This article highlights our real-world experience in building a seamless content supply chain, including step-by-step guidance and best practices for a successful integration - so you can maximize the value of your Adobe Experience Cloud solutions.

Introduction

As organizations strive to accelerate content velocity and improve operational efficiency, integrating Adobe Workfront with AEM Assets has become a game-changer. At 2K Games, we embarked on this journey to unify our content supply chain, streamline creative workflows, and empower our teams to deliver the right content, faster.

Why integrate Workfront and AEM Assets?

For us, Workfront and AEM Assets are not just complementary- they are essential partners in the content supply chain. Integrating these tools unlocks:

• Unified metadata management: Automatically collect and connect operational and asset-level metadata, reducing manual entry and improving reporting.
• Faster time to market: Streamline content creation and approval workflows, enabling teams to react quickly to market needs.
• Enhanced collaboration: Centralize communication and asset management, minimizing tool fatigue and ensuring everyone works from a single source of truth.
• Improved security & governance: Leverage unified user management and folder-level permissions to protect sensitive content and maintain compliance.

Step-by-step: preparing for integration

1. Complete the business platform migration

Before integrating, ensure that your Workfront instance is migrated to the Adobe Admin Console. This step is essential for seamless user provisioning and access management across Experience Cloud products.

Best practice: Assign a dedicated admin to manage user groups and product provisioning in the Admin Console, which will save time and prevent access issues down the road.

2. Establish governance early

Governance is the backbone of a successful integration. Define clear processes for system updates, feature rollouts, and communication with end users. Document business requirements, workflow approvals, and change management plans.

Best practice: Form a governance committee with stakeholders from both business and product teams to ensure alignment and adoption.

3. Design a scalable folder structure

Work closely with both your Workfront and AEM Assets teams to design a folder structure that supports your business needs and scales with growth. Automate folder creation where possible to reduce manual work and maintain security.

Best practice: Set up permissions so that only the right teams can access specific folders - critical for managing unreleased content or sensitive projects.

4. Prioritize metadata strategy

Metadata is the key to findability and reporting. Map Workfront custom forms to AEM metadata fields, and ensure that your schema supports current and future needs. Consider using XMP namespaces to embed metadata directly into asset files for portability.

Best practice: The more metadata you capture automatically - from creative briefs to project details - the less manual tagging is required, and the more actionable your insights become.

5. Plan for ongoing support

Even with SaaS solutions, plan for ongoing support and maintenance. Document your processes, train users, and allocate resources for troubleshooting and enhancements.

Real-world workflow: from creative brief to asset delivery

Here’s how we put these steps into action at 2K Games:

1. Creative request submission: Marketing submits a brief via a Workfront custom form, specifying project details and asset requirements.
2. Automated project creation: Using Workfront Fusion, approved requests are converted into projects with pre-mapped tasks and timelines.
3. Folder automation: Project-linked folders are automatically created in AEM Assets, inheriting the right permissions for each brand or franchise.
4. Asset upload & metadata mapping: Assets are uploaded directly to the linked folder. All project metadata flows seamlessly into AEM, ensuring assets are searchable and reportable.
5. Review & approval: Teams collaborate and approve assets within Workfront, with plans to integrate Frame.io for advanced multimedia review.
6. Secure delivery: Only authorized users can access specific folders, protecting unreleased content and maintaining brand integrity.

Key takeaways & conclusion

• Collaboration: Centralized communication and asset management reduce duplication and speed up approvals.
• Efficiency: Automated workflows and metadata mapping cut production time by up to 70% and increase capacity by 30%.
• Governance: Early planning and stakeholder involvement drive adoption and long-term success.
• Findability: Rich metadata ensures that assets are easy to find, reducing redundant creative requests.

Final advice: Measure twice, cut once. Thoughtful process design and governance are your best allies. Involve stakeholders early, plan for support, and always keep the end-user experience in mind.

Integrating Adobe Workfront with AEM Assets is more than a technical project - it’s a strategic move that transforms your content supply chain. By following these steps and embracing best practices, you will empower your teams to deliver impactful content, faster and smarter.