Welcome to our series of longreads, where the LAIKA team delves into the captivating histories behind some of the most successful implementations of our digital platform.

In this edition, we are excited to share a remarkable case study featuring one of the largest retailers in the world, whose business and processes underwent a transformative journey with the adoption of our modern DAM platform.

Intro: the modern world of worldwide retailer

In the dynamic landscape of modern retail, where consumers expect seamless experiences across physical and digital channels, organizations face an array of challenges in managing their vast repositories of digital assets. One such enterprise, a globally recognized cash & carry retailer that operates on a grand scale, is now embarking on a transformative journey by implementing a cutting-edge Digital Asset Management (DAM) system. This forward-thinking decision underscores the growing significance of DAM solutions in today's competitive market and highlights the pivotal role they play in driving operational efficiency, brand consistency, and customer engagement.

The idea to have a single-source-of-truth as a storage for all product-related assets to increase usage of produced content is extremely popular among many industries. For our featured worldwide cash & carry retailer, whose vast network spans continents and serves millions of customers, the challenges of the modern era are particularly amplified. With an extensive product catalog, encompassing diverse categories and spanning multiple brands, the need for a centralized and accessible repository of digital assets has become paramount. The ability to swiftly locate and distribute high-quality product images and marketing materials to various touch points, including e-commerce platforms, mobile apps, and physical stores, can greatly enhance operational efficiency and accelerate time-to-market.

LAIKA was chosen as a backbone for solution which will store product images and marketing content for all of the branches across 30+ countries worldwide. Solution was named Digital Asset Center and covered all of the required functionality.

Challenge: transition from existing landscape to a new one

During this implementation we worked with non-ordinary customer which brought the following challenges to the table:

• Content Disarray: The customer found itself grappling with content scattered across an outdated and obsolete system, as well as various other sources. This disjointed approach led to difficulties in locating and managing digital assets, resulting in inefficiencies and wasted resources. Consolidating and organizing this vast amount of data, encompassing diverse file types such as images, videos, documents, and complex formats like InDesign files, presented a formidable challenge that required careful planning and execution.
• Parallel Migration and Legacy System Usage: A significant hurdle emerged when the retailer realized that the migration process needed to be conducted simultaneously with the ongoing usage of their legacy system. This parallel operation necessitated meticulous coordination to ensure a smooth transition, seamless availability of assets, and minimal disruption to daily operations. Coordinating data migration, while concurrently managing business processes within the legacy system, demanded comprehensive planning and a phased approach to avoid data inconsistencies and maintain operational continuity.
• "Big Bang" System Switch: The decision to replace the old system with the new DAM solution in a "big bang" approach added complexity to the implementation. Unlike a gradual transition, the customer opted for a decisive moment where the old system would be turned off, and the new DAM system would take its place. This approach required rigorous testing, data validation, and robust contingency plans to mitigate risks and ensure a smooth transition. The high-stakes nature of the switchover emphasized the criticality of meticulous planning and meticulous execution.
• User Accounts and Permissions: Proper migration of user accounts and permissions added an additional layer of complexity to the implementation. Ensuring that authorized individuals retained access to relevant assets, while preventing unauthorized access, was crucial for maintaining security and workflow integrity. Migrating user accounts and permissions accurately, with minimal disruption, demanded careful mapping and testing to ensure a seamless transition for all stakeholders involved.
• Extending Functionality and Adapting to Changing Business Needs: In parallel with the migration, the retailer recognized the importance of extending the functionality of the DAM system and updating the data model to align with the evolving nature of their business. Incorporating new features and customizations, while adhering to best practices, required a comprehensive understanding of the retailer's unique requirements and close collaboration between the implementation team and the retailer's stakeholders.

The implementation had strict deadlines caused by usage of the legacy platform: to reduce project costs it was required to complete all of the migration activities in time, to close the license prolongation of the obsolete system.

Luckily LAIKA is a best-in-class solution for such transition and could easily adopt all of the challenges.

Solution: unified all-in-one platform

In an impressive display of technological prowess, the implementation of a LAIKA platform has revolutionized the way the customer manages its digital assets. Serving as a unified all-in-one solution, this platform has become the single-source-of-truth for all digital assets across 30+ countries, seamlessly encompassing product images and marketing content such as banners, videos, and presentations. With its powerful metadata model and taxonomy, tailored to account for regional specifics and localized content, this DAM platform has brought unprecedented order and efficiency to the asset management processes.

