All businesses rely on digital content, but iAM Learning’s business is digital content. With demand for e-learning skyrocketing in the wake of the pandemic, the team soon realized they needed a scalable system to deliver course materials to customers and manage the flow of digital assets during the creation process.
Initially, they managed their content manually using tools like Dropbox. “That’s fine when you’re a small team and you can just turn to the person next to you,” Tom explains. “But as our business scaled, there were more and more people — including customers and partners — who needed to access that same content. We needed to manage it in a much better fashion.”
The team also had another motivation for switching to a dedicated digital asset management (DAM) platform. They wanted to deliver finished e-learning content to customers in a more polished package. “We were looking for something that would give customers a nice user experience, and scale with us as we grow,” says Tom.
Having spoken with other DAM providers in the past, Tom was expecting a hefty price tag. In Canto, he was pleasantly surprised to find a powerful DAM solution with simple, straightforward pricing. “Canto has given us everything we need and more, at a price that’s in line with our budget,” Tom explains. “If we’d found Canto when we were just getting started, we would have used it from day one.”
With Canto up and running, iAM Learning has automated tedious content management processes, boosting efficiency across the organization.
“We used to have a dedicated, full-time person whose job it was to manage content flowing to customers and partners, making sure we always had the right versions in the right places,” Tom explains. “With Canto, that’s much easier. Now, that person can redirect most of their time to other strategically important work. That alone is probably saving us £25,000 a year.”
And that’s just the start of the cost savings, as Canto helps people work more efficiently at every stage of iAM Learning’s creation and delivery process.
An invaluable resource for external contributors, Canto cuts down on duplicate work
Creating truly engaging training materials takes a lot of creativity, and the iAM Learning team relies on in-house experts and an army of creative freelancers around the world — including animators, graphic designers, storyboard artists, voiceover artists, and script writers.
With a library of content at everyone’s fingertips in Canto, it’s easier than ever to help external contributors collaborate efficiently. Script writing teams can reference existing content in Canto — say, an office scene from a previous course. Referencing content in Canto lets animators know exactly what the writers have in mind, and gives them access to existing materials they can adapt instead of starting from scratch.
“Before we had Canto, we were recreating the same scenes over and over again, and that’s just not cost-effective,” says Tom. “Once you create these beautiful graphics and animations, you want to be able to really use them. The animators have a much better starting point if they know it’s not just an office scene, it’s this office scene and here’s the Canto link.”
A polished, effortless customer experience
Once the creative team has put the finishing touches on a new course, it’s ready to deliver to customers. Canto makes it easy to get the finished content where it needs to go — in a user-friendly package.
“We wanted to present the content in a way that’s really simple,” says Tom. “When we send customers a Canto link, they get a really nice interface with a search function and thumbnails for the collections. But they can also dive deeper and access all the files they need.”
In addition to course content, customers also have direct access to a library of graphics, banners, and trailer videos they might need for communications surrounding them.
“Customers just log in, self-serve, and grab the content they need,” says Tom. “Delivering content to customers could have been a real pain point as we’ve scaled. But because we’re using Canto, it’s not been a problem at all.”
