As you plan for the upcoming year, you may find yourself evaluating the technology that supports your business. While your existing image and video systems might be adequate for now, the need for improvement and modernization is inevitable. But the prospect of switching platforms can be daunting. There are budget constraints, migration complexities, training requirements, approval processes, inherent security risks, and adoption challenges to keep in mind.

Faced with these obstacles, you might be tempted to do nothing and simply make do with your current systems. But is that the best decision for your business in the long run? Is it better to make it work, or make a change?

This guide dives into the significant costs of staying with outdated systems and the incredible ROI potential of adopting an AI-powered visual API platform, providing the information you need to make an informed decision for the future.

What if you choose to do nothing? To keep the legacy image and video systems in place and try to adjust your own processes to make the platform still relatively viable? Sticking with outdated or inadequate systems can lead to several significant and costly issues: 

• Lower productivity. Legacy systems often require manual processes that are time-consuming and prone to errors. The performance of manual tasks that could be automated reduces overall productivity and pulls resources away from more strategic initiatives.
• Poor visual experiences for customers. Slow and cumbersome systems can negatively impact the quality of visual content delivered to customers, leading to poor user experiences and diminished brand perception.
• Slower time to market. Inefficient workflows and outdated technology can delay new product and feature launches, making it harder to keep up with competitors and market demands.
• Inability to adapt to latest trends. Technology is constantly evolving, and staying with old systems can hinder your ability to leverage new trends and innovations.
• High maintenance cost. Keeping legacy systems running requires significant investment in maintenance and support, usually exceeding the initial system cost.
• Limited scalability. Older systems often struggle to scale with growing business needs, causing bottlenecks.

— Pavel Pratyush, Chief Technology Officer, Deporvillage

— Roy Saadon, Vice President and Head of Product Technology, WingTai Asia

What if you choose to make a change? To replace the outdated, inefficient systems dragging down your team? Switching to the right image and video API platform can bring incredible benefits and ROI to your business.

Traditionally, the task of creating, adapting, and managing image and video assets has been a significant drain on resources. Editing, enhancing, and reformatting assets for specific platforms is a manual, time-consuming, and error-prone process. The right AI-powered image and video API platform can automate these tasks, transforming visual assets quickly and accurately. This improvement in efficiency allows employees to reallocate their time to higher-value work, leading to significant cost savings and more resources available for revenue-focused initiatives.

The financial impact of optimized visual experiences can’t be overstated. The right image and video API platform can deliver faster loading pages, resulting in reduced bounce rates, increased user engagement, and higher conversion rates. In retail, even a one-second delay in load time can impact conversion by up to 20%. These quantifiable gains in efficiency translate directly into improved profitability. Beyond the bottom line, optimized visual experiences offer intrinsic benefits like better customer experience and brand loyalty, fostering long-term revenue growth. Customers are more likely to return to a website that offers a buffer-free, visually appealing experience, creating a steady stream of repeat business.

Time to market is a critical factor for business success. AI-powered image and video API platforms play a pivotal role in enabling faster time to market for new products and features by automating the transformation and delivery of visual assets. This accelerates product launches and keeps businesses agile in responding to market trends and customer demands. Optimized visuals can significantly improve a company's SEO rankings, attracting more organic web traffic and freeing up marketing budget for targeted, paid campaigns. Because the platform’s AI can deliver engaging visuals that resonate with customers, brands see higher conversion rates and increased revenue.

One of the key advantages of using an AI-powered image and video API platform to manage visual content is its flexibility. The platform’s AI can adapt visual assets to different channels, devices, and user contexts. This adaptability is crucial in an era of constantly evolving technology, ensuring that visual content remains effective and engaging across various touchpoints. Embracing these systems allows businesses to stay ahead of technological shifts, adapt to industry trends, and continue to deliver cutting-edge visual experiences to their customers. 

These AI-powered tools can also help extend the life and value of all your assets. Whether they’re created in-house, via a third party, or purchased stock, the value of your visual assets is in their reusability. The right platform can use generative AI to scale and automate visual asset repurposing across channels, putting an end to costly reshoots and shrinking the hours spent on post-production edits to minutes.