At the heart of the unified DAM platform lies a robust metadata model and taxonomy. Recognizing the diverse needs and regional variations across their extensive operational footprint, the customer devised a comprehensive metadata framework that accounts for regional-specific details. This meticulous approach ensures that assets are properly classified, tagged, and organized according to geographical nuances, facilitating efficient search and retrieval processes for users across various locations. By incorporating localized content and regional-specific metadata, the DAM platform empowers asset consumers to swiftly access the assets most relevant to their respective markets, enabling faster localization iterations.

Central to the success of this unified DAM solution is its security subsystem, responsible for managing the role model and access permissions. With operations worldwide, it is imperative that users are granted access only to the assets they are authorized to view and utilize. Leveraging a sophisticated role-based access control mechanism integrated with global SSO and roles, the DAM platform ensures that asset consumers from specific locations have access to assets pertinent to their respective markets. This granular control over access permissions safeguards the integrity of assets, maintains workflow efficiency, and upholds the retailer's security standards across their expansive global network.

A vital aspect of the LAIKA platform's functionality is its powerful status and lifecycle model. This model ensures that assets undergo a well-defined journey from creation to archiving, while maintaining the integrity and relevance of content consumed by asset users. Work-in-progress (WIP) assets are shielded from premature exposure, ensuring that unfinished or unapproved content remains hidden from asset consumers. As assets progress through various stages of the content lifecycle, including creation, review, approval, and publication, the LAIKA digital platform provides real-time visibility into the status of each asset, facilitating efficient collaboration and minimizing bottlenecks. Furthermore, the lifecycle model ensures that outdated assets are promptly identified and appropriately archived, mitigating the risk of asset consumers accessing irrelevant or obsolete content.

In addition to its remarkable asset management capabilities, this implementation boasts unique distribution functionalities that enable omnichannel delivery of assets to end-user sites. Leveraging content delivery networks (CDNs) and built-in distribution services, the platform facilitates on-the-fly resizing of assets, preparing different renditions required by specific delivery channels. This robust distribution framework ensures that the right assets are seamlessly delivered to the right channels, optimizing the retailer's omnichannel presence and enhancing customer experiences. By automatically generating the appropriate renditions, the LAIKA platform eliminates the need for manual resizing and ensures consistent, visually appealing asset delivery across all touchpoints.

With the platform's API-first or headless architecture, the implementation of custom user interfaces (UIs) becomes a simplified endeavor. Leveraging this architectural advantage, the customer designed an additional UI specifically tailored for marketing users. This intuitive and user-friendly interface equips marketing professionals across the globe with enhanced marketing campaign management capabilities, enabling them to effortlessly find and download assets related to recent campaigns. This simple UI empowers users to locate campaign-specific assets swiftly and efficiently, facilitating seamless collaboration and streamlining marketing workflows across diverse regions. By simplifying the workflow and providing a user-centric experience, this tailored UI enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing professionals across the organization, fostering consistent and impactful campaign execution.

Implementation: straightforward journey to success

The implementation of the LAIKA digital platform for the customer was a remarkably straightforward process, owing to the platform's well-designed architecture and comprehensive set of features. Leveraging its intuitive use-cases and scenario-driven approach, the platform required no additional functionality, streamlining the implementation timeline and ensuring rapid installation. With automated installation scenarios, the team seamlessly deployed the platform, creating multiple testing environments, acceptance stages, and facilitating smooth transitions throughout the implementation process.

The LAIKA digital platform's open API, covering the full functionality of the platform, played a crucial role in the implementation's success. Leveraging this API, the team developed simple yet powerful migration tools to support the ongoing migration process until the release date. These migration tools facilitated the smooth transition of assets from various sources into the unified DAM platform, ensuring data integrity and minimizing disruptions.

For the implementation of the custom UI for marketing campaign distribution, the team employed a modern Single-Page Application (SPA) approach based on Angular.js. This approach harnessed the power of the LAIKA API, enabling the creation of a lightweight and powerful solution. The custom UI provided a fine-tailored interface for end-users involved in marketing campaigns, allowing them to easily access and distribute assets relevant to their specific campaigns. By leveraging Angular.js and the LAIKA API, the team delivered a user-friendly and efficient UI that empowered marketing professionals across the organization.

