ADAM Catalogue solutions

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ADAM

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These days, digital assets are an inevitable part of every

marketing process, be it brand management & distribution,

packaging workflows, marketing collateral roll out on print

or web, product data management or catalog building.

They are used by companies in various industries using

dif-ferent processes, but without exception they represent a

huge intellectual and monetary value.

ADAM is a versatile digital asset management solution that

helps you manage those processes from creation to

distri-bution. It streamlines your asset’s lifecycle by letting you

store, find and publish all types of assets: pictures, video,

sounds, documents, presentations, page layouts, etc….

Asset Lifecycle Management

ADAM automates the import and classification of new

as-sets, full text indexes any textual content and extracts file

specific information, like XMP for photo and video. It lets

you control access rights on asset, classification and user

level, keeps track of versions and provides full workflow

capabilities to lead your assets through all stages of their

lifecycle. It finally organizes the delivery of your assets by

enabling resizing and transformations on images and video

for cross-media usage, and ordering of assets via

down-load or FTP.

By plugging in additional ADAM Connectors you can go

even further and use your assets directly in Adobe

InDe-sign or Quark XPress, in MS Word documents or

Power-Point presentations, from within the native applications

and transparent to the end user. Soft proofing of high

reso-lution assets can be done using the (Kodak) Smart Review

System Connector. To further streamline your asset delivery

you can control localization and roll-out of media-rich

pub-lications with DocMaker Studio or fully automate product

catalog generation with PIMS Studio (Product Information

Management) together with the InDesign

Connector.-Integration and interaction with internal and remote

systems

ADAM integrates seamlessly with your existing enterprise

applications, from exchanging product information with

your ERP system to integrating with your user’s favorite

comfort zones like MS Office or Adobe Creative Suite.

Adam provides connectors for those and other market

lead-ing applications and lets you connect to all others thanks to

the provider model of ADAM 4.0.

Flexible and open for customization

The ADAM Engine is built on the Microsoft .NET

Frame-work, giving you all the benefits of this standard

technolo-gy where the most significant is its level of interoperability

with other languages, applications and systems. .NET also

allows the integration with third party applications through

Web services and enables communication using standard

Internet protocols such as XML and SOAP, creating a

chan-nel through which internal and remote systems can easily

interact.

ADAM is designed using a Provider Model to allow

choos-ing from multiple implementations in the application

con-figuration. This allows you, for example, to provide your

own implementation for creating previews of

legacy/cor-porate file formats, or delivering content using a 3rd party

secure delivery mechanism or even send out text messages

(SMS) when a workflow task is overdue. The open API

of-fers expanded application interoperability and integration,

and is designed to support any file-format.

ADAM also supports and facilitates interface

customiza-tions: from adding a custom banner and color scheme to

creating a complete custom interface from scratch. RAD

controls make this even easier by allowing easy exposure

of ADAM functionality on your custom built web

interfac-es.

ADAM Software NV ◖E3 Laan 84 ◖B-9800 Deinze ◖Belgium ◖T: +32 (9) 381 63 36 ◖F: +32 (9) 381 63 46 ◖www.adam.be ◖ [email protected]

ADAM Solution

“Let the Media Flow”

We take our baseline seriously. We believe that the Marketing Supply Chain is controlled

by the same principles as the Production Supply Chain: cycle time, output control and cost

control. ADAM can do for your Marketing Supply Chain what ERP-systems did for the

production supply chain: reduce costs, improve time-to-market and enhance control over

every step in the digital asset lifecycle.

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Key features:

P One central hub for all product information managemen P Complex product management in an intuitive interface P Indepth SKU-management with complex relation

possibilities

P Tight integration with your ERP

ADAM Product Information Management

System-Studio is the solution for managing

accurate product information and provide it

to all users from within a central database,

using a browser

PIMS is the perfect solution for companies that are confronted with:

• A wide array of products (spare parts, office supplies, service offerings,…)

• Frequently changing product characteristics • Complex relations between SKU’s

If your company is facing a non-uniform IT-structure and you have to manage a load of product images, attributes, assets and relations between different products and productsets, the ADAM PIMS Studio is what you are looking for.

It offers you the possibility to manage all of your product info from within one central database. The categorization of this “master catalog” is completely modifiable to your own needs and very intuitive to use.

