ClearStory Systems Partners With Grace & Wild To Provide DAM-as-a-Service

Value-Add for Customers Creates Niche for New Revenues and Client Retention

Westborough, MA, December 14, 2007- ClearStory Systems, an established provider of contemporary digital asset management (DAM) announces that Grace & Wild, a leading provider of video and post-production services has integrated their system as a means of competitive differentiation and service. DAM has historically been utilized to improve companies’ own internal operations and production environments by better managing projects and streamlining workflow. Grace & Wild has capitalized on a new trend to offer this service outbound to mange clients’ digital media.

Through Grace & Wild’s fully web-based DAM solution, branded “FinishLine,” the company is able to shorten cycle times and meet client demand for faster time-to-market with multi-channel delivery of commercials and other projects. At the same time, Grace & Wild adds value and secures client relationships through web-based services such as an online client project library.

“FinishLine provides a vehicle for direct interaction among project team members, whether they are our team members, our customer, or third party partners,” says Keith Neff, Grace & Wild’s chief technology officer. “Regardless of the media type, we easily find, access, edit, share, reuse, distribute, and archive assets with the ability to support multi-channel distribution of all our projects,” continues Neff.

Benefits to Grace & Wild include the ability to finish projects faster with shorter turnaround times than the competition. Benefits to both Grace &Wild teams and their clients are the opportunities for closer collaboration, which result in an improved creative environment and streamlined production workflow. With such services as online job libraries, review and approval solutions, media transformation and delivery, FinishLine has often been the deciding factor when Grace & Wild is competing for new business. In addition, DAM SaaS has enough value that clients are willing to pay for the service, which offers a new revenue stream for Grace & Wild.

ClearStory’s software as a service business model aims to solve a problem that many creative organizations are grappling with today. ClearStory sees a larger global trend among companies to outsource their digital media needs with Web-based applications. Compared to the traditional practice of buying hardware and software and implementing everything internally on an enterprise platform, Web-based applications promise to be more efficient, affordable solution for organizations with limited IT bandwidth and resources. ClearStory expects more and more companies like Grace & Wild to exploit this market opportunity with hosted digital media solutions for their clients.

"As time goes on, more opportunities will present themselves for digital asset management as an online service," says Susan Worthy, ClearStory Systems VP of Marketing, referring to the paradigm in which media management is outsourced as an online service. “ActiveMedia allows digital media and graphic service providers to take baby steps or giant leaps as their business models shift to more innovative, technology-based services. Whether they are a large media service provider or a regional printer we can help them achieve their strategic vision.”

About ClearStory Systems
ClearStory Systems is the leader in high-performance solutions for digital media communications. ClearStory software manages the enterprise digital media supply chain – from creation and collaboration, to lifecycle management and delivery – to give companies a competitive advantage, marketing agility, cost avoidance, and maximum efficiency. Backed by premier customer support and service, ClearStory’s award-winning products are easy to use and readily align with our customers’ business objectives for both a rapid return-on-investment and low total cost of ownership. For more information, visit www.clearstorysystems.com.