What if you switch to Cloudinary? To the leading, AI-powered image and video API platform? Cloudinary was built from the ground up by developers who knew there had to be a better way to upload, manage, and deliver tens of thousands to millions of images and videos. Using AI, automation, and advanced image and video processing capabilities, we make it easier for brands to deliver fast and flawless visual experiences at scale.

Here’s a glimpse into how two companies switched to Cloudinary to drive productivity, optimize visual assets, and deliver engaging online experiences that increase revenue.

A global leader in apparel and jeanswear, Levi’s leveraged Cloudinary to overcome the challenges posed by budget constraints and COVID-19 restrictions that prevented wholesalers from visiting physical showrooms. By developing a virtual showroom with Cloudinary and Geos Consult, Levi’s created an engaging, interactive platform featuring detailed 360-degree images and videos. This innovation allowed wholesalers to virtually explore products and make informed purchasing decisions, significantly enhancing their confidence and reducing the likelihood of returns.

“Overall, the best part about Cloudinary has been the simplicity of integration,” says Marco Ginestra, Financial Planning & Analysis at Levi’s Footwear and Accessories. “It’s something you can do easily; you don’t have to invest months to make changes and integrate into your technology stack. With Cloudinary, we can now easily evolve with the latest trends and

technologies, such as the 360 spin set.”

Read Levi's success story.

By partnering with Cloudinary and transitioning to a headless composable architecture, global fashion company Paul Smith can now easily upload, optimize, and manage its product videos to ensure a streamlined internal process, a faster time-to-market, and a superior customer experience. As a result, the company has seen a 45% increase in video-enabled sales and a 40% reduction in asset management costs, providing customers with engaging, high-quality visual content and a more immersive shopping experience.

“When we added video to the product page, we started to see a strong level of engagement conversion with video over straight images,” recalls Hannah Bennett, Head of Digital at Paul Smith. “The fact that we could easily drop product videos into the Cloudinary DAM led to an impressive 45% increase in sales of those products, because of the Cloudinary improvement to the campaign around it. And because Cloudinary gives us the flexibility to adjust the sizes we want to put in between the images and any transformation, we can set the size needed to make it retina-friendly and just pass those values as a URL, dynamically.”

Read Paul Smith's success story.

As you strategize for the upcoming year, having the right tech stack is a must. Switching to Cloudinary's image and video API platform can empower brands to enhance customer satisfaction and streamline their operations. From optimizing visual experiences to a faster time to market, Cloudinary's AI-driven capabilities offer a comprehensive toolkit to tackle the challenges of the modern digital landscape.

A Forrester Total Economic Impact report found that Cloudinary’s image and video platform produces a 203% return on investment in less than three years. The report highlighted several key impacts Cloudinary had on businesses, including:

• Saving more than $2 million when sunsetting outdated legacy systems and replacing them with Cloudinary.
• Faster page load times, better SEO, more clicks and conversions, and a $1.7 million increase in profits due to optimized image and video assets.

Cloudinary’s recognition as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape report underscores our commitment to innovation and excellence in digital asset management.

— Marci Maddox, Research Vice President of Digital Experience Strategies, IDC

The digital marketplace is competitive, so it’s crucial to develop strategies that focus on simplifying internal operations and captivating consumers through engaging visuals. Cloudinary's solutions ensure that your brand stands out, resonates with consumers, and remains agile in a rapidly changing environment.

“The fact that we could easily drop product videos into the DAM led to an impressive 45% increase in sales of those products, because of the Cloudinary improvement to the campaign around it.”

Hannah Bennett

Head of Digital at Paul Smith

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Cloudinary is the image and video technology platform that enables the world’s most engaging brands to deliver transformative visual experiences at global scale. More than two million users and 10,000 customers, including Apartment Therapy, Bleacher Report, Etsy, Grubhub, Mattel, Mediavine, Minted, Paul Smith and Peloton, rely on Cloudinary to bring their campaigns, apps and sites to life. With the world’s most powerful image and video APIs backed by industry-leading artificial intelligence and patented technology, Cloudinary offers a single source of truth for brands to manage, transform, optimize, and deliver visual experiences at scale. As a result, the most engaging brands across all industries are seeing up to a 203% ROI using Cloudinary with benefits including faster time to market, higher user satisfaction and increased engagement and conversions. 

For more information, visit www.cloudinary.com.

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