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Destination Marketing Organization Streamlining Collaboration with Microsoft 365
Company Situation
The company is a destination marketing organization (DMO) focused on promoting tourism and driving hotel occupancy for their city. Their team includes several content creators producing a steady stream of photos and videos featuring local restaurants, events, and merchandise. This content supports marketing efforts across multiple platforms, including social media, websites, billboards, and digital ads. Additionally, the organization fields media requests from travel writers and regional marketing partners seeking scenic photos for promotional use.
Existing Workflow
Currently, the company relies primarily on Microsoft Office 365 tools, using SharePoint as their main digital asset archive. Content is stored in folder-based structures, with files accessed via SharePoint and OneDrive. Because of limitations and confusion between these platforms, the team also uses a local Synology NAS system for faster internal file transfers and as a backup. Staff work across multiple devices and operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows), often sharing files through personal OneDrive folders, which leads to redundancies and inconsistent file management. Editing is done by downloading files locally and sharing them manually.
Issues with the Existing Workflow
Folder-based archives in SharePoint create confusion, especially among less tech-savvy team members.
Overlapping use of SharePoint, OneDrive, and local NAS results in duplicated files and scattered storage locations.
The workflow is not unified or streamlined, making it difficult to ensure all content is uploaded and properly categorized.
Searching for specific images is inefficient due to lack of automated categorization and inconsistent keywording.
There is limited visibility into where and how frequently images are used, hindering content refresh decisions.
Archiving and retrieving assets related to businesses that open, close, and reopen is cumbersome.
Training and adoption challenges arise from the complexity of existing tools.
How Shade Would Change Their Workflow
Shade’s digital asset management platform would centralize all media assets into a single, user-friendly system accessible across devices and operating systems. Its AI-powered auto-categorization combined with manual override capabilities would streamline tagging and searching, enabling quick retrieval of specific content like iconic local food images. Shade would also track asset usage history, helping the team monitor content freshness and optimize marketing materials. Archiving features would make it easier to manage assets related to transient businesses without losing historical content. Overall, Shade would reduce redundancies, simplify sharing and editing workflows, and improve adoption through an intuitive interface tailored to users with varied tech proficiency.
Benefits
- Centralized, cloud-based digital asset repository accessible on all devices
- AI-assisted auto-categorization with manual keywording for precise searchability
- Tracking of asset usage to inform content updates and avoid overuse
- Simplified archiving and retrieval supporting dynamic business lifecycles
- Reduced file duplication and streamlined sharing workflows
- Enhanced user adoption due to an intuitive, easy-to-navigate interface
- Improved media request fulfillment for external partners and press