ADAM PIMS allows you to easily integrate with your ERP-sys-tem, and the intuitive interface helps you to link records, images, files, attributes and even SKU’s (Stock Keeping Units).

Product managers can create or import, modify or delete prod-uct info in the master catalog and automatically notify the local product managers of the changes that were made and ask them to undertake specific actions in their local catalog.

Local product managers have the opportunity to perform a con-trolled set of actions in their local product catalog, working in the same interface as the master catalog.

more info available at : www.adam.be/pims

PIMS Studio

Control your product information within a centralized catalog.

A solution for efficient data collection, management, refinement and output

ADAM PIMS Studio in real life,

a sample scenario:

A European Product Manager (EPM) decides to push a new product into the market, but wants to give Country Product

Managers (CPM) the freedom to adopt this product to their

local catalog or not. If they adopt the product, they will have to translate descriptions into their local language and classify the product in their local catalog.

In order to achieve this, the EPM logs on to the PIMS-interface to access his master catalog. He will drill down the catalog structure to the level where he wants to add the new product. A single mouse-click brings up a process flow in order for the EPM not to forget to fill in all data. This data can consist of product specific data held in product specific data fields or links to images, documents, SKU’s etc. All data fields and relations can be configured in the setup.

From the moment this new product is saved in the database, notifications are sent out to all CPM’s that a new product has become available. These notifications are pushed to the CPM’s as soon as they log-on to the PIMS interface in the form of their TODO list. Clicking on such a TODO-item brings up a dialog showing the details of this product and a single mouse-click lets them adopt the product in their local catalog.

The CPM’s will then allocate this product in their local cata-log structure, and driven by a simple wizard process, they can translate the data, select images and documents for their local market etc.

Both master catalog data as well as local catalog data can be en-tered in multiple languages, and support local specific relational data such as images, documents, SKU’s etc. Fields can be setup to be multi- or single language to support for numeric and other data that may not be edited nor translated.

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Key features:

P Variable catalog pagination based on tagged templates PFixed InDesign®_{templates stored in ADAM avoid}

repetitive lay-outing

P ADAM functions as your central Product Information Management System (PIMS)

P Shortens the cycle-time in lay-out and prepress considerably

P Fully multilingual

P Output is a native InDesign®_{document, ready for final}

modifications

P Streamlines your publication processes using work-flows and version management

P Powered by industry standard Adobe®_InDesign®

Server Software

Nowadays building an audience-targeted product catalog with the highest possible cycle-times is becoming more and more important.

However, composing such catalogues, people are confronted with the same challenges over and over again, such as:

• recovering the correct product info and matching images • synergy between all involved parties in creating a new

catalogue

• management and follow-up of the various tasks in the creation process of a catalogue

The operational workflow is becoming larger and more complex, resulting in less space and time for creativity.

ADAM InDesign®_{connector allows you to simplify this}

opera-tional workflow to save time and money in lay-out and prepress, leaving more space and time for creativity and resulting in a higher commercial level of your catalog.

Product Managers have more control over the structure of the-catalog, because it is directly managed from within ADAM, the central Product Information Management System (PIMS). Graphical people no longer have to spend weeks or even months on lay-outing every page of the catalogue. Tagging the different templates once and storing them in ADAM allows the InDesign Connector to automate:

• Complete pagination

• Automatic sizing of the objects on a page

• The generation of a native InDesign®_{Document, open for}

final editing

more info available at : www.adam.be/indesignconnector

InDesign

®

Connector

Automate your catalog creation directly from within your ADAM database

Shorten your cycle time in lay-out and prepress and reduce production costs

Automated catalog-creation: browsing through the ADAM classifications with multiple language options.

ADAM InDesign

®

_{Connector gives you the opportunity to considerably reduce your production}

costs by automating your catalog-creation.

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InDesign

®

Connector

ADAM InDesign

®

_{Connector in real life,}

a sample scenario:

Setting up a new catalog is a task handled by a

product manager using the PIMS studio.This

catalog consists of several product categories,

each with their own products, assets, images,

technical info and SKU’s.

Lay-out people built product set templates using

InDesign

®

_{in combination with the Adam}

ID-con-nector.This allows to design templates that

be-have according to the rules set-up: boxes can be-have

floating top and/or bottom, can be removed if no

content etc.These templates are stored in ADAM.

