead to higher ROIs as more new visuals are produced and reused across more subsidiaries at a larger scale over time.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• The composite organization has 10 large and global subsidiaries that benefit from rights negotiation and templates.
• Each subsidiary produces an average of 300 new visuals.
• The average cost of producing a visual per subsidiary is $600.
• By negotiating rights, the total cost of reusing an asset across all subsidiaries is only one-third of the total cost of recreating a visual in each subsidiary.

Risks. Reduced total cost of creating assets through digital rights management and templating capabilities may vary based on:

• The number of big and global subsidiaries in the organization that are able to benefit from the reuse of assets.
• The number of new visuals that are produced per subsidiary.
• The average cost of producing a visual, which may vary depending on the type of visual.
• Whether or not the cost of reusing assets or negotiating rights is greater or less than one-third, depending on the legal norms in a particular country.
• Whether or not subsidiaries in specific countries use agencies to produce the visuals.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 25%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $2.2 million.

Cost Savings Due To Modern SaaS Platform

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that before investing in Wedia’s DAM platform, their organizations spent a lot of time correcting issues in their legacy DAMs rather than customizing them for their benefit. As a result, they never got to experience the full breadth of DAM features and functionalities to optimize their usage. But interviewees said that partnering with Wedia led to their organizations hosting internal meetings and meetings with Wedia that were solely focused on how to further develop their DAM platforms rather than fixing technical errors. Moreover, with a SaaS platform, they no longer incurred expensive maintenance costs.

• The global corporate brand manager from the crop science and pharmaceutical industry mentioned: “With Wedia, our retainer services became minimal — from      $70,000 annually to only $20,000. Currently, we may require Wedia to make improvements. But, before, we spent all this money to solve problems.”
• The same interviewee also stated: “With no problems in the Wedia platform, meetings are now about how to improve functions and customize. After using Wedia, we have never missed [our previous platform]. As a result of the lack of technical issues, we have saved the time and effort of five person-days a month.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• The composite organization has a total of 100 brands.
• The composite’s primary users of Wedia’s DAM platform per brand come from three departments: sales, marketing and communications.
• Hence, a total of 300 departments use Wedia’s DAM platform.
• The composite saves the time and effort of five person-days per month, which equals 60 person-days saved per year.
• The average hourly rate for a user across sales, marketing, and communications is $17.
• Retainer services refers to the maintenance service and time Wedia spends to solve the composite’s problems, make changes, and customize its DAM platform.

Risks. Cost savings due to modern SaaS platform may vary based on:

• The total number of brands in the organization.
• The number of departments that are primary users of the DAM platform.
• The average costs of retainer services for the previous platform.
• The average hourly rate for all primary users depending on the average rate for each of the departments involved.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 25%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $379,000.

Faster Time To Market Through Easier Asset Findability

Evidence and data. The interviewees found that with Wedia’s DAM platform, their organizations’ sales FTEs spent less time searching for assets as compared to with their previous platforms. As a result, they achieved faster time to market and efficiency gains from this benefit.

• For instance, the digital product manager, DAM, from the agri-food industry said their organization performed an exercise with its sales FTEs to see how difficult it was to find a logo both with its prior internal network and with Wedia’s DAM platform. With the prior internal network, sales FTEs performed an average of 184 clicks per month to find a logo. But with Wedia, it only took 84 clicks to find the same logo. That represents an efficiency gain of 40%. Prior to using Wedia, the interviewee’s organisation spent an average of 1.5 hours per week searching for assets.
• The same interviewee said: “Prior to Wedia, every time the sales [team] wanted to use a visual, they were asking the marketing [team] if it was the right one. The marketing team then always had to send a version to make sure it was the best one. Today, with Wedia, our sales FTEs can go to the DAM and, in just a few clicks, [they can] find the right visual themselves.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• There are 500 sales FTEs globally across the composite organization who are users of Wedia’s DAM platform.
• The average hourly rate for a sales FTE is $20.
• Each FTE works an average of 21 days per month.
• With the composite’s previous internal network, sales FTEs spent 1.5 hours per week searching for assets.

Risks. Faster time to market through easier asset findability may vary based on:

• The total number of sales FTEs in the organization and the number of sales FTEs who are users of Wedia’s DAM platform.
• The average hourly rate per sales FTE.
• The average amount of time sales FTEs spent on asset search per week with the previous internal network.
• The number of assets on the DAM, which could increase time spent on asset search and the ease with which sales FTEs are able to use Wedia’s DAM software.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 25%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $269,000.

Cost Savings For Asset Storage

Evidence and data. Interviewees mentioned that Wedia helped their organizations build connectors with a stock image library, enabling them to license high-quality 3D models, videos, music, photographs, vectors, and illustrations. With the connectors came opportunities to share assets licensed by other units. Interviewees said all assets bought on the stock image library are automatically transferred into Wedia’s DAM platform along with all the relevant metadata, including asset rights, as part of a centralized library. Organizations can therefore benefit from one universal asset right for all their assets.

One interviewee from the pharmaceutical and crop science industry said that before Wedia, their organization had separate licenses for each country to upload assets. But with Wedia, the organization has a single global contract to license materials that can be used globally across the whole organization.

