NKT

The Client

With a headquarters in Denmark and presence in 14 countries, NKT is a leading cable supplier to the energy sector.

The Situation

NKT’s marketing team produces a range of materials — from print collateral and videos to technical documentation — that feature imagery of their products and large-scale installation projects. This content is used across multiple websites, social media, and other channels. 

The Challenge

Despite the significant scale and reach of their marketing efforts, NKT lacked a central repository for their creative content, resulting in a variety of workflow bottlenecks and challenges. Niklas Rademacher, the Director of Group Marketing at NKT, shared that, “Life was difficult before [Acquia DAM]. We were storing our assets and imagery in various places. We had different servers, different countries, different marketing teams, and different agencies who all had their own repositories.”

Locating the right file was time-consuming, if not impossible. As a result, people used outdated content saved on their computers, and their brand experience was suffering. “It wasn't only inefficient, but it was actually impacting the quality of our websites,” Niklas shared. “We run large-scale construction projects and amass a lot of content from internal sources and agencies for our various channels. We needed a way to bring it all together.”  

The Solution

NKT began looking for a digital asset management (DAM) solution to streamline their content workflows and achieve cohesive brand messaging across channels and regions. In 2018, they implemented Acquia DAM.

​​Empowered users

Acquia DAM has combined all of NKT’s siloed storage locations into a single, searchable repository. Teams now know where and how to find the content they need, whenever they need it. And with Portals, they have further streamlined access to high-use assets. NKT worked with Acquia’s Design Services team to build a brand portal that houses essential creative assets and a simplified brand style guide. And they encourage ongoing user engagement with an intuitive onboarding process and training materials that allow users to learn at their own pace. Together, these strategies help users find the current, approved content they need, with confidence. 

IntegrateD technology systems 

NKT identified opportunities to automate manual workflows by connecting Acquia DAM with systems that support their website. An integration with their content management system (CMS) tool, Magnolia, allows data between the two platforms to sync automatically, eliminating the need to download files from one system and upload them to the other. If a file is updated or replaced in the DAM system, it is pushed to the CMS and immediately published online using embed codes, or HTML to display assets.

In addition, they leveraged the Acquia DAM API to build an integration that supports the publication of their extensive online library of technical documents. This customized process uses a nightly cron job and embed codes to automatically post new or updated files to their website — and it crops each asset to align with its ideal focal point. These website integrations have generated over 5 million embed views in the last 12 months alone. “It was a key point for us to have an integrated DAM system with our website,” Niklas shared, “and we are extremely happy about it.”

Continual optimization

Niklas and his team rely on Insights to understand how Acquia DAM is being used. They are able to see key asset activity — like total uploads, downloads, and shares — at a glance. If there are large dips in these metrics, Niklas and team determine why they’ve fluctuated and identify users or departments that might need additional training. Monitoring these metrics also allows NKT to make adjustments to the system to keep users engaged and maximize the value of their DAM investment. “The most important thing for us is if we measure internally that people actually use the DAM system.” 

The Results

Consistent messaging

Digital assets are the building blocks of every brand experience. Acquia DAM helps NKT ensure that teams across the company are using the same files in their projects and campaigns. With easy, self-serve access to the most current and approved content, no one is tempted to use old files stored on local drives, and teams are able to build a cohesive and effective brand experience.

Greater content value

By using Acquia DAM to store both digital assets like photography and final creative files, NKT has encouraged the reuse and repurpose of their best performing content. “We have both the underlying assets in terms of imagery and all the items that we can then create to amplify the images in other files and documents,” said Niklas. Now, instead of starting from scratch each time, they leverage elements from existing assets in new ways. This brings agility to their workflows and extends the value of their content. 

Sustainable workflows

Acquia DAM is designed to scale as NKT’s content needs change and grow, and it has been essential in supporting the shift to working remotely during the coronavirus pandemic. Their previous DAM system was server-based and Niklas shared, “the way we used to work would have been an immense struggle from home, simply because accessing images on a server takes much longer to load — it’s almost impossible. But we don’t have that situation anymore.” Now that Acquia DAM is built into NKT’s content creation process, they are better able to coordinate efforts across stakeholders, including regional teams, freelancers, and agencies.