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 additional entries 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.

Advocate wanted to make their system as user friendly as possible for its customers. After a period of research, they created a web site utilising Cumulus web publishing technologies. The site delivers a system for its clients to easily find art and illustrations. The types of art and usage are categorised and keywords are added to help users search for specific subject matter. Once a user has found an illustration, they can save it to a ‘lightbox', check cost, availability and rights.

Ed says, "Once the customer has made a decision to purchase, we run a brief account check and then e-mail back a password so a high resolution version of the image can be downloaded from the web."

Advocate's artists also benefit from the new system. Previously, agents would visit customers with examples of artists work, sometimes with both original and examples on a computer. Now, an artist's work is permanently showcased on the web site. Advocate also includes extended information about artists. Customers can find out more about the artists via links to biographies held on the web site.

Advocate Art is a growing business and as with any growing business, tools are needed to help manage and organise. Canto Cumulus, not only helps manage, it also helps promote the business!