Auditing your assets
Auditing your collected assets is a crucial step in prioritizing important files for fixing first. With assets gathered, your team can then decide which assets have been highly utilized in the production process over the past several months or are continually recurring projects, versus which assets are finished items and used purely for reference and rare revisits. We recommend splitting your assets into these two groups – Current Projects and Archival Projects.
Current projects:
Current projects are the files your organization uses regularly. These assets are part of current or ongoing work for your organization or your client(s). They may also include popular files repeatedly used to follow things like branding guidelines, such as logos, graphics, templates, etc.
Archival Projects:
Archival Projects are files that your organization wishes to retain but are not part of any current work. They may be internal files or work for clients, but these assets no longer require modification. They are retained for posterity, inspiration, and reference. However, because these assets may need to be available later, ensuring their ongoing compatibility is essential for current and future projects.
When reviewing your assets, we recommend keeping both project types in mind, but prioritizing the current projects. Consider the resources you have available to work on this issue, without causing undue burden to existing work and deadlines. Focus on what’s best for your organization when moving your assets to Extensis Connect. Bear in mind that doing nothing also has an impact to your workflow and can be worse than making a start on fixing your documents. You may also decide to update archival projects when they are revisited one-by-one, rather than processing them in bulk, as they can distract from the priority documents and put an undue burden to your time.
When auditing your organizations assets, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do I need continual access to all assets?
- Has this asset been used in the past several months?
- When was it last used?
- How often is it used?
- Will this asset impact future work?
- Is it still relevant?
- Should it be archived?
- Is this asset a Template for your organization or a client?
- Is this asset a Brand Guide for your organization or a client?
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