Integration with the existing company-wide Single Sign-On (SSO) provider was seamlessly achieved through the LAIKA platform's powerful mapping system. This system allowed for the mapping of SSO roles to roles within the DAM platform, ensuring a consistent and secure user experience. By leveraging the existing roles and permissions from the SSO provider, the implementation team streamlined user management, eliminating the need for redundant role assignments and simplifying access control.

The implementation of omnichannel distribution was accomplished through a robust content delivery network (CDN) approach. The DAM platform leveraged CDNs to ensure reliable and efficient delivery of assets to end-user sites. By generating ready-to-use renditions according to the specific requirements of each channel, the platform optimized asset delivery and enhanced the end-user experience. This CDN approach eliminated the need for manual resizing and formatting, ensuring consistent and visually appealing asset display across diverse channels and devices.

To ensure scalability and cost-efficiency, the LAIKA digital platform was deployed on an auto-scaling cluster within the AWS cloud environment, under Kubernetes control. This deployment approach provided the retailer with the ability to handle high-load periods while optimizing costs during low-demand periods. The auto-scaling capabilities allowed the platform to adapt to varying traffic and usage patterns, ensuring optimal performance and resource allocation at all times.

In conclusion, the implementation of the LAIKA digital platform showcased a streamlined and efficient journey to success. The platform's well-designed architecture, comprehensive feature set, and open API enabled a straightforward implementation process. The seamless installation, testing environments, and acceptance stages facilitated a smooth transition to the modern DAM system. The implementation team leveraged the LAIKA API to develop powerful migration tools, enabling ongoing data migration until the release date. The custom UI for marketing campaign distribution, integration with the existing SSO provider, and omnichannel distribution capabilities further enhanced the platform's functionality and user experience. Finally, the deployment of the platform on an auto-scaling cluster within AWS ensured scalability, performance, and cost optimization. Overall, the implementation of the LAIKA digital platform exemplified a successful and efficient journey towards modernizing the retailer's digital asset management processes.

Benefits: empowering businesses with a modern and efficient solution

The adoption of the LAIKA digital platform by the global cash & carry retailer brings forth a multitude of benefits, with the primary advantage being the transition from outdated and inefficient solutions to a fast and modern unified platform. By harnessing a modern technology stack, the LAIKA team has provided a best-in-class performance that excels even when managing a large amount of content, including over 10 million digital assets, and complex taxonomies.

Prior to implementing LAIKA, the retailer had experienced firsthand the limitations and frustrations of working with various platforms. However, with the introduction of LAIKA, a new era of efficiency and flexibility began. LAIKA stands out as a user-friendly platform that is highly customizable, configurable, and remarkably flexible. It is designed to adapt to any changes in the business or processes seamlessly. Unlike previous experiences, where businesses often had to fight against the limitations of their chosen technology, LAIKA empowers its users and provides them with limitless capabilities.

One of the notable advantages of implementing LAIKA is the smooth transition it offers. The "big bang" release strategy was meticulously planned and executed, ensuring that all content, access permissions, and user accounts were seamlessly migrated. On the designated day, the old platform was turned off, and LAIKA became available to the entire organization. The friendly user interface of LAIKA enabled users to become familiar with the platform quickly, minimizing the learning curve and ensuring a smooth transition for all stakeholders.

In addition to facilitating a smooth transition, LAIKA extends the retailer's capabilities, enhances performance, and enables advanced use cases. With LAIKA's modern technology stack and optimized architecture, the platform consistently delivers exceptional performance, even when managing a vast amount of content. The efficient handling of over 10 million digital assets is a testament to LAIKA's ability to process, organize, and retrieve assets quickly and reliably. This enhanced performance empowers users to efficiently navigate the platform, locate assets promptly, and streamline their workflows.

Moreover, LAIKA empowers the retailer with advanced use cases that were previously unattainable with outdated solutions. The platform's flexibility and configurability enable businesses to adapt to evolving market demands, changing customer preferences, and emerging industry trends. Whether it's implementing new processes, embracing innovative marketing strategies, or exploring new revenue streams, LAIKA provides the tools and capabilities to support these initiatives. By aligning seamlessly with the retailer's evolving business needs, LAIKA becomes a catalyst for growth and innovation.

