Case Study

Product Archival Solution – Improved Intellectual Property Management, Content Reuse, and Time-to-Market

Business Challenges

Our client, a leading publishing company, had the need to manage the archival of the final files of their published products. They continually returned to this material for reprints, customized editions, revisions, and to reuse for other new products. They did not have any cross-divisional systems in place to store, manage, version, search, or retrieve this material that was stored in various application files (PDF, InDesign, Quark, MS Word, etc.) and often housed at external vendors. This storage arrangement presented many problems including intellectual property control, inefficient file reuse, version management and the lack of a cross-referencing archive system. These inefficiencies presented time-wasting verification and searching, prior to beginning new publishing activities, costing the company millions of dollars a year in labor and lost opportunities with manufacturing.

The client sought to replace the existing process with an OAIS Model (Open Archival Information System) Content Management Solution for their Archival Systems. Their ideal solution would have a positive impact throughout the archival workflow by centralizing and standardizing the archive processes. Approximately 10 TB of stored data is to be initially migrated into the Archival System within 18 months of system deployment.

The ArborSys Solution

ArborSys collaborated with the client’s Business Sponsor, Users, IT, Publishing Operations and Systems, PMO, and QA groups to design, develop, and implement an enterprise-wide content management system that met the client’s archival and workflow needs. The client’s key representatives worked closely with the ArborSys team to collect and document the system’s requirements. The team established a standardized process, roles, lifecycles, and workflows for the system.

EMC Documentum was used as the content management repository, and Documentum DamTop provided the user interface for managing the files and providing end user tasks and functionality.

The ArborSys team was engaged to:

• Conduct sessions to gather, analyze, and document the business, functional, and technology requirements;
• Create a User Interface (UI) prototype to facilitate the clients functionality, usability, and process testing;
• Develop the detailed application design and implement the solution;
• Meet performance levels for initial migration of 10 terabytes of archival content;
• Provide QA support and documentation.

Functionality included:

• Compatibility with different clients (MS Office, Macintosh, and PC Platform);
• Optimized server-based processes for upload/download of large volumes of content;
• Customized views for creating unique Archival folder hierarchy structures;
• Customized Request views and task workflows for content ingestion and manipulation;
• Customized Search views for retrieval of enterprise-wide content;
• Administrator views for division-level metadata configuration.

Value Delivered

Our team was able to design and deliver a solution that met the immediate needs of the client and provide the foundation for future strategic initiatives. The solution provided a standardized division-level configurable platform for the management of all product files which reduced the inefficiencies of searching/locating the latest files across disparate sources. This led to higher levels of content reuse when creating new or re-published products, as well as reduced costs and improved time-to-market. The client is in process of planning the migration of existing 10 TB of product file content into the repository.