The content supply chain secret nobody has unlocked. Well, almost nobody…

Technological advantages don't remain advantages forever. Once one player sets a particular genie free, it's only a matter of time before competitors catch on and close the gap.

We happen to know an overlooked but potent technological advantage just sitting there right now for any organization that needs to produce content at scale. Embracing the demand for personalized experiences means producing more and more videos, photos, graphics, social media posts, articles, and every other form of content under the sun. But we talk to companies every day who haven't yet unlocked the best way to do this.

We're talking about integrating Adobe Workfront, Creative Cloud, and AEM Assets. Its potential to supercharge your content supply chain is vastly more than the sum of its parts. And trust us when we say almost nobody is really taking full advantage of it - yet.

Integration doesn't add, it multiplies

"Wait a minute," you might be thinking. "That's the big secret? The industry-standard Adobe products everybody knows about?"

Not quite. The secret is what you can do when they're properly integrated by technologists and change managers who deeply understand both the platforms and the humans who use them. (Ahem. That's where we come in. More on that later.)

It's not just that the work is managed in Workfront, executed in Creative Cloud, and stored in AEM Assets. When the three are connected and augmented with automation, it's like spraying WD-40 on every friction point throughout the process. Their compatibility, their common Adobe language, lets your content factory run faster than ever before... without burning your people out.

Managing your content supply chain can be less about wrestling with problems and more about unlocking new capabilities and scale.

Problem? What problem?

The first step, as they say, is admitting you need help. Think about the haphazard way content gets created in your organization. Inconsistent briefs with opaque visibility. Cumbersome review processes. Feedback delivered via different channels and uncertainly applied. Manual edits for every single iteration of every asset.

Think about all those times the right hand didn't know that it was duplicating work the left hand had already done. Those times you wound up with various versions of assets scattered across different DAMs, or different servers, or worst of all, different personal machines. Those files with names like "1280x460banner-noborder-approved-final-reapproved-reallyfinalforrealthistime(1).jpg".

And all those frantic after-hours last-second scrambles... the less said about those, the better.

Until recently, a good content team could just about manage to keep that chaos from showing up in their customer-facing output and putting their brand at risk. If the unreasonably crazy hours and stress don't drive them crazy. If their manual processes never break down. And if their luck doesn't run out. Those are some big ifs.

Now that the bar for personalized experiences is rapidly soaring toward the roof, though? Those ifs become whens. The old way never worked that well. These days it doesn't work at all.

There's got to be - say it with us - a better way

Now imagine a clearly defined process flow in Workfront, with full lines of sight for all stakeholders. Before a project even kicks off, managers can see their team's capacity, other in-flight projects, and the team's strategic priorities, and assign resources accordingly.

Workfront is the sole source of truth on the project, from the pre-briefing background through the production timeline to feedback and final approval.

In the production phase, content creators can use Creative Cloud's new generative AI capabilities to ideate and iterate at unprecedented speed - then submit the assets to Workfront for review without ever leaving Photoshop or Illustrator.

As soon as they're marked "approved", those assets are automatically stored in AEM Assets, with a consistent, accessible naming and folder structure. Automation keeps the content supply chain moving with minimal manual processing or intervention.

When they're integrated right, the three core Adobe platforms don't just complement each other. They amplify the strengths of all three.

And then comes customization

If that were all, the case for Workfront + Creative Cloud + AEM Assets would be hard to deny. But what's even more exciting is the ecosystem's potential for almost unlimited custom integrations and automations through Workfront Fusion.

The full end-to-end ecosystem is fair game: CRM, marketing analytics, finance... whatever would reduce friction, eliminate drudgery, and free your people up to do more work with their brains and less with their mice and keyboards.

If it's so good, why isn't everybody doing it?

Good question. The best answer is that these Adobe capabilities are so new that everyone's still figuring out how to take full advantage of them. We're all used to the status quo. It takes some mental stretching to really grasp what's possible.

A more mundane answer is simply institutional inertia. As long as you're (mostly) getting work out the door, without (too much) staff churn, who's got time to stop and think about a better way of doing things? So far so good... until you're blindsided by the personalized content your competitors are able to deliver to their customers, and your former customers.

And finally, there's a lack of expertise in the consulting market. To really pull off this Adobe integration, you need a partner who understands more than how to connect A to B.

All of their consultants should be Adobe Expert-certified, of course. But your integration partner should have years of experience with Workfront implementation, opitmization, and integration, including change management across hundreds of projects. The key members of their team would have decades of high-level industry expertise leading corporate and agency creative and marketing ops teams. And this ideal partner should demonstrate a keen understanding of the human factors that make or break any digital transformation.

That describes WNDYR. And pretty much nobody else. It seems to work for our customers, who honored us with a world-class NPS of 85 in the 12 months leading up to April 2024. There's still time for you to seize the leading edge in your industry with an Adobe Workfront-Creative Cloud-AEM Assets integration. Reach out to us today to get started. Because a secret this good won't stay a secret forever.