Change is everything
Being able to quickly adapt to new circumstances can be vital in todays marketing landscape. New channels should be supported, new formats are requested and more information is necessary.
This can be a difficult task for a photo studio that has spent lots og time and money in rigging the studio and workflow, changing this is something that isn’t done easily.
Is your current solution really perfect?
If you are stuck with a technical solution that is tailored to to your current operation and workflows it may feel like the perfect solution, until you need to change. This is when the nightmare starts.
If something is to be changed, the business needs to understand the challenge at hand and then specify a required change. These requirements should then be sent to the developer or IT department to order have the change implemented.
The above makes you not want to start a development project for small things. Therefore, IT and/or your developing partner will urge you to wait and collect many changes and run a larger development project. The consequence is that necessary changes take time and become very extensive.
Welcome to the modern world of SaaS!
What is a modern solution? How does it operate? What are the benefits?
In a modern world we are steadily moving towards cloud based services, some are faster to adopt and some are slower but we will move there and this goes for studio work as well. What are the driving forces to run your studio management platform in the cloud?
You can set up your own server in the cloud 0R you may subscribe to an application that operates in the cloud, this is generally called a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution.
There are essentially four benefits with a SaaS solution:
- Back up and maintenance
- Scalability and alternative storage
- Speed of change
- Easy Integration and open API’s
Back up and maintenance
Regardless if you have a server locally or in the cloud or use a SaaS solution you often need back up and maintenance. The cost of maintenance on a locally installed server is traditionally very high where as the cloud service is far less costly.
If you run your own server in the cloud you still have to maintain staff to monitor and maintain the server. However, if you run a SaaS solution you let someone else worry about maintenance and making sure that the server is constantly up and running.
Scalability
Being able to scale up is important if you don’t want to be stuck with to little capacity or if you don’t want to have excess capacity all the time. In the cloud services, it is easy to add capacity as you grow. You don’t need to by new hard drives or add new servers.
Many may argue that the cost of storage in the cloud can be high but this is an over-exaggerated fear, cot is generally very low. Furthermore you may use both Hot storage and Cold storage. Hot storage is the storage you use on a daily basis and Cold storage is a storage that harder to access but the cost is dramatically lower. Cold storage is generallyy good for things you don’t use but don’t want to throw away.
Speed of change
Traditional servers are slow to adopt new technology, it takes a long time and requires a lot of man-hours to upgrade and update a server or application. This is the Case for both running the application on your Own servers or using a cloud service to run it.
With the SaaS solution it is completely different. Here the vendor will constantly update the application and add new features and functions. For a studio with limited technical skills this could be a great option as you don’t have to worry so much about performance and technical evolution.
Easy integration
Integration is something that doesn’t come easy in any platform, especially not in locally installed applications. It is somewhat taken for granted that this is something that is done by you local IT organisation or by your IT partner. And often the application vendors are not providing tools to easily do this.
When you move to a SaaS solution it is core to provide easy integration. This is necessary for two reasons:
- You cant let your integration partner change the platform as the SaaS vendor will constantly update and upgrade the application. It would be impossible to keep track of all the local adaptations. Hence, the SaaS vendor must provide good integration som that anyone can interact with the platform with ease
- As the application lives in the cloud in a domain owned and managed by the SaaS vendor it is essential that the application can interact with the customers internal systems with ease. Hence it is important to provide open integration technology, often called open API’s. This are documented ways to communicate with the application.
Conclusion
You may be satisfied with your current solution but is it future proof? It may do the job you want it to do today but what about tomorrow?
Any photo studio would like to create great content and not focus so much on technology and development. Yet, all photo studios are under pressure to adapt to new requirements, new channels should be supported new formats must be provided and more content per product.
It is not easy for a photo studio to manage these new circumstances. Choosing a SaaS solution that is dedicated for studio work is one way to get ahead. If that solution is more of a toolkit that you may change, adapt and manage yourself, it would be even better
ProStudio for workflow is a SaaS solution that is future proof and gives you the tool to drive your own successful change. With ProStudio for workflow, we want to help you excel in your creativity.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us for more information
