Why Smart Photo Studio Processes Are the Key to Speeding Up Product Launches

This article by Julie Allouch, Director of Digital Experience at Nuxeo, was originally published on the Nuxeo Blog and we think our readers will find it informative.

You can’t launch a new product if you don’t have the right photos. High-volume, highly structured photoshoots are an integral part of the product launch process. And in these times, organizing new photo shoots is quite impossible, it’s critical that companies can trust their existing content. Being able to search, find, and reuse digital assets will be key to survival.

As product companies focus more on eCommerce and pursuing omnichannel sales strategies, there is a huge need for efficient photography and video production. 50% of eCommerce shoppers say product pictures are influential in their purchasing decisions.

And when the current situation will improve, photographers and designers will be facing tremendous pressure to deliver completed assets faster. What used to take months is now needed in weeks, and what used to take weeks is now needed in days. To keep up with increasing demands and produce quality content, product photo studios require efficiency and speed.

However, all too often photo studios are held back by high-throughput processes that are ad-hoc and manual. For example, a photographer will photograph a shoe from six different angles to get shots for marketing materials. The process is long, clunky, and costly.

The Problem: Outdated Traditional Photo Studio Processes 
We spoke with some of the largest product companies in the world and discovered that many stakeholders were deeply frustrated with outdated traditional photo studio processes. The feedback was that:

• Companies using external photo studio vendors suffer from low visibility and have to rely on expensive external search processes to rediscover and reuse assets. Images are often reshot because internal users can’t find them.
• Version history isn’t available for assets, which means teams don’t know about past changes made, including what those changes were and when, and whether they should update an image across their sales channels.
• Images are disconnected from product information and sales resources, leaving salespeople to try and put together product images from Google to pitch a product to retailers.
• Multiple photo shoots are requested for the same item - for example, at one company, products are often shot first in the prototype stage, and then again after manufacturing is complete. More shots increase project length and cost.

One of the key takeaways from our conversations with these companies was that common processes like managing shot lists and equipment inventories or sending images downstream to add to eCommerce applications, was taking place via inefficient ad-hoc processes.

Most product companies were relying on email, phone calls, and manual handoffs to manage product assets, which meant more delays and extra work for teams. In short, traditional photo studio processes can’t scale to the needs of the product creative lifecycle, which demands faster project delivery than ever before.

The old processes developed in the days of digital archiving and traditional photography just aren’t fit for today’s dynamic product companies. Today, smart, scalable solutions with detailed product information and full version history are the future.

Build a Smarter Photo Studio
The Nuxeo Platform is a core building block in the photo studio of the future, providing transparency over internal and external resources. The next-generation smart platform makes it quick and easy to search for assets. Teams can search through files and global repositories instantaneously, no matter how many assets they have stored inside business systems.

Our customers have used the Nuxeo Platform to build a leaner, cost-effective process. The concept behind the platform was to make it easier to initiate, ingest, and control photo shoots. A smarter photo studio process eliminates the need to hunt down assets and helps the user to find the best shots for the product at hand.

Content Review & Annotations
The content review process is a major source of frustration and delays for many companies. Disconnected legacy systems and diverse file types mean that content reviews are done differently in every company. In other words, there’s very little consistency.

Lack of a unified process means that different processes develop in different teams. Some of these processes work better than others, but there’s no unified strategy. To improve consistency, the Nuxeo Platform can accommodate the workflows of any team, no matter how they review and approve content.

For example, we’ve included native support for serial and parallel approvals, voting on selects, marking up images and video, automatic routing of sensitive material for additional legal or executive review, and more. Support for complex workflows makes the Nuxeo Platform easy to adopt and minimizes disruption.

We recognize that most workflows change over time, and the Nuxeo Platform comes with a visual workflow design configuration feature in Nuxeo Studio. The platform enables you to add new review levels and file types for annotation in a matter of minutes. Our approach is flexible so that you can build the processes that fit your company.

Build a Better Workflow Process for Creatives and Downstream Teams
No two companies have the same process for shooting product photos and videos, which is why Nuxeo provides you with a highly configurable content services platform that can adapt as your needs evolve. The Nuxeo Platform streamlines photo studio processes and helps accelerate products to market.

Faster development not only helps creatives but also empowers the downstream teams that depend on them. More complete contextual briefs, in-platform photo or video annotations, and full audit trails provide you with complete visibility over a project. There are no more tedious manual processes, which make creative and technical teams not only more productive, but happier as well.

Want to modernize your photo studio management with a next generation platform? Contact IO Integration today for a free consultation.