Dentsu and Alim

Customer Stories

Two Japanese businesses get a handle on graphics with Dropbox for Business

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Published on April 07, 2015

For many businesses, sharing graphics files has long been a challenge. Their size, often hundreds or thousands of times the size of the typical Word doc, makes moving them around difficult, to say the least.

It’s a problem that two very different Japanese companies, Dentsu and Alim, know well. Dentsu, one of the world’s largest advertising and PR agencies, has a client base that spans 110 countries. By its nature, that geographic reach often puts Dentsu thousands of miles away from customers. Bridging those gaps is an absolute necessity, and one that the agency used to struggle with. Because Dentsu’s email server limited attachments to 25 MB, the company resorted to shipping DVDs out to clients and vendors. Relying on DVDs was cumbersome at best. Not only did it require time to burn discs, package them, and get them shipped, it also used up precious time and incurred huge shipping costs.

Dropbox for Business makes it easy to manage the big, heavy data every day. We just send links to our clients, and they immediately get what they need. - Ai Ando, Account Supervisor at Dentsu

Alim, a leading mobile developer best known for the popular Brave Frontier game, experienced similar challenges. With a frequent need to quickly share large files, the company relied on email attachments or file servers. But the team’s fast pace, remote workforce, and dependence on a variety of mobile devices made setting up access an ongoing chore. The restrictions that grew out of this setup were beginning to threaten the company’s growth.

With both companies experiencing the same pains, it’s not surprising that they both arrived at Dropbox for Business as a solution. Alim in particular already knew how well it could work on a limited scale. Their COO, Eiji Takahashi, had been an avid user of Dropbox Pro for several years, and had been actively using the service within Alim to share designs and other materials. He and others responsible for production and development used personal Dropbox accounts to share files.

But as the business grew, they realized the need to deploy a solution company-wide, one that met Alim’s storage and administrative control needs. At Dentsu, Dropbox for Business also addressed another very important need: the ability to get files to regions that traditionally had problems with file sharing. Dentsu Account Supervisor Ai Ando says, “International markets are really important to us and we often have to send data abroad. We knew that Dropbox for Business was secure and reliable enough to use in other countries.” Now the company’s accounts and events team find themselves exchanging information with clients and vendors more quickly than ever. “We frequently do photo shoots and have to send clients 20–30 high-res files at a time — each of which is 200–300 MB,” adds Ando. “Dropbox for Business makes it easy to manage the big, heavy data every day. We just send links to our clients, and they immediately get what they need.”

The speed that Dropbox for Business delivers entire teams is what’s helping power both these companies. As Alim’s Takahashi says, “With Dropbox for Business, we always have remote access to our most important information, which allows us to address urgent matters in a timely manner.” With ad agencies and game developers alike running at the same breakneck pace, it’s that speed that helps them stay ahead.

To learn more about how Dropbox for Business can help your team share their information, try it free.