HSEvents Webinar 'The Future of Brands: easy access for all'

On the 13th of December 2023, CI HUB was hosting another insightful HSEvents Webinar titled 'The Future of Brands: easy access for all'

Hear from digital experts from Smint.io and CI HUB and learn from their experience in this webinar.

The Future of Brands: easy access for all

How do we get the Brand, through DAM, to become a true companywide asset that everyone can access easily? 

• How to increase the DAM usage inside a company
• How to turn all departments into Brand ambassadors
• What will the CI HUB Connector Corporate do
• What is the CI HUB Drive and what will it do
• Make the Brand front and center for all to use

Speakers:

Gert Fahrnberger
Co-founder and CCO of Smint.io

Andreas Michalski
CEO and founder of CI HUB

Questions & Answers

Question:
Can CI HUB recognize when it is in InDesign as well? Specifically, is there a way for a low-res image to be accessed from a DAM into InDesign to then have the ability to generate a PDF with hi-res replacement?

Answer by Andreas Michalski:
Yes, absolutely. With the CI HUB Connector for Adobe, you have the full capability of having all of your assets in a DAM system, working in the layout with low-res files, and then, whenever you want to have a hi-res pdf you just replace the logo files with the high-res and then you go ahead. So yes, this is one of the original purposes of the CI HUB Connector.

Question:
Does Smint.io have the ability to switch between sub-brands? For example, there is one main brand and other sub-brands with their look and feel within the same company. Can this action also be duplicated with CI HUB?

Answer by Andreas Michalski:
CI HUB has started to introduce an idea that we call “spaces”, to set your contexture environment. Imagine, you have a main brand and you have a sub-brand but the sub-brand may get the asset from a different DAM system. Then you can define your workspace and as soon as you switch to your workspace, the connectivity to different DAM spaces or different folders in the same workspace will automatically switch with it too.

Answer by Gert Fahrnberger:
Yes, you can. There are two ways of doing that. Either you have separate portals with separate domain names, separate URLs, and different designs that you can connect. The other way is to have sub-portals where you have different design- and permission-levels on the sub-portals as well.

Question:
Are there plans to have a connector for Lightroom Classic?

Answer by Andreas Michalski:
I would love to have a Connector for Lightroom Classic but this is still not supported by Adobe. To implement and make a CI HUB Connector available in a program there need to be certain functionalities in the public API and this is just not the case for Lightroom Classic. A lot of customers are asking for that and we will let you know, as soon as this is available. Sign up for the CI HUB newsletter to be kept informed.

Question:
Is CI HUB available as a web SDK to integrate into other solutions?

Answer by Andreas Michalski:
Yes, absolutely. It is. Please send us an email to partner@ci-hub.com to get more information. But yes, this is something we would love to do.

Question:
While a CI HUB Connector can streamline asset access and can be used across various platforms, what about 3D models, textures, etc?

Answer by Andreas Michalski:
Oh, I love that! This is something, that is on our roadmap. We would love to integrate with the Adobe substance, and this is something to be expected by next year.

Question:
What do I do if my DAM does not have the CI HUB Connector?

Answer by Andreas Michalski:
Oh, that’s a question, I really love it! If this is the case, then talk to your DAM vendor to contact us. Creating a new Integration for a DAM system that is not connected yet is a very simple straightforward process and we invite any DAM vendor and PIM vendor to talk with us and leverage our 24 different Connectors for their customers. It is really easy; anyone can work with us.

Question:
Could you elaborate on the possibility of metadata tagging, and also, what about the need to work offline?

Answer by Andreas Michalski:
In general: The CI HUB Connector supports all the metadata that you have in your asset management system depending on the level of your system is integrated, we do allow dynamic metadata, so all the metadata you have in the DAM system will be visible in CI HUB and you can drag and drop all of the metadata into your design. That can be a Word-, a PowerPoint- an InDesign, a Photoshop document or whatever. Just drag & drop the metadata into the asset. We are working with some of the premium vendors on updating metadata in CI HUB and writing it back into the DAM MAM or PIM system and the CI HUB Drive is build for the use case that you do work offline. The amazing thing about CI HUB Drive is: Imagine, you are on the way to your next pitch presentation and before you start you have the folder of your customer downloaded to your machine, you go to your plane, you work in the plane to do some changes on the imagery and as soon as you connect back to wi-fi, all of these changes that you did offline are automatically replicated back into your DAM system. This is a damn good idea because it makes it easy for remote work and we have lots of use cases where especially agencies that do video productions come and use the capability of doing e selective replication for huge assets and they can work without the need of a very capable internet connectivity.

Question:
What kind of different Systems Smint.io is already supporting?

Answer by Gert Fahrenberger:
Smint.io is a very flexible component framework, so it is very easy to have new connectors added. Either individually or as a prioritized part of the product. Currently we support about 15 different systems, we have the most common DAM systems like Aprimo, Bynder, Cloudinary, also European systems like PicturePark or Celum are among them. But also Tenovos and Thrown from Italy are Connectors we have and in addition to that you can also connect to ICM platforms like Google Drive and of course Sharepoint and BOX. Dropbox is “in the making” and we are going to match that as well.

Question:
Is CI HUB following the security requirements of our company?

Answer by Andreas Michalski:
I don’t know the security requirements of your company but one of the things we have build CI HUB on is Data Security, Data Privacy and Compliance with large organizations. The CI HUB Connector never stores any Information in itself so there is no data storage of your corporate data and with the concept of using open out or SSO we have actually passed all of the different security requirements, even from very large finance, insurance and government organizations and we just did an ISO 27 OO1 Certification. So yes, we do everything to make that happen.

Question:
Is there a limit of portals I can use in my organization?

Answer by Gert Fahrnberger:
There is only a commercial limit, so there is none. We have many organizations that are using it as a platform for all sorts of different content portal experiences. And the more portals you are using the less is the prize for one. If you are interested in learning more about that, just get in touch with us.

Question:
How long does it take to implement a Smint.io system?

Answer by Gert Fahrnberger:
Smint.io portals is a standard platform and it comes with a starting point for brand portals for download centers, for press portals for different use cases that take you very far. The technical setup is let’s say even if it’s with a single sign-on and maybe if you are a DAM is not prepared for it probably just a couple of hours. Then the next step is to change it to your design and to your branding which is part of our no-code-platform easily to be done by yourself. The biggest part of implementing it is to fill it with your content. Putting it into a context to your brand assets, your brand guidelines and so for. You will be quicker if you already have brand guidelines defined and all your brand definition and vision done. Then you just have to transfer it to a nice portal experience. Otherwise, it can be a bit longer but of course the main task will be to define your branding and that’s not portal work.

Question:
How can we try and test the CI HUB Connector?

Answer by Andreas Michalski:
This is really simple. You can just go to our website ci-hub.com, you can go to the Adobe store or to the Microsoft store, download the CI HUB Connector and it’s really easy, it takes two minutes to install it and you always have a 30-days free-trial version, you can play around with the full capabilities, you can connect it to what-ever-system you have access to and you can try and test everything before you decide on getting it for your organization.

Question:
Does Smint.io already have a connector with Tenovos?

Answer by Gert Fahrnberger:
Yes, absolutely. And also several customers who are using it with Tenovos.