Back to Workflows
Creative Agency Integrating Marketing and Video Production
Company Situation
The company operates in the creative agency space, specializing in marketing, communications, graphic design, web design, and video production. Their team is predominantly office-based, with about 80% working on-site and the remainder working remotely or at company locations. Their projects often involve stringent security requirements due to government contracts, influencing their choice of storage and collaboration tools.
Existing Workflow
Currently, the company uses Microsoft SharePoint primarily for office documents like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as some smaller digital creative files such as Illustrator and photos. For video production assets—which include raw footage, working files, edits, and final deliverables—they rely on an on-premise Synology NAS storage system. Remote access to this storage is slow and cumbersome, relying on VPNs or manual hard drive transfers. For collaboration and review, they have trialed tools like Frame IO but have mostly reverted to using Vimeo’s review features for company-related feedback.
Issues with the Existing Workflow
Storage Limitations and Costs: SharePoint storage is costly and frequently requires expansion, with storage increases every two months due to large creative files, especially video assets.
Workflow Inefficiencies: SharePoint is not optimized for large creative assets or video workflows, leading to patchwork solutions and limited collaboration capabilities.
Remote Access Challenges: VPN access to the Synology NAS is slow, causing remote users to rely on hard drives for file transfers, which is inefficient and error-prone.
Fragmented Toolset: Collaboration and asset management rely on multiple disconnected tools (SharePoint, Synology, Vimeo, Frame IO), complicating workflows and increasing overhead.
How Shade Would Change Their Workflow
Shade offers a unified platform that combines instant, mountable storage with built-in digital asset management and review/approval features tailored for creative workflows. Instead of juggling multiple tools for file storage, metadata tagging, collaboration, and feedback, Shade consolidates all these capabilities into a single solution. This would simplify the company’s infrastructure by replacing the costly SharePoint expansions and the on-premise NAS with cloud-based storage optimized for large video files. Shade’s platform would enable seamless remote access without the VPN slowdowns or hard drive shuttling, and integrated review features would streamline company feedback and internal collaboration.
Benefits
- Consolidated storage and collaboration platform tailored for creative and video workflows
- Reduced storage costs by replacing expensive SharePoint expansions and on-prem NAS maintenance
- Faster, more reliable remote access to large media assets without VPN bottlenecks
- Streamlined review and approval processes with built-in feedback tools
- Enhanced metadata and asset organization to improve team productivity
- Simplified IT management by reducing the number of disparate tools in use
Technologies Used
Want to see how Shade can improve your workflow?
Book a Demo