It’s FotoWare for Hamburg Süd
For corporate communications, Hamburg Südamerikanische Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft KG (Hamburg Süd), a shipping company founded in 1871 with around 4,700 employees worldwide and 300 offices, uses FotoWare Cameleon Web to manage the company’s current and archival image collection.
The corporate communications department is responsible for worldwide internal and external communication for Hamburg Süd. Suitable images need to be available at short notice for employee newspaper production and brochure design as well as for the publication of press information. Given the ever rising tide of images as a consequence of digital photography it is increasingly difficult to meet this demand. This necessitated professional management of images and other media.
After a comprehensive test phase and evaluation of various vendors the shipping group decided at the end of 2008 on the product FotoWare Cameleon Web. Clinching the sale were the software’s clear and simple structure, service on site and the Norwegian supplier’s years of experience in the area of printing.
According to Carsten Jordan, the project manager in charge of introducing the system, the high expectations of his colleagues were fulfilled: “First, the response time for photo requests has been cut considerably, and second, for the first time we are able to have a complete overview of all the photos that are important to us. So in the future we will know more precisely, for example, whether we need to commission new image material from photographers or if we will be able to fall back on material we already have. For us this means considerable synergies and cost savings.”
Image processing, too, is substantially simplified, according to Rainer Behrens, who is in charge of the image archive: “Since we have been working with the new system, for the first time it has been possible to furnish large quantities of images with ready-made metadata quickly at the touch of a button or to attach individual information to them. The time saving is enormous, as we no longer have to select each image laboriously from folders and DVDs like before, but have relevant images at our fingertips so to speak.”
“The FotoWeb module also gives selected agencies and freelancers access over the Internet to the multimedia archive. Here, too, we expect further synergies,” says Jordan.
“First, the response time for photo requests has been cut considerably and second, for the first time we are able to have a complete overview of all the photos that are important to us.”
Carsten Jordan - Hamburg Süd, Germany
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