copy written for LucidLink
Shopify is a
leading provider of essential internet infrastructure for e-commerce, offering
trusted tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business of any size.
The Shopify platform offers online retailers services, including payments,
marketing, shipping, and customer engagement tools. Founded in Ottawa, Shopify
powers millions of businesses in more than 175 countries and is trusted by
brands such as Allbirds, Gymshark, Heinz, Tupperware, FTD, Netflix, FIGS, and
many more.
article here
Shopify’s creative
powerhouse
To maintain the
quality of its leading e-commerce brand, Shopify has built an internal creative
team handling marketing communications. Most of the content they produce is
centered around video. “We are not a creative agency, but we have the in-house
skills to film and produce video content addressing an array of communications
needs of our staff and clients,” shares Kevin Luttman, Content Management Lead,
Shopify. “Our content ranges from corporate messages and executive talks to
training and guides on new features.”
IT is the backbone
of their media production pipeline, connecting dozens of creatives across
multiple teams. They are primarily based in North America but regularly
collaborate with people all over the world.
The challenge of
adapting to remote work
Like many other
businesses, Covid-19 completely disrupted the established ways of working at
Shopify. “Before the pandemic, most company investments were concentrated on
the office, and all of our servers were installed on site,” says Luttman.
“There was no need for Shopify to build infrastructure supporting remote video
work – no one was asking for it.”
“The pandemic
flipped our strategy on its head virtually overnight. We had to find a way to
continue working but in an entirely decentralized fashion,” adds Luttman.
Shopify faced the
seemingly impossible challenge of having multiple distributed editors working
on the same project — simultaneously.
The company needed
a robust, secure solution to connect its creative teams collaborating on shared
data-rich assets. “Neither Dropbox nor WeTransfer are approved solutions at
Shopify. The last thing we wanted to do was to equip our people with RAID
systems or massive local storage. Not only would that be a security risk, but
also administering and maintaining distributed hardware was not something we
were set up to do,” Luttman explains.
Enter LucidLink
Shopify’s creative
team first heard about LucidLink during conversations with Adobe. “We were
discussing whether Adobe Productions and our primary editing tool, Premiere
Pro, would work better using a VPN or sharing a central SAN over the Internet,”
Luttman recalls. LucidLink was recommended to Shopify as the only officially
sanctioned solution for use with Productions over the Internet.
“We ran LucidLink
through internal validation tests using Adobe Productions and almost couldn’t
believe it at first. What initially struck us was how easy it was for creatives
to use Filespaces. Sharing files was intuitive and rapid. The response
from employees was equally enthusiastic.”
Shopify was able to
immediately onboard 100 members of their marketing communications team and now
has more than 120 people collaborating on LucidLink every day. These include
teams of editors, producers, directors of photography (DoPs), production staff,
and heads of departments who require visibility over multiple projects.
“Everyone can access media assets far more quickly than before, and team
collaboration is enabled from anywhere,” says Luttman.
Efficiency
supercharged
The most
significant benefit of LucidLink was the amount of time it saved Shopify.
Conventionally, if you’re collaborating remotely, you would go through the
laborious process of uploading, downloading, and relinking every single file,”
Luttman points out.
It meant that one
of Shopify’s creatives could finish up their work on a file or project
and save it in Premiere. Immediately, another creative, across the other side
of the world, could access it and begin editing.
Shopify didn’t have
to quantify the costs as the results in speed and efficiency were clear. “If
you are looking for a tool that lets creatives just be creative, then
LucidLink is the way to go. Using LucidLink is a no-brainer,” insists Luttman.
Everyone wants technology to be invisible and simply work in the background.
“Technology shouldn’t require any complicated setup or complex training. It
should just work – and LucidLink does just that. Try it! It will forever change
how you work remotely,” Kevin Luttman, Shopify.
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