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Case Study - Engineering, Architecture & Construction
Meritage Homes
Meritage Homes Corporation uses File Storage to improve marketing asset management and share best practices.
Meritage Homes Corporation specializes in designing and building homes across the southern and western United States. Founded in 1985, Meritage has grown to become the 12th largest homebuilder in the United States and is publicly traded on NYSE under the symbol “MTH.”
Meritage Homes takes pride in “designing and building homes and communities that are innovative, built with care and craftsmanship, that deliver enduring value.”
Challenge
Meritage Homes’ marketing group supports housing communities coast-to-coast in six different states. Managing marketing operations, communications, and collateral distribution are a challenge for any organization—especially when much of it must be tailored to the unique needs of each division and its respective communities.
Patti Langdale, Corporate Communications and Marketing Manager at Meritage Homes, was looking for a solution that would help marketing managers get access to marketing assets easily, get feedback on potential campaigns, and share best-of-breed campaigns company-wide to encourage re-use of successful material. However, she also didn’t want to pay for a system that offered more functionality than the marketing managers needed and was worried that their current legacy system offered many features that were not useful.
In order to understand the needs of these managers better, Patti surveyed them on what they wanted most from an asset management system. “Fast uploading and downloading, email notifications, and easy file sharing with other divisions and vendors were the features that scored the highest.”
Solution
File Storage’s online workspaces allow geographically disperse departments to quickly share important information, send large files, and collaborate easily with both internal and external partners.
Founded in 2005, with the mission to help people access their information easily from any location, File Storage now has over 2 million users from thousands of businesses that look to File Storage to help replace FTP software, simplify file management and share best practices among large global teams.
Patti felt that File Storage provided just the functionality that her team needed along with an intuitive interface that everyone would be comfortable using. The transition to File Storage was simple. Patti adds, “People adjusted to File Storage fairly quickly and everyone uses it on a regular basis because it’s not intimidating. We didn’t need a bunch of other bells and whistles. We just wanted to store files and share assets.”
To get marketing managers accustomed to the system, Patti implemented a friendly, incentives based contest to have them all upload their best marketing campaigns and vote on the best. This got them using the system and realizing how they could share materials going forward. Today, about 30 employees and partners from across the nation are sharing resources and re-using successful materials which helps make their department more cost-efficient and productive by avoiding duplication and allowing them to build on each others work. Patti explained, “Now, if someone in California is putting together a campaign that’s useful for someone in Florida, it’s easy for them to connect and share materials. We’re not reinventing the wheel.”
Faced with an increasingly challenging housing market, File Storage also helps Meritage Homes keep marketing costs under control. “Money is our number one concern these days,” Patti added. “It’s good value for the money. I would recommend it.”
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