CMS Inc.

Situation and Challenges

CMS Inc. is a full-service corporate communications/event production agency that specializes in cutting-edge business presentation technology for all types of industries. From offices in Los Angeles; Sacramento; Orlando; and Alpine, Utah, the company produces major business events, satellite broadcasts, conferences, films, videos, interactive training and many other types of presentations.

At the 10-person headquarters office in Los Angeles, CMS develops large proposals for prospective clients, documents that typically include many images and that result in very large files. The proposal drafts often must be exchanged with other CMS offices for editing and approvals. When scripting video modules, CMS needs to deliver video to clients for approval and then transmit re-edited versions that incorporate client revisions. These files may total hundreds of megabytes each.

CMS had tried several methods of delivering these various kinds of large files, but each method had proved challenging. The company was paying to maintain an FTP site through which files could be uploaded and subsequently downloaded by recipients, but the site was frustrating for both sender and recipient.

“I found FTP to be very expensive, difficult to explain to others who needed directions on how to use it, time-consuming in the many steps involved, and frustrating in its restrictions,” said CMS Office Manager Caryn Parker. “It wasn’t simple; in fact, it was very, very difficult. And it took forever to upload and download files. More often than not, recipients couldn’t even get onto the site to find or download their files.”

When Parker needed to download a file via FTP, she often had to summon an on-call technician to go into the office at all hours of the night because it took so long to receive the file.

The company also had used courier services to deliver videos and hard copies of documents, but that method had become expensive. Documents generally needed to be sent overnight both to and back from the client, so it was costly at both ends of the delivery process.

Finally, CMS attempted to deliver files via e-mail, but with frustrating results. “We had to send 10 or 15 e-mails to get a file across, breaking it into pieces that needed to be reassembled by the recipient in the right order,” Parker recalled. “We also got a lot of e-mail bounce-backs. If the file was just a little too large for the recipient, it would bounce back; so we had to know how large a file the recipient’s system could handle, as well as the size we could send out.”

Solution

For some time, Parker had been looking for a more effective and secure method of delivering very large digital files. “I knew there had to be something better,” Parker recalled. “It was just a matter of time before we received a file delivered via YouSendIt for Business, and we were immediately interested in it.”

Once she tried YouSendIt for Business, Parker registered and subsequently upgraded to the Corporate Suite edition to enable five people within the organization to use it. “I canceled our FTP service immediately and started using YouSendIt for Business,” she said.

Rolling it out to other users within the organization was as simple as a face-to-face conversation or e-mail to them explaining that they had a new method to send files, telling them how YouSendIt for Business works and informing them that FTP would no longer be valid.

Why YouSendIt for Business

Parker fell in love with YouSendIt for Business right away, noting “instead of sending just files, we can send a whole folder of files and YouSendIt for Business will Zip it up for us.” She especially liked the fact that YouSendIt for Business could be used directly within Microsoft Outlook, as well as from her desktop with YouSendIt for Business Express, so that she did not even need to open a browser to send files. “It’s very easy to use,” she said. “I could probably call my 10-year-old son in and he would figure out how to get it done in no time.”