SAE International Selects Widen Media Collective to Manage Digital Media Files

MADISON, WI--(Marketwired - April 15, 2015) - SAE International (originally established as the Society of Automotive Engineers), a global association of more than 137,000 engineers and related technical experts in the aerospace, automotive and commercial-vehicle industries, has selected the Widen Media Collective for its digital asset management (DAM) needs. SAE International's core competencies are life-long learning and voluntary consensus standards development. They will use Widen's DAM solution to organize and distribute a massive library of digital assets.

Formed in 1905, SAE relaunched their brand in 2013, creating a need for increased usage of their brand guidelines, consistent imagery and logo usage. They amassed a large amount of digital content spread across folder structures on shared drives. Files were not easily accessible by globally dispersed users and compatibility issues arose with users on both MAC and PC platforms.

"We have a lot of assets that are all over the place," stated Ryan Pristow, creative brand manager at SAE. "We tried using Microsoft SharePoint to host a brand portal website, but had a lot of issues which caused abandonment, so we began looking for a simplified process to manage, leverage and distribute assets."

SAE started looking for a system that could handle both their DAM and marketing automation needs. They quickly noticed that in systems that offered both, the DAM side was lacking functionality. After refocusing their search on just their image management needs and branding guidelines, they ultimately chose the Widen Media Collective. They also noted that Widen's pricing, which includes no long-term contracts, and readily available customer retention data helped confirm their decision to move forward with Widen.

"We liked that Widen has a baseline product which everyone is on, and just modify it per customer. We could just add our logo and start using it," stated Pristow. "Widen has already perfected the art of DAM, versus having to build something from the ground up like some other products."

The DAM system will create many efficiencies for SAE's workflows. It will give easy access to promotional content, pdfs, images, stock imagery, event photography, edited video, b-roll video clips, audio, logos and InDesign templates to their graphics and marketing groups. 90% of their usage will be other staff members outside of marketing, so the Media Collective's simple and easy to navigate user interface will help increase usage over their legacy systems.

"SAE's decision to refocus their RFP with requirements and use cases outlining how they wanted to use DAM was a winning approach for this project," stated Brenna Hale, senior advisor with Widen. "Widen was able to provide a test environment and work closely with the SAE team members during the evaluation stage, quickly identifying the Media Collective as an excellent fit."

About SAE International
SAE International is a global association committed to being the ultimate knowledge source for the engineering profession. By uniting over 137,000 engineers and technical experts, we drive knowledge and expertise across a broad spectrum of industries. We act on two priorities: encouraging a lifetime of learning for mobility engineering professionals and setting the standards for industry engineering. We strive for a better world through the work of our charitable arm, the SAE Foundation, which helps fund programs like A World in Motion® and the Collegiate Design Series™

About Widen Enterprises, Inc.
Widen is a marketing technology company that powers the content that builds your brand. Leveraging cloud-based resources, Widen delivers configurable, scalable, and cost-effective digital asset management solutions to help you easily store, search and share your digital content. Organizations of all sizes use Widen's SaaS DAM solution, the Media Collective, to streamline their marketing and creative workflows and make their content work harder. Widen is trusted by hundreds of thousands of users around the world at organizations like LG, Roche, Trek, Cornell University, New Orleans Tourism Marketing, The Atlanta Falcons, Red Gold Tomatoes, Electrolux, and Yankee Candle. To learn more about Widen, go to http://www.widen.com.