The product manager can select for each

product set one or more templates to be used.

The information that has to appear for the

productset and for the different products are

also stored in the database, with possibilities

to link product categories, products, attributes,

assets,images…

The lay-out operator can than simply select

any level in the hierarchy to start the automatic

page building process. Additional parameters at

this stage include the language(s) that need to be

paginated as well as the master page that will

define the look and feel of the catalog. In case

multiple languages are selected, they will be

paginated on different layers into one document.

When the pagination is finished, a new native

InDesign

®

_{document is generated and again}

stored in ADAM. Alternatively, the system can be

setup to store PDF documents next to the native

InDesign

®

_documents.

The catalog can now be attached to a workflow in

the ADAM Workflow Studio before it gets printed,

or can immediately be downloaded for further

processing, modifying and publishing or printing.

ADAM InDesign

®

_{Connector integrates with:}

ADAM Engine

• Digital Asset Lifecycle Management

• One central asset repository for publications and

contained items

• Version management

• Access control

• Content delivery via download or ftp

ADAM PIMS Studio

• Product Information Management System

• Complete product classification, including

im-ages, technical info, attributes, assets,…

• Multi-regional, multi-lingual, multi-market,…

product-database

• Mother/child-, brother/sister-links between

different products

• Complete SKU-management

• Controlled access to the database by different

user-types

ADAM Workflow Studio

• Business process management

• ADAM Smart Review System Connector

• Soft proofing on high res publications

ADAM DocMaker Studio

• Manages creation and editing of InDesign

®

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Introduction of Studios and Comfort Zones

ADAM 4.0 introduces Studios as logical workspaces that group functionalities by process or role. Included in the Engine are the Asset Studio, which bundles the core asset management functionalities like previewing, managing meta-data and ordering assets together with Config Studio, which is the brand new ADAM administration interface, organized into one workspace.

Next to the two standard Studios, you can easily plug in additional ADAM Studios, like Workflow Studio to control your media business processes, PIMS Studio to manage your product information and DocMaker Studio to automate your document localization and roll-out.ADAM 4.0 also introduces the concept of Comfort Zones, providing integrating seamlessly with your user’s favorite applications like MS Office, SharePoint or Adobe Creative Suite.

Additional modules merged into one Engine

In earlier ADAM versions, additional modules like Resize on Export, FTP Order-ing and Import/Export functionality were optional and had to be purchased separately. In ADAM 4.0 these modules are incorporated in the standard En-gine.

Extended security model

Permissions can be controlled in User and Field management, allowing admin-istrators to delegate part of ADAM administration without giving away full control. User roles are no longer fixed but can be custom defined, allowing you to be flexible in matching user and group permissions to specific needs. Classification security provides new configuration settings and additional se-curity levels including “deny” permissions. A graphical Access Analyzer gives administrators a clear overview of a user or group’s access rights for classifica-tions and records on all levels.

Increased performance and scalability

Improved distribution of application processes between the database server and web servers allow to more easily scale your ADAM environment to specific needs, boosting performance and response times both on the workstation cli-ent and on the server.

Fully multilingual

ADAM 4.0 enables a fully multilingual interface for any user: translations are

provided on button labels, error messages and other interface elements. Field values can also be entered in multiple languages, allowing management of as-sets or product metadata in different languages. The full text indexer supports unilingual searching to find matching assets in all languages.

Enhanced Field functionality

The whole approach on Fields as custom metadata attributes has been ex-tended significantly, new data types have been added and Fields are no longer reserved for Records only, but has also been enabled on files, users, classifica-tions and indexer tasks.

Based on .NET Framework

The ADAM 4.0 Engine has been completely rebuilt on the Microsoft .NET Framework, giving all the benefits of this new standard technology where the most significant is its level of interoperability with other languages, applica-tions and systems.

.NET also allows the integration with third party applications through Web services and enables communication using standard Internet protocols such as XML and SOAP, creating a channel through which internal and remote systems can easily interact.

Provider Model

ADAM 4.0 is designed using a Provider Model to allow choosing from multiple implementations in the application configuration. This allows you to develop your own Graphic Engines, Notification agents, Maintenance tasks, Ordering agents and Indexers and plugging them easily in your ADAM environment.