Best practices: how to build a modern digital asset management platform

Implementing an advanced digital asset management solution can significantly enhance your business operations and productivity. By following these steps, you can leverage the strengths of a modern DAM platform to maximize the value of your digital assets:

1. Organize Content Effectively: Centralize all your digital assets in a unified single-source-of-truth platform. This allows for easy accessibility and efficient management of assets. By categorizing and tagging assets with relevant metadata, you can quickly locate and retrieve the required files, saving valuable time and effort.
2. Streamline Work-in-Progress Processes: Establish a structured work-in-progress (WIP) process to streamline asset ideation and creation. This enables effective collaboration among teams, ensuring that assets progress seamlessly from concept to completion. By implementing a WIP process, you can maintain visibility over ongoing projects, track milestones, and deliver high-quality assets on time.
3. Implement a Flexible Permissions Model: Safeguard your digital assets by implementing a robust permissions model. Grant access to assets based on user roles and responsibilities, ensuring that sensitive content is protected and only authorized personnel can view or edit it. A flexible permissions model allows for easy management of user access rights, enhancing security and compliance.
4. Enable Content Distribution: Establish an efficient distribution process to make your content reusable across various channels. By automating content delivery, you can ensure consistency and reduce manual effort. A well-defined distribution workflow allows you to seamlessly distribute assets to target endpoints, maximizing the impact of your marketing campaigns and content strategies.
5. Plan Your Rollout Strategy: Consider the most effective rollout strategy for your organization. Whether starting with a phased implementation, testing the solution in a single country, or adopting a "big bang" approach for a simultaneous release, choose a strategy that aligns with your business goals and resources. Look for a platform that supports various rollout scenarios to accommodate your specific needs.
6. Embrace Modern Capabilities: Opt for a modern digital asset management solution that offers best-in-class capabilities. Look for features such as advanced search functionality, AI-powered tagging, and real-time analytics. By leveraging these capabilities, you can enhance collaboration, optimize workflows, and gain actionable insights to drive better business outcomes.
7. Ensure Exceptional Performance: Choose a solution that delivers exceptional performance in any conditions. A modern platform with optimized infrastructure and scalable resources can handle large volumes of content and complex workflows with ease. This ensures that your business remains efficient and resilient, ready to tackle any challenge that comes your way.

By following these best practices, you can transform your digital asset management processes and unlock the full potential of your assets. Implementing a modern solution enables you to organize content effectively, streamline workflows, secure assets with granular permissions, enable seamless distribution, and optimize performance. Embrace the power of a robust digital asset management platform and propel your business towards success in the digital age.

Conclusion: platform for your specific case

In the world of PIM and DAM platforms, the LAIKA digital platform emerges as a beacon of exceptional flexibility and capabilities. The architects behind LAIKA understood the frustrations that businesses face when dealing with rigid systems and sought to create a solution that breaks free from these constraints. By putting their own experiences working with PIM and DAM platforms at the forefront of their design process, they crafted a platform that empowers businesses and supports their transformation in the digital age.

Sometimes vendors concentrate solely on out-of-the-box features or specific pricing models, resulting in less customizable systems. We have found that modern customers require a solution that is as flexible as possible. With this philosophy in mind, the LAIKA team set out to build a platform that offers unparalleled flexibility and customization options, ensuring that businesses can tailor their workflows to meet their unique needs and challenges. There is no need to fight against the platform or technology you're using. It should support your business and empower it. LAIKA is designed to be an ally in the digital asset management journey, allowing businesses to increase their effectiveness and make their assets reusable across multiple channels.

Our goal was to create a solution that supports and encourages business transformation. We want to enable our clients to increase their effectiveness and make their assets reusable among multiple channels. With LAIKA, businesses can embark on a journey towards digital transformation, armed with a platform that adapts to their evolving needs and unleashes their true potential.

LAIKA digital platform is not just another PIM or DAM solution. It is a powerful tool designed to support, empower, and transform businesses in the modern era. By embracing LAIKA, businesses can transcend the limitations of traditional systems, increase their operational efficiency, and unlock the full value of their digital assets. Experience the exceptional flexibility and capabilities of LAIKA and witness the positive impact it can have on your business.

About the author: Dzmitry Dounar is an expert with over 15 years of experience specializing in PIM and DAM platforms, solution architect of LAIKA digital platform. Has collaborated with leading clients in diverse industries including retail, fashion, pharmaceuticals, and production.