New Research Commissioned By North Plains Shows An Over-Reliance On Email To Manage Digital Assets

22nd January 2015, London, UK - North Plains has announced the results of independent research around how marketing and other business professionals manage the wide variety of digital assets that make up their campaigns and communication strategies.

The results found that while every single respondent thinks digital asset management is important and the majority can see areas where they'd like to improve asset management, there is still an over-reliance on email to share, track and distribute assets (70 per cent of respondents).

However, 43 per cent are looking at implementing digital asset management systems to improve access control, while 52 per cent have systems that they are seeking to improve.

Said Mark Finch, General Manager EMEA, North Plains, “The research bears out what we've been hearing from the market for some time: organisations may still be overly reliant on email and other processes that simply aren't designed for or able to provide efficient asset management, but these organisations are also aware of that fact and are seeking to change. Given the fact that most of these organisations are now heavily dependent on digital assets, the volume and diversity of which continues to explode, this is no surprise to us.”

Research basis
The research was carried out by eMedia across 100+ UK-based executives with responsibility for digital asset management, over half of whom are involved in marketing – right up to CMO level - the rest across a broad spectrum of management job titles. All are at mid-range to large organisations, including financial services organisations, utilities, consumer brands and the public sector.

Some of the key findings:
Reliance on email, FTP and shared web drives for important assets – 70 per cent still use email to share assets with third parties such as agencies. 56 per cent also use FTP and 46 per cent use Dropbox or similar online services.

Less than half confirm that they have security in place to protect their marketing assets – the rest either say that they do not or are not aware of any security measures.

Over half say that digital asset management is either extremely important or very important to them – with all other respondents saying that it is important or somewhat important. Over 40 per cent are researching digital asset management systems at the moment and over 50 per cent are planning to upgrade their existing systems.

Areas for improvement
Respondents were also very clear on areas of digital asset management that they'd like to improve:

· Giving other people in their organisations better access to digital assets – 27 per cent

· Making it easier to find assets – 43 per cent

· Better control over assets, internally and externally – 30 per cent

· Better compliance and rights management – 12 per cent

· More efficient distribution of assets to multiple locations – 19 per cent

· Better analytics of how assets are being used and where – 21 per cent

About North Plains
With over 1,400 installations supporting over one million active users worldwide North Plains is recognized as the leader in helping global brand managers, marketers, content creators, publishers and media companies to efficiently and effectively engage and connect with their target audiences through visual media including images, photos, videos and 3D designs.

North Plains' market-leading software portfolio enables companies to address a number of needs across the Creative Marketing Lifecycle, including work-in-progress creative production systems, digital asset management infrastructure and comprehensive marketing and brand asset management solutions. In addition to providing a complete portfolio of software products, North Plains is uniquely positioned when it comes to the integration and implementation of product and software solutions with its professional services team and a rich network of resellers and global technology partners.

Since 1994, North Plains has helped its customers stay ahead of their rapidly changing marketing needs. With offices in Canada, the United States, Europe and Japan, North Plains counts many of the world's leading companies and brands among its satisfied clients. For more information, please visit http://www.northplains.com.