CHALLENGE:  With a team of 200+ creatives worldwide, MarketScale faced challenges with file management and secure asset sharing between key collaborators & clients. MarketScale tried relying upon on virtual machines and cloud systems like Box, but experienced delays from slow transfers and missing assets. Maintaining an IT staff to manage servers and remote machines also added complexity & cost as its dispersed team expanded.

WHY SUITE? Suite transforms MarketScale’s workflow, delivering 25% time savings on video projects uploads and downloads alone—that’s 1,200 labor hours monthly of time back. Suite’s cloud-native filesystem reduces transfer times, allowing editors to access & edit media directly from the cloud the moment it’s uploaded. Suite’s SSO integration and file permissions also exceed MarketScale’s vigorous security protocols, improving reliability overall.

CORE INSIGHTS:

• 200+ users on Suite
• 1200 labor hours saved per month
• 90 minutes saved on uploads & download—per video
• SSO integration and permissions play a crucial role
• Remote creatives in 38 countries

“We're always looking at new tools—with Suite we found a golden nugget.”

— Alex LeBlanc, Director of Production, MarketScale

Tapping into an audience and promoting engagement within it—the crux of every marketing team’s efforts. But who really needs an agency when you have excited customers, die-hard fans, and insightful thought-leaders on your team? Nobody. And that’s where MarketScale makes its claim.  At its core, MarketScale is a software company that equips B2B companies with the tools to harness the power of the crowd, turning fans and subject matter experts into content creators. In turn, this professionally captured & curated video content makes it possible for a range of brands to access & capitalize on their network. By taking a community-first approach to content, MarketScale puts creative direction & execution back in the hands of those who really matter.

While the well-polished video content & digital-first marketing materials that MarketScale helps its clients create ensures each & every brand shines its brightest, until recently the inner-workings of MarketScale’s workflow had its troubles, explains Director of Post Production, Alex LeBlanc, who manages over 200 individual editors (mostly remote) from his desk in Dallas, Texas. “Our team is completely global,” he explains. “We don't focus on location—we focus on skill. There’s a proximity thought that comes to production & post; the Suite platform opens the door to seeking out the best talent available for the job, eliminating any distance.”

Allowing MarketScale to grow effortlessly without investing in costly hardware & IT management, and enabling hundreds of remote editors & project supervisors to share assets securely from anywhere, Suite’s cloud storage lets MarketScale work to its potential, without the headaches. Here's the full story of how it came together.

Decentralized Collaboration… The Hard Way

Heading into 2024, the team at MarketScale realized it needed more video professionals to match demand on the platform—great for business, not for streamlined workflows. “We started bringing in remote editors, then we wondered: How the heck do we get them access to the media?” reflects LeBlanc. “We created virtual machines with computers in our closet; at one point we had 40 remote machines running in a server room connected by a NAS—but we kept needing more.”

LeBlanc then tried implementing Box, but the numerous uploads and downloads required for media to remain current caused trouble, and longer timelines. “The worst way of doing it,” he remarks. “We had to employ an entire IT staff to manage, maintain, and run the server room full of editing computers and render farms. When we started to decentralize & allow creators to work off of their own machines, we also ran into a ton of issues. For instance, an editor wouldn’t provide all the assets; that could result in a two- or three-day delay getting files sent over, instead of knocking out what should have been a simple revision for the client.”

Significant delays & difficult file management halted creativity—even worse, it became nearly impossible for LeBlanc to oversee media effectively on such a large scale, posing security threats & potential risks for MarketScale’s clients. LeBlanc knew there had to be a better way…

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“I was so freaking tired of working that way,” laments LeBlanc. “There were constant problems. One day, I was sitting in my car, and I had four phone calls from editors missing assets. After I hung up, I pulled out my phone and the first thing at the top of my feed on Instagram was an ad for Suite. After that, I talked with our Director of Post Production, Shannon Willey, and said: I would give all of my money to Suite if it could solve my problems. Now, we’re at the point where we're seeing how many tools we can eliminate and [replace with] Suite.”

Why Suite?

For LeBlanc and his wide-ranging team of remote editors, it was necessary to find a solution that not only worked intuitively, but was simple to adopt and provided the necessary security features for such a broad platform of creatives. First, the familiar interface on Suite proved easy-to-use for key players. “Editors were able to download and install Suite in under two minutes and start working right away,” he says. “Now, I have editors asking me to get rid of the rest of our remote machines and put everything on Suite.”

In LeBlanc’s seat, however, “security is what really sealed the deal.” In part, this is due to the way Suite handles data stored on the cloud on a granular level: When uploading data to Suite’s cloud-native filesystem, those files are broken into blobs. This ensures data remains secure in-transit & at-rest, but also isn’t accessible without Suite’s filesystem to put the pieces back together.

SSO and one-click admin settings that enable (or disable) granular permissions for every individual connected to Suite also have a big impact for MarketScale’s complicated workflow. For LeBlanc, who manages so many editors & artists, this provides unspeakable peace of mind. “Let's say I have to remove an editor; if I cut their access to our SSO, every bit of data stored on their Cache drive is now useless. They can't access those files, do anything malicious.”

Lastly, Suite’s file transfer tool, Suite Connect, is a game-changer for LeBlanc & his team. This two-way transfer tool lets LeBlanc’s editors upload media directly into Suite from anywhere, while also giving the team the ability to create easy download links to share media with external collaborators directly from the cloud-connected Suite Dive… without ever bringing media local. “Suite is adding features that solve problems for not just videographers, editors or admins—you’re solving problems that many people face being in this industry,” says LeBlanc

Rollout & Implementation at Scale

How is it possible to completely revamp a workflow that spans hundreds of individual creatives across the globe? Starting small, examining the pros & cons, and putting Suite to the test in real-time, on real projects, helped LeBlanc & his team flip the switch. “Everything that we hated about our old system, the new system solved,” he says. With the ability to cache (and pre-cache) data on a local SSD, Suite enables even faster editing—and an opportunity for LeBlanc to send each of his editors the gift of a brand new SSD to use alongside the updated workflow.

“We invested back into our community. Now, all they want to do is use Suite—and they want me to get rid of our the rest of our server room,” he comments. “When switching to Suite, putting these hard drives in the mail was an opportunity to show that we're investing in a new system we know is going to change how they work. If you try to drag an editor to a new system completely out of the blue, it's not going to work; but if you can find a tool where all you need to do is work the same way you normally would, the adaptation is almost instant.”

“I had so many editors tell me that there's no way this is going to work out,” continues LeBlanc. “The moment my editors realized they didn't have to use Box; to store files locally; to go onto a remote machine to render something; that they could do every aspect of work from their computer… that was the ‘aha’ moment for my team.”

Final Thoughts

For MarketScale’s global team of editors & creatives, the results of using Suite’s cloud storage manifest daily in significant ways. “During the process of revisions, we were able to reduce time spent uploading & downloading on each individual video by 90 minutes,” LeBlanc says. “That’s 1,200 labor hours saved every month.”

While the time saved on file transfers alone speaks volumes to Suite’s ability to streamline dispersed workflows, the cost-savings LeBlanc experiences avoiding server-room management and the baked-in security features that come standard made it a no-brainer switch to the cloud. If an issues arises, LeBlanc also recognizes that Suite’s lightning-fast customer support is there to assist. “We're always looking at new tools—with Suite we found a golden nugget.”

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