International Marketing Agency Sharing Large Files, GDPR Compliance
Client Profile
Perceptible Group’s mission is to bring intelligent engagement that fosters outside-in thinking using a valuable suite of marketing and communication products and services. As an agency and MSP, Perceptible has locations in Canada, the USA and the UK and has earned the trust of clients around the world, many of whom have multiple locations globally themselves. They have found that if every part of an organization is intelligently engaged, with the customer at the centre of everything they do, communication will flow and community will grow. Outside-in thinking ensures that engagement is customer driven and brings positive results.
Perceptible is a team of experienced product, marketing and business strategists, talented creatives, designers and content creators and thoughtful web, mobile and application developers that conceive and create new marketing approaches, web sites, mobile apps, print and epublications and community management platforms for both private and public sector clients.
“Cost per user is very small compared to using DropBox as there is no limit on file transfer size and all files stay in their source locations and are not duplicated elsewhere – perfect for GDPR compliance. And clients find it very easy to use. So support is very easy. Once it is up and running it is a no-brainer.”
– Philip Bliss, CEO of Perceptible
The Challenge
As an international marketing agency and technology platform developer Perceptible is in a unique position both to provide agency services to their clients globally, but also support their clients acquisition of technical services. In this Perceptible had encountered a number of technical challenges:
- Regularly need to present work in progress with clients, often requiring the client have access to very large data files in a range of formats
- Media such as video needs to be presented to the client but not downloaded by them so the presentation quality needs to be like it was resident on their computer. Adding to the challenge, the client may be half a world away.
- Some clients want assurances that what is being developed for them is treated with the highest level of security possible so common public cloud file share may be considered an unacceptable approach.
- Need a lot of eyes on the content for approvals and collaboration – but have to keep the copyright intact and secure.
- Prototyping – at the concept stage that you don’t want people being able to copy, edit, sharing at that stage.
- Clients are increasingly scrutinizing their data security, particularly in Europe under the recently launched GDPR regime.
- As an MSP Perceptible’s clients are seeking solutions that enables GDPR compliance – increased desire to keep data behind their own firewall.
Project Summary
As an agency and MSP, Perceptible has locations in Canada, the USA and the UK and has earned the trust of clients around the world, many of whom have multiple locations globally themselves. As this global business expands so does the expectation for near on demand access to information, coupled with requirements for the protection of that information. Most recently, the establishment and roll-out of the GDPR has made security even more top of mind particularly for clients that have business in or access to European customer data.
Key Project Components
A solution was sought that could satisfy the necessary security, quality and availability requirements
- Perceptible has very large amounts of content that have to be shared including video that has to look as good remotely as it does next to the video server. Experience with many of the cloud sharing aps had been unsatisfactory in terms of delivering production like quality. “In our business the details are important, when a client looks at our work in progress it has to look as we intend it to look – no color degradation, speed issues or pixelization/clipping due to bandwidth issues with the cloud providers” Philip Bliss, CEO Perceptible.
- The solution needs to be easy for the end customer to access. Expecting a client to create multiple DropBox accounts and trying to manage permissions and rules is not practical. A variety of cloud solutions were tried including WeTransfer and DropBox but managing the accounts and access rules was painful. While BlackBerry on premises was secure it wasn’t really easy for users.
- The security and access to the content being shared must be carefully monitored to ensure intellectual property is maintained.
- In providing a solution for their customers compliance needs, like GDPR, is an increasing driver. For example, a financial services client has to keep all data behind their firewall. How to accommodate that in a cloud sharing environment became a critical issue.
- FileFlex was deployed as the solution that met all the necessary functional requirements and also enabled GDPR compliance. Perceptible uses it on the agency side with clients and now resells it to facilitate the same advantages for others.
Project Outcomes
- Implemented FileFlex to collaborate with clients and now resell FileFlex to customers as a solution.
- Have a better file share for rich media without using the cloud, more secure, better quality and user experience.
- “Cost per user is very small compared to using DropBox as there is no limit on file transfer size and all files stay in their source locations – perfect for GDPR compliance. Clients find it very easy to use. We love it because once it is up and running it is a no brainer.”
- The company can share anywhere in the world with no loss of quality or security. And now their FileFlex customers around the world including Europe, US, Asia can do the same. “Your device becomes your own personal cloud.”
- Now clients that have new, more stringent, cloud regulations like GDPR have all the benefits without the risk – they know where their data is at all times and if their customers request deletion or access there is no concern with where it may be in the cloud.