Advocate Art is the largest illustration agency in the UK. With success comes the challenges, particularly managing the company’s illustration library — one with over 20,000 images, growing at a rate of 10,000 a year.

Ed Burns, Managing Director of Advocate, asked himself a question: “How can I create a ‘virtual’ agent, an electronic live system where our clients can search for the art that they need — and do it without leaving their office?” First he wanted to catalogue Advocate’s collected art and the files of information relating to it. Secondly he needed a system that would provide the features and tools to enable users to research and find art or illustrations they want. After much research and with the help of system integrator, En-Route Solutions he found the answer... Canto Cumulus. Cumulus is a digital asset management solution that enables its users to manage all kinds of digital files. Advocate is now empowered by a solution that helps organise examples of artists’ works so that Advocate and its clients can easily find the art or illustrations they want.

Advocate users can easily add art to their Cumulus catalogues and update information about its use, such as rights, usage, licencing etc. As soon as this new material is added, it can be accessed instantly by other agents and by customers over the Internet.