SUCCESS STORY
Marks & Spencer
Industry• RetailSolution• OpenText™ Media Management

Services• OpenText Professional Services

Results
Replaces multiple systems withsingle, enterprise-wide DAM,
providing consistent, efficientand costeffective processes
Reduces unnecessary asset
recreation, saving time and money
Accelerates review and approvalof assets, ensuring they canbe on the website within 24 hoursof creation

Marks & Spencer efficiently manages
digital assets with OpenText
OpenText™ Media Management provides enterprise-wide Digital AssetManagement, streamlining workflow and speeding up processes“After the upgrade to OpenTextMedia Management v16,
we sent out a questionnaire and98 percent of users gave it apositive rating. The user interface
is so clear and intuitive, it reallyhelps our users get our assets tothe website in the shortest time.”
Beth Cross

Product Owner
Marks & Spencer

Marks & Spencer efficiently manages digital assets with OpenText

Marks & Spencer needs to efficiently handle product images
and videos for its website and other channels, with 800 users
interacting with more than 2,500 new assets each day. OpenText
Media Management has streamlined the process, providing asingle system that ensures brand consistency, saves time andavoids unnecessary asset recreation.

Challenge
Founded in 1884, Marks & Spencer (M&S) has grown into aninternational, multi-channel retailer, with nearly 1,000 stores in the UK
only. The company sells clothing, home products and food sourced
from 3,000 global suppliers, with 85,000 employees. Its website alone
marksandspencer.com, receives 8.3 million visits each week.
As a large retailer, M&S needs to interact with its customers acrossmultiple channels, including web, mobile, tablet, apps, in-store,
staff-assisted and phone. To ensure brand consistency andefficiency across these channels and to deliver a consistent customer
experience, M&S needs a centralized digital asset repository forimagery and video.
Previously, M&S had multiple Digital Asset Management (DAM)
repositories across different departments and functions. With
several different DAMs in use, the company struggled to handle
its assets effectively.
It was impossible to undertake federated searches, causing asset
location to be slow and potentially incomplete. This meant thatassets were duplicated, but recreating assets that already existed
wasted time and money. The company also had problems with rights
management, with no reliable, definitive source to establish if an
asset were available for use under the terms of a licensing agreement.

M&S.com lists about 20,000 products, which each have an averageof six or seven digital assets, consisting of a product video andmultiple photographs. For example, an item of clothing may have fulllength images and detail shots of pockets, cuffs, or collars.
Working with multiple external agencies and internal departments,
M&S sources, reviews, approves and manages up to 2,500 assets perday–meaning that its DAM needs to provide an efficient, easy-to-use
solution for its 800 users in the UK and internationally.
As part of a wider, multichannel digital transformation program, M&S
looked for a single, enterprise-class DAM.

Solution
Following a review of the options available, which involved productdemos and getting opinions from a large group of users within
the company, M&S chose OpenText Media Management as its
centralized DAM.
“The business considered a number of options and the usabilityof the OpenText system and the workflow were definitely
strong points,” said Rebecca Chamberlain, product owner at
Marks & Spencer.
“OpenText ticked the boxes for key features including bulk
upload, amending assets, creative briefs and inputting video,”said Chamberlain. “OpenText offered more of the functionality wewanted, compared to the other systems we looked at.”Working closely with OpenText, who provided on-site resources, thesystem was live in just seven months and serving images to in-store
screens. Within a year, the OpenText solution was providing images toM&S’s website for all products.

Marks & Spencer efficiently manages digital assets with OpenText

Benefits
The OpenText system provides a fast, efficient means for submission,
review and approval of digital assets and ultimately publication andongoing management. The system streamlines and accelerates
operations by reducing the amount of manual processing needed,
due to features such as automated integrations, handling files in thecorrect format and automated handling of appropriate filenames.
“The usability of OpenText is better than the systems we hadbefore, in terms of being able to view a lot of thumbnails and zoomin and zoom out to look at the metadata–it’s a lot more flexible,”said Chamberlain.
The simplicity of the system helps M&S ensure assets can beapproved and put live on the website as quickly as possible, which
is a key target. It is also straightforward to manage access to thesystem for external suppliers and agencies–they can then drag anddrop files to a ‘hot folder.’
OpenText has helped M&S to avoid unnecessary asset recreation.
Users can quickly locate assets and make any required changes
within the OpenText system, without going back to the originator andstarting the process again. This speeds up publication and prevents
unnecessary expenditure.
In addition to products being sold, M&S uses the OpenText system toprovide images for customer service, to help them deal with customer
enquiries or warranty claims. The system also integrates with M&S’s
product lifecycle management (PLM) system, providing images to thePLM that helps plan new ranges and products.

“We handled the integration with the PLM ourselves, with help froman OpenText consultant,” said Chamberlain. “We have been happy
with OpenText Professional Services: they provide good support
and their consultants are impressive–and readily available when
we need help.”
M&S has recently upgraded to v16 of Media Management, ensuring it
benefits from the latest system features, as well as compatibility with
the Oracle Database 12c it uses.
“After the upgrade to Media Management v16, we sent out aquestionnaire, and 98 percent of users gave it a positive rating,”
said Beth Cross, product owner at Marks & Spencer. “The userinterface is so clear and intuitive, it really helps our users get ourassets to the website in the shortest time from when we shootthem in the studio.”“For example, the widget functionality allows our content
managers to personalize and amend their home screen, to see
the information that’s most appropriate to them.”
The OpenText system has been in place for about five years andM&S is looking for where it can achieve further process efficiency
improvements, as well as bringing in other areas of the business–for example it has started transferring all its marketing videos tothe system. M&S also expects more people to access the OpenText
system on iPad s and other mobile devices, with the new userinterface of v16 improving usability.

About OpenText
OpenText, The Information Company,
enables organizations to gain insight
through market leading information
management solutions, on-premises orin the cloud. For more information about
OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX)
visit opentext.com.

®

“For all the assets which go through OpenText, we use an approval
process so it performs a vital task and we’re fully dependent onit,” said Cross. “In the year I’ve looked after the system here, we’ve
never had a problem that we couldn’t resolve internally or with theassistance of OpenText Professional Services.”

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