Having partners world-wide who are product experts has helped MediaValet integrate with a variety of industries and clients all over the globe. Our partnerships are a huge part of our growth strategy here at MediaValet—we wouldn’t be where we are without them.

Work Management Australia (WMA) is an Adobe Workfront certified partner and leading Workfront expert in Australia. WMA has more than 100 implementations in APAC and works with clients on Workfront, proofing, DAM and Fusion. Designing world-class solutions and tailored Workfront implementations, WMA is a valued partner and integral part of MediaValet’s connection to the Australian region.

We talked with Nicky Allen, the founder and director at WMA about how MediaValet has helped her add value to her clients’ Workfront strategies.

First off, can you tell us a little bit about Work Management Australia?

I started Work Management Australia about six years ago because there was no Workfront presence in Australia. So, we set out to be the Workfront subject matter expert here in the region and to be able to service the APAC work management market. We also work with partners or vendors, who might integrate seamlessly to Workfront, like MediaValet, to create a beautiful end-to-end solution for our customers.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what it is that you do at WMA?

I had a background in TELCO and consultancy in the IT space for many, many years. I got into that space after university, then had a fantastic ten years in the UK with Texas Instruments and Accenture. When we came back from the UK to Australia, I spent time selling TELCO and project management solutions until I set up WMA in 2015 to address the Workfront presence here in Australia.

I’m the owner and director of WMA. I’ve grown the team with several fantastic Workfront specialists who not only know how to implement and support and train for Workfront, but also the third party solutions that hook into Workfront like DAMs and the other integration pieces as well, so we’re able to give the client a total solution around the whole work management processes both upstream and downstream.

When a client comes to you, what are the top challenges that they’re trying to solve?

They’re mostly trying to manage their digital work processes in projects and marketing campaigns and trying to centralize all of that work in the one place. When they first come to us, many of the processes might be manual. For example, they might be reviewing and approving their digital assets by email. Assets can get lost; versions can be confused; and audit trails can be lacking. There’s a big lack of visibility into what everyone’s doing, what’s going on in campaigns and where the holdups are on approvals.

One of our clients, who sells thousands of brands of drink products, implemented Workfront just before Christmas, and had set up processes for each of the different brands, but pretty rapidly realized that many of those processes were similar. Once they realized this, we were able to work with them to standardize those processes and make them much more efficient. So, we were able to help them gain efficiencies of scale between the teams and their brands, which was very rewarding.

We have another large agency client that enables their customers to submit a request for a marketing campaign directly through Workfront. They’ve automated all of those requests to ensure they have visibility into all of the activities, approvals and asset proofing, all the way through for the final client review and approval. This visibility ensures that they know what’s going on and are also able to give each client an update on what’s happening with that campaign. In fact, they even have some clients collaborate as part of their campaign.

What are some of the different types of organizations that you work with?

We work primarily with digital agencies, but we’ve worked with all sorts of organizations. We’ve worked with everything from IT PMOs to marketing organizations in companies such as banks, airlines and even opera houses. We’ve seen a significant rise in the use of Workfront among agencies and marketing teams, who are now realizing that work management solutions can be highly useful for managing marketing campaigns and their processes because they often have the same problems as traditional project managers.

It’s a broad spectrum of organizations, both in the PMO space and marketing spaces, and also in New Product Development, finance and HR organizations. They all use Workfront to be able to have that visibility of the work management process.

Do you mostly work with large companies or do you also work with smaller businesses?

Both actually. We’ve worked with a wide range of organizations, from large global banking organizations to some of the smaller agencies who only have a few licenses and use it in a simpler way just for proofing for example.

How long does the process with WMA typically take?

If it’s a low hanging fruit, we’ve done some of them in a couple of weeks, but typically they would take three to four months. Usually, we would go in and do a discovery session with the client to kickstart the project. It’s like building a house: you have your architects have a look at your processes now, what do you actually want, and work through some of your requirements. We’ll do some discovery workshops and after we’ve done that, we’ll be able to give them a design of the solution to build out their requirements.

For example:

• What do they want to manage in a new campaign?
• What are the steps for the process?
• How do we automate them?
• How do we digitally review and approve an asset that’s needed for a campaign?
• What reporting is needed?

We also encourage our clients to help us build their solution. Not only does it help our clients become self-sufficient and learn the system, it also reduces the cost for them. Once it’s built, we’ll support their user acceptance testing, provide walkthroughs, host training sessions, and then stand by while they pilot the solution and eventually go live.

We always recommend keeping it simple initially because it’s a learning process and they’re able to tweak the solution as they go. Then afterwards, we might look at integrating MediaValet, for example, and that would be a second phase when they really start to understand the solution and processes.

