We often get asked the question: “What is ConceptShare?”
Sometimes customers, potential customers and partners describe ConceptShare as “a proofing tool” or “a review and approval tool” or “a markup tool.” Those are all fair descriptions based on our functionality and on what the customer’s or partner’s perception and individual needs (and interest in ConceptShare) might be.
And to be completely honest those descriptions are what we set out to build when ConceptShare was founded (by Chris, Bernie and Scott) almost 6 years ago. Our goal was to build the easiest to use application to review (or mark up, or annotate) and approve images, documents, web pages, audio files, interactive assets and video files.
Our application isn’t perfect (it never will be), but based on our relationship with hundreds of customers and partners whose business we’ve earned we feel that we have done a good job of meeting our original goal.
For a while everyone looked the same. To be more accurate, customers (and potential customers) thought everyone was the same. We would often have conversations with companies where they would say things like “So, I saw <insert name of company that annotates assets> and it looks like they do the same thing that ConceptShare does”.
That was a fair thing for customers to say. Initially we (and the competitors that emerged) all set out to build tools to “draw circles on top of assets.” To be honest there was not a lot of functional differentiation on the surface that customers could notice “at a glance.”
That has changed.
Over the last couple of years, ConceptShare has started to focus increasingly on meeting the needs of companies of a certain size and in specific industries. These companies share a number of common review & approval use cases and are also being impacted by a number of the same business, technology and economic trends.
Today, we have the privilege of working with 150+ enterprise-sized marketing and creative services teams. We have also earned partnerships with companies like OpenText, ADAM Software and Widen Enterprises who have integrated our technology to support the “review and approval” workflows of their mid-sized and enterprise customers.
Meeting the needs of enterprise customers is distinctly different than meeting the needs of a freelancer.
Our focus on enterprise customers has shaped our current product and our roadmap. Today we include functionality such as Review Management, Task Management, Dashboards and other functionality that is relevant to and valued by the enterprise customer.
By spending hundreds of days and thousands of hours onsite with clients we have learned many things and heard many things from them (and from many companies that are not yet clients). The things we have learned have shaped where our product has come to today and where it is going.
2. Global, 24/7, Multi-Disciplinary Production Environment: the skill required to produce increasingly complex assets (video, web, interactive) has led to asset development across multiple teams (UI/UIX designers, interaction designers, developers, etc.). And the economics of asset development (or creative work) has changed radically in the last 5 years. With more and more assets being developed across multiple locations, time zones and through a growing network of insourced and outsourced service bureaus.
3. Growing Number of Stakeholders: the number of stakeholders who need to participate in the review and approval of marketing assets has also grown. In today’s environment where the cost of a mistake can have significant consequences on a company’s brand and bottom line, it’s only natural for there to be more and more oversight of every asset before it goes out the door.
![COM Graphic]( "COM Graphic")
As we have spent time with more and more customers we have come to the realization that part of what they need to do is “draw circles on top of assets,” but that is an activity that is part of a much broader workflow.
We are describing that workflow as the process of moving from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.” Before we get into what that means from a functionality point of view and what ConceptShare is doing to address it, let’s share what we have learned from observing 150+ marketing and creative teams.
1. Toggle, Toggle, Toggle: we see that our customers are toggling between multiple applications (ConceptShare to project management to skype/yammer/email to file server, etc.) to manage the process of moving from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.”
2. Information in Multiple Locations: the toggling reality described above means that information related to the development of any piece of creative work is littered across multiple locations. We see marketing and creative teams being grossly inefficient when it comes to managing the process. Inefficiencies that they can’t afford as the number of assets they need to produce is growing in response to the opportunity presented by more marketing data and customer segmentation.
3. Hack System X: we have seen too many enterprise marketing and creative services teams try to use existing applications (DAM, MRM, EMM, SharePoint, and many others) to try and manage the process of going from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.” They usually don’t work because those applications were designed, developed and optimized to support different workflows.
We are putting a stake in the ground and calling this Creative Operations Management (COM).
![com]( "com")
What is COM?
