This Accellion customer (they have asked to remain anonymous) is a leading manufacturer of luxury wrist watches and is one of the world’s most recognizable brands.
A lot more goes into producing fine wrist watches than one would think. Sure, engineering, design, technology and craftsmanship are all critical elements. But so are hi-resolution photos for print and digital ads, design specs for product development, and budgets and sales forecasts for company growth. These aspects of the business may be more mundane however they’re just as important as the art and science of watchmaking.
While the Company’s watchmakers are producing fine timepieces, the corporate side of the business is producing content – lots of content. Typically, this information needs to be shared efficiently and securely to enable the business to run like a fine Swiss…well, you get the idea. Anyway, the Company’s sales and marketing employees relied on a third-party FTP solution to share and collaborate on product designs, advertisements, sales forecasts and other proprietary content with partners in other offices and retail stores.
FTP however was cumbersome to use and administer and did not have the adequate security features to comply with the IT department’s data protection requirements. The Company was open to a cloud solution but it had to seamlessly integrate with the Company’s existing content systems. A Systems Administrator with the Company elaborates, “we were sold on kiteworks’ ability to securely span platforms, providing universal and instant access to files in multiple enterprise content systems, including SharePoint – from laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphones.”
While seamless access to content from any device or location was going to make employees more productive, protecting the Company’s intellectual property was the absolute top priority. The Company therefore deployed kiteworks as an on-premise, private cloud deployment so that IT could have total control of its content, including sole ownership of its encryption keys.
The Company is currently utilizing kiteworks for a variety of projects and workflows. For example, sales managers in the field can photograph and instantly upload and share photos of partner product displays right from their smartphones, without a VPN. kiteworks is also being used by the Company to collaborate with project managers on blueprints and building plans for a large expansion project.
The Company has been very pleased with kiteworks to date and adoption continues to grow. The Systems Administrator concludes, “the beauty of kiteworks is that it just works. It’s a breeze to configure and customer support is excellent but its ability to keep our content secure is the best part and this alone makes the investment worth it.”
To Learn More
To learn more how Accellion helps this luxury brand watch manufacturer collaborate securely and efficiently, download the case study.