Increased the value of their digital assets by 100% with Portfolio DAM.
The University of Cape Town (UCT) is the oldest university in South Africa and currently the highest-ranked university in Africa. A leader in teaching and research, UCT comprises six faculties: Commerce, Engineering and Construction, Law, Health Sciences, Humanities, and Natural Sciences. The university community consists of 28,600 students and 5,000 academic and administrative staff.
UCT aims to become the leading academic link between South Africa, the rest of Africa, and the world. By expanding its global networks and offering a unique perspective on Africa, the university addresses core issues of its natural and social culture through innovative research and teaching.
Where they started:
The UCT's Communications and Marketing Department (CMD) is responsible for all of the university's websites and serves as a central hub for creating and storing digital media. A team of more than 45 members in six divisions manages the institute's online presence, organizes visits and events, engages with the media and social media, and creates content about university news.
These six divisions serve the entire university, including its six faculties and administrative departments. The Communications and Marketing Department, as the university's central communications hub, was gradually struggling with storage capacity, particularly with its extensive video content library. The team also faced the challenge of having its digital content scattered across various divisions, hard drives, and CDs.
The CMD team decided to seek a solution to address these issues and increase the overall value of its digital assets.
Nico Badenhuizen, lead web developer at UCT, explains: “Our assets had very little value. Either because we didn't know they even existed, or because they were almost impossible to find. And if we did find them, it took a very, very long time. Finding a DAM solution became essential.”
Their goals:
To effectively manage the university, the CMD team needed to:
improve the discoverability and overall value of digital assets;
gain storage capacity by centralizing its assets;
reduce redundancies;
implement a consistent process for capturing metadata;
provide a simple and intuitive solution for all users that is easy to set up and cost-effective;
lock and restrict access to sensitive digital content.
The Solution:
UTC evaluated several solutions and chose Portfolio DAM due to its ease of use and rapid implementation. Portfolio DAM also proved to be significantly more cost-effective than competing products.
Within the first month of use, UCT migrated more than 250,000 existing assets. Nico, the project manager, pulled assets from various locations into Portfolio and was able to easily organize them using Portfolio's managed upload and cataloging features.
After the initial wave of assets was added, Nico gradually trained his colleagues on how to use Portfolio. This took no more than 15 minutes per person. Now, users and sub-teams create their own catalogs. And thanks to Portfolio's robust metadata capabilities, files are automatically tagged with keywords derived from file and folder names.
After the initial wave of assets was added, Nico gradually trained his colleagues on how to use Portfolio.
The Results:
Since deploying Portfolio DAM, the CMD team's previous asset search problems have been virtually eliminated.
Nico compiled specific scenarios where Portfolio has impacted the team's overall workflow and efficiency:
"As part of an institutional evaluation documenting the work of our former Vice Chancellor, the editorial team needed to locate all instances where his name was mentioned in publications, including all photos taken during his tenure and other content related to him. Previously, sifting through all available content and finding the relevant assets took an incredibly long time. And I'm quite certain that a lot of relevant content was missed simply because it was unfindable. Portfolio made finding content quick and easy, delivering far more assets than our traditional search methods."
Another Example:
“Right after we set up the DAM, I received a request for all the assets related to a professor. At the time, we were getting requests from several sources regarding images, photos, and everything else we had—and everyone wanted them quickly. I went to my computer, and 10 minutes later, I had emailed them every single asset I could find. What used to take days now literally took 10 minutes—a huge difference in processing time.”
Nico noted that the fast processing time was particularly helpful for collaboration between UCT and the media.
“When the media requests something, you have to be able to react quickly. They don't have days to search for the relevant assets. If an article doesn't include a suitable image or video, the likelihood of it being picked up by media outlets decreases exponentially. A photo accompanying a press release is therefore almost as important as the press release itself. We often don't have time to search for the right content. That's why the fast turnaround offered by Portfolio was so important to us.”
Portfolio DAM not only offers shorter turnaround times but also shared access across teams. This gives individuals broader access to UCT's assets and promotes the overall use and increased value of their digital media.