Central Desktop Eases Client Collaboration Headaches For Ad Agencies

Central Desktop’s mix of filesharing and project management offers creative firms a better way to share materials with clients.

Cloud collaboration specialist Central Desktop is winning business from advertising agencies that need to share files and track projects with their clients.

Earlier this year, Central Desktop announced SocialBridge as a customized version of its system for ad agencies to work better with clients. This week, Central Desktop announced three early customers: Rhea + Kaiser, Upshot, and SK + G Advertising.

SK + G director of creative services Jennifer Cuny said the 120-plus person Las Vegas firm has for years been looking for an alternative to sharing files and updating clients through email. “I think our clients will welcome this. There are challenges we run into, on both sides, with using email to send files back and forth. With this, we will have a centralized location to review everything,” she said. SK + G is currently testing the product, prior to sharing it with customers, but in the long run is likely to use it for both internal and external collaboration.

[ Learn why one company found a single-pane-of-glass, multi-vendor collaboration strategy was its best choice. Read When One Collaboration Tool Can’t Do It All. ]

Central Desktop has offered collaboration applications over the Web since 2005 and made InformationWeek’s list of the Top 15 Cloud Collaboration Apps earlier this year. Collaboration between corporate marketing departments and agencies is also one of the prime markets for the cloud filesharing applications from Box and Dropbox.

Cuny said SK + G currently uses Dropbox and YouSendIt for some file exchange tasks but wants to move to a common platform that also provides other collaboration features.

Central Desktop CTO Arnulf Hsu said creating collaboration solutions for specific industries is one of the ways his company will distinguish itself. “There are quite a few vendors focused on very general collaboration, including point solutions just focused on files, like Dropbox or Box, or Jive, which provides the social layer–the ‘Facebook for the enterprise’ type of category,” he said. Central Desktop is also building in social networking functions, but sees them as “additive components to the comprehensive and flexible platform,” he said.

Follow David F. Carr on Twitter @davidfcarr. The BrainYard is @thebyard

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