Rapid development

ADAM 4.0 allows Rapid Development for customizations and custom develop-ment:

- support for all .NET enabled languages allows the use of Microsoft Visual Studio, giving developers IntelliSence, color-coding and state-of-the-art debug functionalities, reducing errors and increasing programming speed. - enhanced API, offering expanded application interoperability and integra-tion, and designed to support any file-format, which means that assets are no longer image-specific.

- RAD controls allow easy exposure of ADAM functionality on your custom built web interfaces

Key features:

P Introduction of Studios and Comfort Zones

P All supplemental modules merged into Engine (like FTP ordering or Resize on export)

P Extended security model

P Increased performance and scalability P Fully multilingual

P Enhanced Field functionality P 100% .NET

P Allows Rapid Development for customizations and custom development

Asset Studio

Let the Media Flow on the Microsoft .NET platform

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ADAM Workflow Studio brings the configurability and flexibility of a workflow solution to your desktop.

Companies nowadays use different media, target different audiences and deliver their message in a wide range of chan-nels. Therefore the tools they use to do this need to be versatile and easy to use. Most important of all: users need to be able to quickly change the flow of a process as business requirements are constantly changing. The challenge lies in reacting equally swiftly.

ADAM’s Workflow Studio provides the tools to help you organize, fine-tune and adapt the existing way of doing things. It puts the power into the hands of the person that knows best: your business analyst.

Marketing and communication processes depend highly on hu-man interaction, therefore a system that wants to structure these processes needs to be able to handle situations that are inher-ent to working with people. Adam’s Workflow Studio can auto-matically distribute a given task to a group of users depending on their workload. The engine can also take in account business hours, sick leave and holidays and distribute or delegate tasks accordingly.

The Workflow Studio contains building blocks for all major Adam functions such as creating, editing and deleting records, classifications, orders and more. These building blocks can be dragged and dropped onto a Visio drawning to build an Adam workflow process. This framework is fully extensible and allows you to develop your own building blocks and workflow triggers if necessary.

more info available at : www.adam.be/workflow

Workflow Studio

Add BPM capabilities to your PIMS & DAM solution with ADAM Workflow Studio

Manage and optimize your digital supply chain

Key features:

P Design workflows using Microsoft Visio 2003 or 2007 P Manage and control your processes with an easy to

use web based dashboard

P Automatic delegation of tasks when users are unavailable

P Extensible and configurable BPMS framework

Use Microsoft Visio®_{to create your DAM workflows}

ADAM Workflow Studio in real life,

sample scenarios:

Scenario 1: A manager wants to be notified whenever a restricted asset is requested for download. He designs the process in Micro-soft Visio and uploads it into the Adam Work-flow Studio. Once the workflow definition has been published, every order will pass through a workflow that checks the status of the file and asks for management approval.

Intuitive screens guide you through your workflow

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Workflow Studio

About ADAM Software NV

ADAM is a Digital Asset Management company that provides clients the ability to manage, structure and deliver media between people, processes and systems. Our software has an intelligent open architecture that provides the ability to customize and continuously develop new applications using our ADAM SDK. We understand our clients needs to share and collaborate, automate mundane tasks and control quality. We are passionate in providing our clients with intuitive and easy to use software to help them organise media and distribute assets as quickly as possible. We have the knowledge of the way the media supply chain works, its people, the workflow and the common goal to publish and distribute quality content.

ADAM platform and architecture

ADAM Workflow Studio in real life,

sample scenarios:

Scenario 2: Whenever a new asset needs to be published to all users within the ADAM Download Centre a specific tagging process needs to be followed. The regional manag-er needs to decide whethmanag-er he wants the asset to be available for his region. The marketing team needs to tag the asset with a range of keywords and the content manager needs to approve the work of the mar-keting department.

Scenario 3: Whenever a product gets updated within the Adam PIMS Studio, all regional managers need to be notified. These managers can then decide whether they want to update their product information. Once this has been done, the workflow process will invoke the InDe-sign Connector to refresh the associated InDesign docu-ment using the latest product information. Afterwards a PDF is created and the content manager could receive a task to review and approve the latest version using Kodak’s Smart Review System.