And of course, the relationship doesn’t stop there. We host master groups and regular communication groups to keep in touch and check in with our clients throughout their journey with Workfront and any other downstream systems, such as MediaValet.

So, for large organizations, you’d recommend a phased approach?

Absolutely. Some of our customers, for example an agency with multiple clients, we may suggest running with one client, so that they can get used to how this new digital solution works and evaluate how to automate their processes. Often, they’ll find that they think they need a bunch of complex processes, and then realize after they’ve implemented with the first client actually it’s much easier and streamlined if we simplify.

Or they could do it by teams – such as starting with the studio team first, then rolling it out to the rest of the organization. It really does depend on where the quick wins are and what problems the client has. We’ll discuss with them what’s going to be the best for them and how do we roll that out for them, specifically.

Getting that low-hanging fruit is important. They’re paying for licenses and we want to make sure that they’re getting the maximum value out of those licenses as soon as possible.

Why would someone use WMA to set-up a work management environment, as opposed to doing it by themselves?

“About 90% of the clients or organizations we’ve talked to who’ve tried to set it up themselves don’t renew with Workfront after year one, and it’s quite sad because they’ve made that investment. What it usually comes down to is that they were unable to implement Workfront to achieve ROI in an effective manner, or set-up a simple user interface to get high user adoption, which is really, really key.

Part of the process of working with WMA is the practice of identifying the low hanging fruit and the best client to use as a pilot to really test Workfront out. We can advise our clients on how to set up processes efficiently using little tricks and techniques that you wouldn’t know unless you’ve used the system for years and years.

We have that broad experience of setting up a client and then advising them on what other systems are going to create that end-to-end solution, such as using MediaValet to manage those assets that they’ve created.

At the very least, we recommend holding the client’s hand while they do it, so we can pass on our IP to the client. Doing it themselves is…brave.”

What makes WMA stand out from other work management environment consultants?

“For one thing, we’re the only consultants in Australia that are solely focused on Workfront implementations. Because we’re focused specifically on Workfront, we’re very, very good at it. But, of course, this knowledge extends to integrations too.

Aside from being the absolute experts in Australia, we’re also extremely focused on our integrity and what’s in the interests of the client. I’ve got a real belief that you do what’s right in the short term for the customer, even if it’s not maximizing that initial sale. Ensure that the client gets what they need and what is really going to benefit them. We want to get the most ROI for them in the short term and then build on that to add value for them later down the track in a timely manner.

What would you say the benefit is to connect a platform like Workfront with a DAM?

Organizations spend so much money on beautifully processed and approved assets that are managed in Workfront, only to dump them in Google Drive or local storage. But, you really need a proper asset management storage solution, like MediaValet, to ensure they’re managed and secured. You don’t want to take the risk of losing your assets, or using the wrong version, or having to pay the suppliers to access it, which is often the case.

One of our clients was paying their supplier $6 to access an asset every time they needed to use it. If you own it, you don’t have the cost of trying to retrieve your asset. This alone really shows the ROI of implementing a DAM, like MediaValet.

What’s the value you see in the partnership with MediaValet?

I love the fact that MediaValet is very agile and flexible – the team is able to react and move very quickly. We would love to expand the footprint for MediaValet here in Australia, as there is a big need for great DAM solutions to be able to help our clients with their digital asset storage requirements. As it also has a simple demonstrable plug-in for Workfront, it is a valuable addition to our toolkit to help solve our customer’s challenges.

Do you have any advice for organizations looking to connect DAM and a work management solution?

I’d certainly say define what’s important to you—what are your needs, what are your processes? It’s really important to understand how your marketing and creative teams work with digital assets.

Because different solutions work for different clients, it’s also important to be able to have a good understanding of the type of vendor that you want to work with. Is it a small vendor that you want a really personal connection with and that ability for the vendor to be able to really get to know you, or do you want a big name with a big reputation?

And, of course, what’s the budget. MediaValet is an amazing DAM at a reasonable price point. We really love the fact that we’ve had the opportunity to work with MediaValet to give our clients a great option in the DAM market space. It also comes back to the fact that MediaValet is small, agile, and very easy to work with.

I feel like MediaValet is a small family that you get to know, and you care about each other and you’re working towards the one goal. It’s a great organization and I’m really pleased to be partnering with you.

Just a fun one to end off on: What are you currently binge-watching?

Well, I’ve done The Crown—tick, I’ve done the Queen’s Gambit—tick, Bridgerton—tick. I’m now onto a series called Fauda which is absolutely amazing, which is about the Israeli and Palestinian conflict.

Learn more about our Workfront integration

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