Our customer service department at MerlinOne gets rave reviews from Merlin users. I know, because they, our customers, reported as much in a survey a few years ago, and they continue to sing their praises when I visit with them.
Usually my contact with the Merlin user community is during phone calls, web-based training and the periodic webinars and Merlin Users Group (MUG) meetings we hold.
Not this week however. This week I am visiting a number of our customers near Providence in person.
My trip started with a visit to one of our newer customers, Providence College. I spent the morning with members of their Marketing and Communications department. They already have over fifty thousand images stored in their Merlin Digital Asset Management system and have figured out that managing metadata is important and will pay dividends in the future. We had some great questions from the user community and it was a chance for me to remind them about how powerful searching in Merlin can be, with the ability to search not only specific dates, but date ranges or how to use Boolean operators and fuzzy searching to quickly find what you are looking for. Because Merlin tracks download usage, it is easy to see who, and even how, content was previously used.
Never one to miss a chance to show off, I showed users what to look forward to in the upcoming release of MerlinX, our web-based client…specifically exporting directly to social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter as well as the powerful new web upload form.
My next stop, the Providence Journal, a long-time Merlin customer. Content in their Merlin DAM goes back to before 1990 and they have over 4 million items stored. We chatted about how important Trax was to their workflow, especially as photographers handle more assignments every day. Trax makes it easy to find assignment requests from the past, and important notes and contact information may be stored in Trax and easily retrieved. Michael Delaney of the Providence Journal showed me their “analog” assignment request system from 1979, a log book with each day’s requests recorded.
My week has barely started. I will visit the New York Power Authority and Save the Children this week with a final stop at Landov, the New York City-based photo agency that uses Merlin to distribute their content to their users.
What does MerlinOne get out of this? A chance to see how our customers use Merlin in their day-to-day operations. If we see something that is taking more mouse clicks then it should, that gets discussed with developers so that possible solutions may be engineered. Most of the great features in Merlin are a direct response to our customers.
If you would like to learn more about MerlinOne’s products and services please…..
Email us at sales@MerlinOne.com
MerlinOne’s David Breslauer outside Harkins Hall at Providence College