WellSpan Health

WellSpan Health is a comprehensive healthcare system in South-Central Pennsylvania and parts of Northern Maryland. The organization operates eight hospitals and 220 patient care locations. These include specialty centers dedicated to stroke, endovascular disease, and cancer treatment; services such as diagnostic imaging and laboratory testing; rehabilitation, primary care, and urgent care facilities; and the retail sale of medical equipment and pharmaceuticals. 

WellSpan is dedicated to its mission of “Working as ONE to improve health through exceptional care for all, lifelong wellness and healthy communities.” By emphasizing the word “ONE” in its mission statement, the organization makes clear that, despite its many distinct locations with different functions and specialties, they all work together towards a common goal:  providing exceptional care to the people of the region they serve. 

“Working as ONE” is a philosophy embraced by every part of WellSpan, including the teams managing its marketing or creative content. Keeping this in mind, WellSpan’s creative leadership team was committed to developing a digital asset management (DAM) program that incorporated the necessary people, processes, and technology platforms to support their future vision for the brand. 

In this short video, Marco Ceo, Senior Director of WellSpan’s creative studio, discusses how the company successfully implemented a DAM program with Victoria Morgan, Customer Advocacy Marketing Manager at Bynder, and Ben Owen, Sales and Marketing Manager at Stacks. The conversation centers on how WellSpan successfully built, launched, and grew its DAM program through strategic partnerships, its value to the creative team, and what the future holds for both the program and the brand.

Key Takeaways From the WellSpan Story

Select the Right Partners

From the beginning of the project, WellSpan put first things first by ensuring they assembled the right team to effectively build, launch, and grow a DAM platform that would meet and exceed their needs. For some organizations, this might involve hiring or empowering full-time staff members. For others, like WellSpan, it can mean bringing in partners to provide expertise, support, and additional human resources to meet their DAM needs.

For many organizations, one of the most important partners in DAM is their DAM platform vendor. As Marco mentions, WellSpan issued a request-for-proposal (RFP) to several vendors, evaluated their options, and ultimately chose Bynder, a leader in the DAM space. Bynder provides scalable and robust DAM software out of the box. It also has a team of professionals dedicated to helping organizations get their systems up and running and providing value. In addition, Bynder offers specific modules to enhance a DAM program’s functionality including Brand Guidelines, Templates, and Dynamic Asset Transformation (DAT. The DAT module allows DAM systems to adapt and deliver assets in different formats, sizes, resolutions, or orientations as needed. Bynder also has an incredible customer success team that supplies its clients with analytics to guide their future decision-making around content.

Even with Bynder’s support, the WellSpan team realized they needed additional expertise and resources to effectively manage and grow their DAM program. One of the first fruits of its partnership with Bynder was another partnership, this time with Stacks. Stacks is a team of DAM managers with extensive experience in both Bynder specifically and DAM more broadly. It provided WellSpan with the support it needed and also brought expertise and vision to its DAM program.

Effectively Manage Transition Period

One of the most critical things that Marco highlighted was the importance of managing transition periods when building a DAM program. He referenced several instances where having a clear DAM vision and reliable partners ensured that all tasks were completed, the next steps were clearly defined and communicated, and users felt taken care of. 

While times of change like this can present opportunities for an organization,  they can also destabilize and confuse teams using and managing digital content. For example, the migration of assets to a new DAM platform can mean they aren’t accessible to people who need them but haven’t been trained on the new system yet. 

The rollout of a new DAM program to end users can lead to chaos, confusion, frustration, and low adoption rates if it isn’t managed well. Investing the time, money, and brain power to ensure the transition to a new system goes smoothly is critical to the long-term success of a new program.

Use Your DAM Vision to Drive Decision Making

Any good strategy starts with a solid, well-thought-out vision. The same is true for DAM. Your DAM vision should align with broader organizational goals to ensure that the program supports the key performance indicators (KPIs) your leadership team wants to achieve. 

Your vision should be easy to remember and inspiring to program stakeholders, driving enthusiasm for and adoption of the DAM program. It should also facilitate and inform the more tactical, in-the-weeds decision-making that DAM admins, leaders, and users make daily. 

During the discussion, Marco mentioned ways the Stacks team helps the WellSpan team keep its long-term vision in mind when they discuss weekly projects and monthly goals. Every project, task, and activity in the DAM program contributes to achieving this vision. The Stacks team helps ensure not only that regular tasks are executed, but also that long-term goals are achieved.