COM is:
-Routing creative work to the right people at the right time
-Reviewing creative work in a way that is quick, easy and communicates/captures clear and actionable feedback
-Approve and generate other decisions on creative work by individuals and teams
-Annotation + Project Management + Workflow Management
-UI/UX optimized to easily communicate and consume information from dozens, hundreds or thousands of creative work projects
COM is an application that will have the functionality and UI/UX optimized for creative teams and their stakeholders to efficiently move from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.”
COM is NOT:
-A final asset repository
-A resource management system
-A time-tracking system
-A financial reporting system
COM is where creative teams and their stakeholders will live to route, review and approve creative work. COM can be integrated with other enterprise systems (DAM, MRM, Project Management, SharePoint, etc.) so that information, workflows and creative work are synced and coordinated across systems.
COM is the natural evolution of what ConceptShare started to build 6 years ago. We are grateful to our customers that helped shape our current version of COM and we are excited to be working with them as we embark on delivering an even more robust Creative Operations Management solution to enterprise marketing and creative services departments.
We don’t have all the answers. Our commitment is to continue to build an application that allows enterprise marketing and creative teams to effectively and efficiently manage the process of moving from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.”
Over the coming weeks and months we’ll be sharing more of what we are incorporating into our COM solution. We invite existing and new customers and partners to learn more about that vision. We invite you to help us shape what COM is and what it can be. We invite you to help shape how COM syncs with other enterprise applications such as DAM and MRM.
Leave us a comment and tell us how you are managing the process of moving from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.” If you want to talk more about COM for your organization, then contact one of our Product Specialists.
Sometimes customers, potential customers and partners describe ConceptShare as “a proofing tool” or “a review and approval tool” or “a markup tool.” Those are all fair descriptions based on our functionality and on what the customer’s or partner’s perception and individual needs (and interest in ConceptShare) might be.
And to be completely honest those descriptions are what we set out to build when ConceptShare was founded (by Chris, Bernie and Scott) almost 6 years ago. Our goal was to build the easiest to use application to review (or mark up, or annotate) and approve images, documents, web pages, audio files, interactive assets and video files.
Our application isn’t perfect (it never will be), but based on our relationship with hundreds of customers and partners whose business we’ve earned we feel that we have done a good job of meeting our original goal.
Who Do We Focus On?
When we started 6 years ago we weren’t just the new kids on the block, we were the only kids on the block. As we started to gain traction, lots of other companies started popping up trying to do what ConceptShare was already doing. Today, there are lots of companies that offer the ability to review (or annotate, or markup) assets.For a while everyone looked the same. To be more accurate, customers (and potential customers) thought everyone was the same. We would often have conversations with companies where they would say things like “So, I saw <insert name of company that annotates assets> and it looks like they do the same thing that ConceptShare does”.
That was a fair thing for customers to say. Initially we (and the competitors that emerged) all set out to build tools to “draw circles on top of assets.” To be honest there was not a lot of functional differentiation on the surface that customers could notice “at a glance.”
That has changed.
Over the last couple of years, ConceptShare has started to focus increasingly on meeting the needs of companies of a certain size and in specific industries. These companies share a number of common review & approval use cases and are also being impacted by a number of the same business, technology and economic trends.
Today, we have the privilege of working with 150+ enterprise-sized marketing and creative services teams. We have also earned partnerships with companies like OpenText, ADAM Software and Widen Enterprises who have integrated our technology to support the “review and approval” workflows of their mid-sized and enterprise customers.
Meeting the needs of enterprise customers is distinctly different than meeting the needs of a freelancer.
Our focus on enterprise customers has shaped our current product and our roadmap. Today we include functionality such as Review Management, Task Management, Dashboards and other functionality that is relevant to and valued by the enterprise customer.
What Did We Learn from Enterprise Customers?
We spend a lot of time onsite with our clients. No survey and no amount of phone calls (or web conferences) can replace the value of peering over someone’s shoulder and sitting next to them for hours or days to see how they work. How do they use our tool? What other tools are they using to get their work done? What is working for them? What is frustrating them?By spending hundreds of days and thousands of hours onsite with clients we have learned many things and heard many things from them (and from many companies that are not yet clients). The things we have learned have shaped where our product has come to today and where it is going.
