Johnsonville Improves Access to Digital Assets Across Departments and Geographic Locations

Challenges 

Founded in 1945, Johnsonville has a rich history and thriving brand. “Our identity is in all our photography, packaging, our product images,” said Kelly Owens, Packaging Graphics Coordinator at Johnsonville.

However, they lacked a central repository to store and manage their creative and historical imagery. Content was scattered across multiple devices and tools, making it hard to find an asset and know if it was the correct version.

In addition, the graphics team was constantly fielding file requests. This involved locating files, saving them in multiple formats, sharing them, and remembering where they are stored if an update was needed. “It was very daunting,” Kelly shared. Each request could lead to hours of searching for a specific asset.

After a two-year search for the right digital asset management (DAM) solution, Kelly helped Johnsonville select the Widen Collective.

Objectives

Efficiency

Reduce time spent searching, re-formatting, and sharing files

Search speed

Help people find assets in less time

Security
Control who can access what and when

Market growth
Provide on-brand assets to expanding markets

Solution

Roles and permissions management
In 2016, Johnsonville started using the Collective just to within the packaging department to house logos, advertising, and product photography. “They are loving it,” said Kelly. “It's super easy to collect the photography...and just share it out to the agency.”

Over the years, their use of the Collective expanded across departments. It now stores brand and creative assets for marketing, historical assets for human resources, and video files for manufacturing. Kelly configured the roles and permissions so each department only sees the content they need. For example, when marketing is working on their ad campaigns, other users can’t access those assets.

Self-serve access
Johnsonville uses the Collective's Portals application to simplify how they share content with a range of stakeholders. “It’s a better way to distribute the assets,” Kelly explained. For example, they built portals for external sales teams with content for each business unit. “Their assets are organized visually so that they can find things very quickly. It’s very easy to navigate,” Kelly shared. “They can easily download in a format that fits their needs.”

Relationship and support
Through their partnership with Widen, Johnsonville has changed the way they work, for the better. “I would highly recommend Widen for a digital asset solution,” Kelly confirmed. “The solution is easy, it’s intuitive, their knowledge is in-depth, and it’s exactly what you need. Widen is amazing. Their customer service is unbelievable. And their CSMs are top-notch.”

Benefits

Valuable time savings
Before Johnsonville implemented the Collective, searching for assets could take hours, even over the course of several days, and sometimes assets couldn’t be found. Now assets are accessed from a central, searchable repository. Plus, the Collective allows any user to convert a file to different formats, on their own. “Reformatting on the fly has been a lifesaver,” Kelly affirmed.

Easy global distribution
Their use of Portals also supports global distribution. “Our international team has asked us to create a portal for their advertising agencies in Japan and China, so that they can create their websites over there.” Those teams receive a link and a password to download just the files they need. This self-service access makes working across time zones much more efficient.

"The solution is easy, it’s intuitive, their knowledge is in-depth, and it’s exactly what you need. Widen is amazing. Their customer service is unbelievable."

– Kelly Owens, Packaging Graphics Coordinator, Johnsonville