Sitecore teams up with ADAM to build better site experiences, easier workflow

Digital analytics provider Sitecore and digital asset management (known among marketers as DAM) service ADAM are joining hands today. The move marks Sitecore’s bid to bite off a larger slice of the global enterprise pie. The new alliance will integrate a DAM built to handle global enterprise-grade digital asset management with an existing customer experience and analytics workflow to streamline the content creation and analytics process.

The two services already share a number of big name customers like Pandora and Proctor & Gamble. For these companies, DAMs like ADAM are used to create a workflow for sorting and storing different versions of assets like photo and video files. Meanwhile Sitecore’s customer experience management systems created a workflow for managing a variety of customer-specific experiences, like social and email campaigns.

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With big customers on “both sides” of the Sitecore/ADAM divide mentioning that they were using both systems concurrently, Sitecore aims to expand their slice of the top-level enterprise pie. “The agreement with ADAM Software serves the higher end of the market,” said Sitecore marketing VP Mark Floisand. This isn’t the first time that Sitecore has partnered with digital asset management systems. Other DAM software optimized for integration with Sitecore include DAM for Sitecore built by House & Co., as well as solutions provided by companies like QBank.

Even for companies not on the global stage, with so many different screens and portals, Floisand says that these are essential in a world of social media outlets and screens with different optimization standards. “All of the stuff that [consumers] just take for granted as — you know, stuff should just work — it’s the combination of the Sitecore and the ADAM technologies that makes that so,” Floisand said.

On a day-to-day basis for marketers, integrating these two technologies means making being sure the logo you’re sticking on your mass email newsletter is the most updated, color-approved version and not the one that was approved and changed the minute you uploaded it to the Sitecore Email Campaign Manager. “They know categorically that [what’s available to them] is the right asset and they have the permission to use it, and any weirdness associated with [that piece of content].” Floisand said.

Marketers (and other users) will be able to access files from an files uploaded to ADAM directly within Sitecore, where they would have to upload them separately otherwise In the long term, the integration also means that marketers will be able to track the impact of different pictures and videos you post to Facebook, Twitter and send out via email while also having the ability to seamlessly switch in newly approved content. Of course, this partnership doesn’t mean that customers get to take advantage of the services of one at no additional charge.

“The costs will be additive, and … very much dependent on the need of that particular organization, based on the scale of deployment,” Floisand said. This case-by-case pricing strategy applies both to existing and new users. According to Floisand, the connector that will enable users to integrate the two workflows is currently in beta and will be available within a couple weeks.

DAM partnerships aren’t the only field Sitecore is trying to bring under the fold either. The customer experience management service also recently announced an effort to integrate technology from e-commerce software company Insite Software. With companies like Box, Dropbox, and startups competing in the digital asset management space, ADAM Software, a European company founded in 1984, seems like an industry veteran, if not a dinosaur.

The established DAM-focused company has scored clients of the likes of Microsoft, Viacom, and Philips. Sitecore is similarly seasoned in its field. It was founded in 2001 as a business-facing customer experience analytics solution, and has since expanded across the globe, with offices in the U.S., Australia, London and Singapore. The customer experience company’s partnerships with other software companies put it in competition with other consolidated customer engagement and asset management systems like Adobe Systems and Intershop.