Learning: The Marketing World Our Enterprise Customers Operate In
1. More Assets, More Assets Now: the volume of assets being generated has exponentially increased as marketers have more and more data by which to segment their customers. And the pace at which assets need to be available has changed as marketers have more real-time data that creates more real-time opportunities to segment and target customers.2. Global, 24/7, Multi-Disciplinary Production Environment: the skill required to produce increasingly complex assets (video, web, interactive) has led to asset development across multiple teams (UI/UIX designers, interaction designers, developers, etc.). And the economics of asset development (or creative work) has changed radically in the last 5 years. With more and more assets being developed across multiple locations, time zones and through a growing network of insourced and outsourced service bureaus.
3. Growing Number of Stakeholders: the number of stakeholders who need to participate in the review and approval of marketing assets has also grown. In today’s environment where the cost of a mistake can have significant consequences on a company’s brand and bottom line, it’s only natural for there to be more and more oversight of every asset before it goes out the door.
Learning: Navigating from “I Need an Asset” to “I Have an Asset”
As we have spent time with more and more customers we have come to the realization that part of what they need to do is “draw circles on top of assets,” but that is an activity that is part of a much broader workflow.
We are describing that workflow as the process of moving from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.” Before we get into what that means from a functionality point of view and what ConceptShare is doing to address it, let’s share what we have learned from observing 150+ marketing and creative teams.
1. Toggle, Toggle, Toggle: we see that our customers are toggling between multiple applications (ConceptShare to project management to skype/yammer/email to file server, etc.) to manage the process of moving from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.”
2. Information in Multiple Locations: the toggling reality described above means that information related to the development of any piece of creative work is littered across multiple locations. We see marketing and creative teams being grossly inefficient when it comes to managing the process. Inefficiencies that they can’t afford as the number of assets they need to produce is growing in response to the opportunity presented by more marketing data and customer segmentation.
3. Hack System X: we have seen too many enterprise marketing and creative services teams try to use existing applications (DAM, MRM, EMM, SharePoint, and many others) to try and manage the process of going from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.” They usually don’t work because those applications were designed, developed and optimized to support different workflows.
Learning: The Need for Creative Operations Management
What we have heard and learned from our customers is that there is a need for an application that is designed, developed and optimized for enterprise customers to manage the process of moving from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.”We are putting a stake in the ground and calling this Creative Operations Management (COM).
What is COM?
COM is:
-Routing creative work to the right people at the right time
-Reviewing creative work in a way that is quick, easy and communicates/captures clear and actionable feedback
-Approve and generate other decisions on creative work by individuals and teams
-Annotation + Project Management + Workflow Management
-UI/UX optimized to easily communicate and consume information from dozens, hundreds or thousands of creative work projects
COM is an application that will have the functionality and UI/UX optimized for creative teams and their stakeholders to efficiently move from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.”
COM is NOT:
-A final asset repository
-A resource management system
-A time-tracking system
-A financial reporting system
COM is where creative teams and their stakeholders will live to route, review and approve creative work. COM can be integrated with other enterprise systems (DAM, MRM, Project Management, SharePoint, etc.) so that information, workflows and creative work are synced and coordinated across systems.
COM is the natural evolution of what ConceptShare started to build 6 years ago. We are grateful to our customers that helped shape our current version of COM and we are excited to be working with them as we embark on delivering an even more robust Creative Operations Management solution to enterprise marketing and creative services departments.
We don’t have all the answers. Our commitment is to continue to build an application that allows enterprise marketing and creative teams to effectively and efficiently manage the process of moving from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.”
Over the coming weeks and months we’ll be sharing more of what we are incorporating into our COM solution. We invite existing and new customers and partners to learn more about that vision. We invite you to help us shape what COM is and what it can be. We invite you to help shape how COM syncs with other enterprise applications such as DAM and MRM.
Leave us a comment and tell us how you are managing the process of moving from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.” If you want to talk more about COM for your organization, then contact one of our Product Specialists.