Back to Workflows
Creative Agency Streamlining Storage with Network-attached Solutions
Company Situation
The company is a creative agency managing large volumes of digital assets for multiple companies, including design teams and marketing projects. Their team setup involves centralized storage on a network server, with a single main workstation hardwired to the server to handle indexing and asset management. The scale of their data is substantial, with tens of terabytes of files spanning multiple years and thousands of folders.
Existing Workflow
Currently, the agency stores all company files on a shared server, organizing them by company and year. Team members manually navigate through extensive folder structures to locate design assets and photography files. Indexing of these assets is done on one main workstation, which attempts to process entire company folders at once.
Issues with the Existing Workflow
Overwhelming volume of data: Indexing 19 terabytes and over 30,000 files at once leads to performance issues.
Difficulty managing collections: New collections added for different companies do not immediately reflect in the system, causing confusion about indexing status.
Slow and inconsistent indexing: Initial indexing completes quickly, but subsequent indexing cycles bog down, delaying access to newly added assets.
Lack of segmentation: All files are lumped together without prioritization, making it hard to focus on active projects and slowing down overall workflow.
Single point of failure: Only one computer is hardwired to the server for indexing, limiting team flexibility and scalability.
How Shade Would Change Their Workflow
Shade offers a powerful indexing and asset management platform that can help the agency segment their asset collections more effectively, allowing indexing to run in the background without blocking user access. This means the team can prioritize files relevant to current projects, reducing overload and improving speed. Shade’s indexing capabilities would streamline searching and browsing large file sets, while its ability to create collections tailored to company needs enhances organization. Additionally, future improvements planned for Shade will enable better multitasking and background processing, addressing current bottlenecks.
Benefits
- Faster access to relevant digital assets through prioritized indexing
- Reduced system overload by indexing smaller, segmented collections instead of entire archives at once
- Enhanced team collaboration with clearer collection management
- Time savings by eliminating manual navigation through deep folder structures
- Improved scalability and workflow efficiency for large data volumes
- Future-proofing with upcoming features supporting background AI processing and multi-project prioritization
Industry
Want to see how Shade can improve your workflow?
Book a Demo