Marketing Digital Asset Management Leads to Increased Levels of Employee Satisfaction and Productivity

The proliferation of marketing channels and globalization remain key challenges for every organization. Digital content will continue to expand exponentially as new marketing channels surface. This makes effective management and efficient use of content essential to maximizing return on marketing investment. A recent survey of over 185 companies conducted by Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS), revealed how Best-in-Class tactics help marketing departments maximize investments and leverage technology to improve brand effectiveness, brand consistency, and return on marketing investments, ultimately delivering strategic value from marketing asset management technologies. The research reveals that 75% of Best-in-Class companies decreased the amount of time spent locating files and 83% of Best-in-Class companies increased employee productivity after implementing a Marketing Asset Mangement solution.

The top pressure causing all organizations to focus on digital asset management is the need to manage brand consistency (64%), with the need to improve return on marketing investments the second most relevant business pressure (61%). Best-in-Class companies indicated that they currently utilize Rich Media support (52%), search capabilities (48%), content indexing (43%), and dashboards (41%) to increase the effectiveness of the digital asset management system used by marketing. As a result of technology implementation and organizational support, Best-in-Class organizations achieve superior performance in time-to-market, return on marketing investments, and brand effectiveness.

"Unfortunately, there is no single metric for measuring the strategic value of marketing digital asset management. Best-in-Class demonstrate unique processes and capabilities that enable them to maximize investments in people, process, and technology," explained Ian Michiels, a research analyst at Aberdeen. "Strategic value is derived from making technology an integral part of the marketing workflow and day-to-day operations."

The report demonstrates the value of collectively leveraging organizational practices in process, performance management, knowledge management and technology to provide a foundation for digital asset management success. By utilizing content indexing (43%) and search capabilities (48%), Best-in-Class companies are able to minimize the amount of time employees spend searching for content, thereby increasing overall employee productivity.

The research educates readers on how to instill organizational capabilities to nurture digital asset management initiatives. The report also provides the results that Best-in-Class companies achieve across key marketing metrics after employing processes and technologies and compares these companies to the Industry Average and Laggards who have not yet pursued a similar strategy.

A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part by the following underwriters: Interwoven, Saepio Technologies, and WAVE Corporation. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4579 .

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen(TM) for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com .

© 2008 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
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Media Contact: Ian Michiels Aberdeen Harte-Hanks (925) 264-1824 Ian.michiels@aberdeen.com