ResourceSpace customer interview: European Commission

15th February 2021

Dimitrios Koskeridis is a communication consultant for the European Commission.

His role within the Department of International Cooperation and Development requires him to implement tools and strategies that make project management easy and secure. Millions of euros go towards development projects each year, and most are subject to a communication and visibility clause. EU Delegations around the world and implementing partners are sending videos and photographs of projects to get feedback and assistance in distribution from the European Commission HQ in Brussels, facilitating the need for a platform to track and classify the data being shared.

"ResourceSpace was the best solution for this," says Dimitrios.

An integration by ResourceSpace produced the department's Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform, DIVA.. Dimitrios has since taken on the responsibility of managing digital assets on the DIVA platform. The role involves reviewing resources and making sure the keywords and hashtags are properly classified. Colleagues and partners rely on him to advise them on comms campaigns, delivery of visual assets, and compliance with organisational guidelines.

How did the department manage assets before ResourceSpace?

The European Commission has a vast audiovisual platform that is managed by nearly one hundred employees. This is the largest audiovisual library of EU-related content, where journalists and citizens can access and download video and photos produced by all European Union institutional bodies and partners.

However, the platform only stores finished, ready-to-publish versions and not raw footage or unclassified photos that could potentially be used in new communication products. The EU Delegations and partners of the Union around the world needed a space to share raw material and digital resources useful for the whole community in order to produce high-quality content in a coordinated manner.

Before the DIVA/ResourceSpace integration, these assets were stored in local or online shared drives, not centrally managed, making the research process cumbersome, with the danger of losing many of the assets.

Since there are intellectual rights to consider, there are limitations to what kind of data can be exchanged with external partners. Furthermore, the previous setup meant that administrators could not track each asset's source. Without an effective asset classification strategy--or workflows to follow--it was necessary to find a customised solution.

What improvements did the ResourceSpace solution make?

The DIVA/ResourceSpace integration allows the two platforms to complement each other, and resources and assets can be stored and shared by all parties using the correct proprietary metadata.

For Dimitrios, a key benefit of using the ResourceSpace DAM system is centralisation.

"The main purpose and full power of it [ResourceSpace] at the moment is when it comes to photos and videos. We now have one centralised place where raw videos, photos and digital assets are classified with keywords so they can be searched and found easily," he explains.

What made the integration a success?

Onboarding users from EU delegations around the world and helping them to understand what the platform could do was a significant challenge.

"It will only work if you make it work for you," says Dimitrios. "I find ResourceSpace's emails with how-to video content and new ideas very useful.

"I don't find it expensive, and the customer support is good; they are reactive and help you throughout, and they can set it up to do powerful things."

An avid learner, Dimitrios continues to expand his industry knowledge through self-study, and plans to implement the ResourceSpace solution for his other clients.