Instant replay

The Chicago White Sox, jubilant 2005 World Series champions, can savor that victory even more with the help of a digital asset management solution upgrade the organization has implemented.

The Chicago White Sox has deployed Portfolio 8 from Extensis, a division of Celartem. With the solution, many departments within the organization are able to access instantly the team's library of more than 30,000 images. Those departments include public relations, sales, corporate partnerships, scoreboard operations, publications, design services and marketing. And before long, partners, vendors and sponsors will be able to access the images through an implementation of Portfolio NetPublish Server that is underway.

The White Sox organization first purchased Extensis software in 1999 to help the team photographer manage hundreds of images collected during each game. After that, Portfolio Server was installed, enabling dozens of additional users to access the photographs without requiring the photographer to find and manually distribute them.

Says the White Sox team photographer, Ron Vesely, "When people learned how easy it was to access my images using Portfolio, it took a lot of the work off of my back and allowed our departments to self-manage themselves in regards to the photographs they required. I would always rather work smart than hard, and Portfolio helps me work smart."

In addition to easing distribution of photos inside the organization, the system is also used for external partners, sponsors and members of the press. The solution also has a feature that makes it easy to e-mail original files, or generate low-resolution preview files, directly from within the program, a recent press release from Extensis reports.

"It can be hard to quantify value when it comes to a sponsorship deal. Using the solution, the White Sox are able to easily show our partners photographic documentation of what their sponsorship includes," says Jorie Sax, coordinator of corporate partnerships for the White Sox.