The same interviewee stated: “The cost savings from the opened space meant that other business units such as research and global communications were able to build up their own assets. In our organization, we have been able to save roughly $500,000 as a result of this benefit.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• Previously, the composite organization had a noncentralized platform on which each country the organization operated in had a separate license for asset storage.
• The composite organization has 70,000 employees, and 30,000 are users of Wedia’s DAM platform.
• The annual revenue of the composite organization is $10 billion.

Risks. Cost savings for asset storage may vary based on:

• The organization’s previous environment (e.g., if the organization previously used a platform for asset storage that was centralized across the organization).
• The number of assets stored across the organization.
• The organization’s total revenue and number of employees because the cost savings depend on the number of users or departments that will store their assets.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 25%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $187,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Increased accuracy in new packaging sent to customers. Interviewees said all the different countries have their organization’s customer database connected to the DAM. One interviewee said that whenever their organization introduces new product packaging, it can be more than 99% accurate when sending this packaging to its list of customers in each of these countries. They explained that this helps their organization accurately disperse its assets (e.g., the actual packaging) to their customers.

• Clear view of the copyright, which helps avoid compliance issues. Interviewees said that with Wedia’s DAM platform, copyright information is provided with each asset and the reader or user can also see guidelines that explicitly explain where and how the visual can be used and situations or scenarios in which the visual cannot be used. In turn, this means the organization is able to ensure it does not have any copyright issues.

• Improved quality of data. Interviewees said distributors expect high-quality data from brands at the right time. One explained that when the organization faced technical errors with its prior platform, it was never able to deliver the expected quality of data to its distributors on time. This caused unnecessary costs because it was fined by its distributors. But the interviewee said with Wedia, the organization has a seamless process to send the right visual at the right time and avoid paying fines. Interviewees also said their organizations require limited quality checks as Wedia is a SaaS platform.

• Reduced technical issues. Interviewees said that with their organizations’ previous DAM platforms, users faced technical issues (e.g., downloading issues) that halted their progress on the tasks they were performing.  One interviewee even mentioned that as a result of downloading issues and other technical issues with the legacy platform, their organization had fewer users and fewer downloads. But they said with Wedia’s DAM platform, the organization avoids these technical issues.

• Supportive professional services team. Each interviewee praised the efficiency and professionalism the Wedia team provided from the implementation process to today. One interviewee said: “The team at Wedia was like a computer. … [They’re] so precise, efficient, and considerate. These qualities cannot be bought by money. ... The service is so good, and you are not being put on a waiting list.”

• Single sign-on for ease of employee access. Interviewees said Wedia’s DAM platform provides a centralized platform to release all brand identities there. Each user of the DAM across different regions can then access all the assets uploaded on this centralized platform, facilitating the ability to showcase their work to product leaders. SSO also has a security lens for employee access only, so each employee is only required to log in once a day on the platform and only use one set of credentials. This improves company security.

• Better collaboration process. Interviewees said users of Wedia’s DAM platform have better collaboration experience because there is a centralized platform with all the assets that makes it easier to share assets within the organization but also for external parties (e.g., journalists, outsourced consultants). One interviewee mentioned that their organization’s prior platform had an upload feature that required all assets to go through librarians before they were uploaded. But they said that with Wedia, it only takes 10 seconds to upload an image.
  
  In addition, an interviewee explained how the Content Picker feature has helped journalists directly surf as external users without needing to register in the DAM. They said one resource selects these assets and makes them available in Content Picker, and then all these assets are made available directly on the organization’s website.

• Ease in localization of content and asset diffusion. Interviewees said that with Wedia’s DAM platform, their organizations can use the ability to seamlessly push their assets on their websites at scale, resulting in high performance. Localization also allows organizations to translate and make assets more contextually relevant for a geography, which ensures marketing campaign templates are more appealing to local audiences in a particular region to promote business growth and opportunities.

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement Wedia’s DAM platform and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Using innovative features with AI and genAI as part of DAM functionalities. Organizations can expand their use of Wedia’s DAM platform by using functionalities like AI-based tagging for assets and autogenerated translations for video transcriptions and subtitles. Interviewees mentioned that their organizations would like to use the more advanced modules for genAI, such as the new Wedia.ai feature to generate new backgrounds for product visuals and to imagine new scenes for the product in the style of the brand or local regions.

• Expanding usage of DAM across departments within the organization and increasing the volume of assets. Most of the interviewees’ organizations have three key departments actively using the DAM software: marketing, sales, and communications. However, they would like to integrate more departments as end users of the DAM. One interviewee noted their organization has been “receiving different requests from different divisions that want to use the DAM for different purposes” and that it eventually wants to expand and have more assets in its DAM.

• Improving workflow validation when working with agencies. Wedia has a platform for workflow validation called Creative Workflow, and interviewees said users can use it to initiate a project and have external users (e.g., agencies) upload relevant assets and manage conversations about changes needed to get these assets in line with the project’s objectives and the brand image. Once this has taken place, all relevant parties must see and approve the creative project. These parties could include senior management and legal teams that need to sign off on various elements of the assets linked to each project, ensuring copyright and brand image are protected. One interviewee mentioned their organization has already started seeing benefits of this feature and that stakeholders are asking for workflow validation for other content.

• Increasing reuse of assets and reducing re-creation of assets across more subsidiaries. An interviewee mentioned that the cost savings from negotiating rights to reuse assets across big subsidiaries has inspired their organization to reduce the number of local subsidiaries and have only global ones that can benefit from these cost savings.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Appendix A).