MWRBrandCentral.com is a Digital Asset Management system (DAM) that houses images, videos, and audio files used for marketing purposes on U.S. Army MWR websites, digital screens, and print materials.
U.S. Army IMCOM MWR takes care of soldiers.
They deliver Family and Morale, Welfare, and Recreation programs and services enabling readiness and resilience for a globally-responsive Army. With over 100 installations around the globe, more than 3,500 businesses, and millions of active duty soldiers, family members, veterans and community members, coordinating communication requires focused technological solutions.
Challenge
The U.S. Army MWR had an older proprietary Digital Asset Management System (DAM) and a Sharepoint install that many marketers have difficulty using. PortlandLabs found users are frustrated, lost, and unable to find assets. Content Editors managing websites spend a lot of time searching through content to find the right images and videos in the right size and quality. The manual processes delayed content creation and distribution and wasted countless hours across hundreds of marketing professionals.
Stakeholder interviews unveiled common issues around the following:
- Search - Dead-end results, broken links, and old data.
- Tagging - A better tagging system is needed to produce better results.
- Navigation - Most participants felt confused and lost in the navigation. Duplication and nested navigation are also to blame for user confusion.
- Upload/Create Process - The create/upload process is one of the primary reasons users started to abandon the Sharepoint Server.
Paths to Success
PortlandLabs (the team that leads Concrete CMS) provides a fully managed subscription, including hosting and support, so the MWR team can focus on their marketing goals and trust that the technology and compliance requirements will be handled. The entire system has been granted an internal Army Authority to Operate (ATO) meeting or exceeding DISA Impact Level 2 controls.
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Digital Asset Management With Concrete CMS
Aligning the product to business goals while focusing on user needs will be the main factor in improving the overall experience with a new strategy and rethinking the navigation from the ground up.
Adding a simple and intuitive search feature navigation and advanced analytics allows MWR staff to improve search performance and add additional assets to fulfill user needs. 70% of Brand Central visitors engage with the website by downloading a file.
Tagging images with keywords is time-consuming; by automatically tagging photos with relevant metadata using AI, Army MWR Staff saves hundreds of hours of productivity.
Brand Central directly integrates with 100+ Army MWR Concrete CMS websites. Editors can search Brand Central for assets from the same file manager they’re used to using for local images. Now all of the authorized photos, logos, and files are in one place. The media is shared and is usable to over 100+ websites for content production and distribution everywhere.
MWR Brand Central is also a complete copy of Concrete CMS with all of the easy to use Web Content Management features used to easily build great content on the internet. A flexible branding guidelines section lets marketing managers show best practices, style guide, and timely information in a flexible fashion that’s uncommon with a traditional application focused DAM.
Learn more about our Digital Asset Management system built on top of Concrete CMS. All of this code is free and open source, ready for you to use for your own needs!
