
One of the top ten Digital Asset Management (DAM) vendors in the world, global ICT company Wedia helps to efficiently manage, customize, and deliver marketing for business success to over 250 brands worldwide.
A seasoned executive with 15 years in computer software, Vice President of Sales and Operations for North America at Wedia, Sebastien Bardoz helps brands and retailers tackle their marketing operations and digital transformation challenges, including Marketing Resource Management, Digital Asset Management, Digital eXperiences, and Distributed or Channel Marketing platforms. Sebastien spoke with us recently to discuss the foundations of Wedia Group, and the specific services a Digital Asset Management vendor offers clients.
Digital Asset Management
“Wedia started back in 2001,” Sebastien explains, “but we really started selling martech solutions to global enterprises since 2010. We started operations here in Canada in 2020 after the signing of our first client, Hydro-Québec, and after a few years in the North American market. We have about 150 people in multiple countries. Our technology has been recognized by research firms like Gartner and Forrester at multiple occasions since 2016.”
A truly global company, Wedia has offices in the heart of New York City, Paris, and Frankfurt, as well as the recently opened office in Toronto, a few blocks from the CN Tower. The firm works with over 250 enterprise clients, each servicing their own global portfolios.
Wedia solves a multitude of issues for its clients, but tends to the see the following four pain points among its clients: managing the volume and variety of assets, delivering better customer experiences, localizing content while maintaining brand consistency, and making sure all content is in line with particular regulations.
“We have clients such as a home improvement retailer that has more than 5m assets of all the products that they are selling, from lawnmowers to screwdrivers, and they have to manage all of these assets, like images, videos, how-tos and documents in one place, and make sure that its accessible to everybody.”
Another challenge our clients face, like one of our clients in the sporting goods, is that with such a proliferation of e-commerce sites today, they need to make sure they deliver powerful customer experiences and contextually personalized content automatically across all touchpoints. Clients have to showcase their products in all possible outlets, making sure that they are of the best quality to encourage sales. Wedia males this possible by helping them deliver billions of assets every month.
“The third objective is particularly important for global companies, such as our client, an iconic motorcycle brand – they have to make sure that they localize their content to all local needs. It’s translation, but also the specifics of all the markets, like regulation and cultural differences. They want to give the capability to their sales and local teams to customize marketing content in a single place in a simple manner while maintaining brand consistency.”
The last pain point – making sure all regulations are complied with – is most important for highly-regulated industries such as life sciences, banks, financial services and insurance companies, which must adhere to extremely stringent regulations.
“When we started back in 2010 in the Digital Asset Management market, the solution was meant initially only to simply manage a few documents or images and store them in a single place, but over time people and marketers had additional needs.”
These additional needs include creating and delivering personalized content experiences, integrating with the company ecosystem, mastering omnichannel strategies, and measuring the effectiveness of content. Over the years these capabilities have been built into the DAM system.
In April of 2022, Wedia announced the acquisition of Tripnity, creator of Iconosquare, a powerful social media analytics tool that allows Wedia to offer a seamless solution to manage all marketing content and visuals, and dynamically distribute them on all social channels.
“Today, the performance and efficiency of content is key for all marketers. They want to make sure that whatever they are producing is generating value and sales. As such, the acquisition of Iconosquare helps our client to better understand how the asset is performing on the various social networks.”
The longer term goals for the company will begin with strengthening its presence in the Canadian market, growing that arm of the business faster and bringing in an influx of new clients.
“In terms of technology, we are looking at increasing and going deeper into all analytics capabilities in order to make sure that we provide a full dashboard with regards to the assets of our clients. We are also engaged in improving the way artificial intelligence is used to help our clients gain in efficiency.”
Wedia helps large organizations efficiently manage, customize and deliver their marketing assets for more relevance, impact and overall business success. By combining artificial intelligence, computer vision, cognitive networks, and video management, Wedia goes above and beyond to provide the best user experience. Find out more about Wedia Group by visiting www.wedia-group.com.