Where's a high-resolution image when you need it? During an internal operations audit, a $300 million media company discovers it is using five different systems to obtain, format and track digital assets. Not only do the multiple processes unnecessarily strain technology resources such as storage and software support, their incompatibility prevents the company from easily launching new products. To improve workflow and clean up its banks of audio and video clips, images and other documents, the company embarks on a yearlong, million-dollar project.

The biggest expenses in this project are for labor and services: looking at the current environment, locating the assets, separating out the important ones, designing new workflows and conducting an in-depth pilot. These tasks take most of a year, and result in a repository of 80,000 assets (whittled down from more than 100,000) and a working pilot. During development, the project team focuses on adding metadata, refining the integration of the system with the company's content management software and other enterprise applications, and building a browser interface.

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