DPCI helped W. W. Norton develop a strategy for a digital asset management system to centralize and manage image assets and final production files for trade and college textbooks.
W. W. Norton & Company, founded in 1923, stands as the oldest and largest publishing house owned wholly by its employees. The company is known for its distinguished publishing programs in both the trade and the college textbook areas. W. W. Norton & Company publishes about 400 books annually in hardcover and paperback.
In 2008, W. W. Norton & Company set out to find a digital asset management system to centralize and manage image assets and final production files for trade and college textbooks. The new system would act as a digital archive and would help W. W. Norton staff, specifically print production, advertising, emedia, and photo research departments, easily search for, retrieve and transform content for reuse in promotional materials and other channels.
With so many options in the digital asset management marketplace, W. W. Norton set out to find a consulting partner with subject matter expertise to help the company find the best fit solution. W. W. Norton retained DPCI to help define its business requirements and support the procurement process for a digital asset management system.
DPCI met with staff members from W. W. Norton’s print production, emedia, advertising and photo research departments to elicit high-level business, functional and technical requirements for the new digital asset management system.
Next, using its standardized vendor evaluation process, DPCI prepared a set of worksheets that contained questions and requirements for product vendors to address. The must-have criteria or ‘coarse’ filters, including technical platform and budgetary constraints, were used by W. W. Norton to narrow the product landscape down from 10 to 5 potential products. Vendor’s responses to the functional requirements were then used by W. W. Norton stakeholders to compare the 5 finalists.
DPCI provided support to W. W. Norton throughout the procurement process and helped to validate vendor assertions. This process allowed W. W. Norton to map product functionality to its digital asset management requirements and helped to identify the best solution for W. W. Norton’s needs and budget.
At the end of the procurement process, W. W. Norton chose Chuckwalla software as the best fit digital asset management system. The Chuckwalla digital asset management system was then implemented by staff resources at W. W. Norton in conjunction with Chuckwalla professional services.
