Organization’s name: Producers Direct
Founded: 2009
Producers Direct is an organisation committed to growing an international cooperative owned and powered by smallholder farmers. At Producers Direct, we believe that smallholders, our greatest asset, are stronger together, and our mission is to invest in smallholder farmers, inspire unity, knowledge sharing, and enhance their resilience.
With a focus on supporting smallholder farmers, Producers Direct has made significant strides, benefiting 13 producer organizations and contributing to up to a 100% increase in incomes for the involved smallholders, having reached 1.3 million of them since their launch in 2009.
Today we talked to Gertrude Bosire, Communications Manager at Producers Direct about how their nonprofit organization is using Pics.io digital asset management for nonprofits.
- Can you please tell me more about your organization?
Our organization is called Producers Direct and we’re working with smallholder farmers across East Africa and Latin America.
"Pics.io helped us to take care of the challenge of having duplicate photos. Sometimes we have 10 photos but 4 of them are the same thing. So now we can sort through the photos, tag them, have all of them in one place, and not worry too much about storage space."
- And what are you responsible for?
My role is Communications Manager.
- What was the problem that you solved with the DAM system?
When I joined, we used to have our assets on Google. With the way our team is set up in Latin America and East Africa, different people would go to the field, come back with assets, and store them on Google Drive. Sometimes, everyone will take as many photos or videos as they want and just add all of them to Google Drive. As a result, we were almost at a point where the storage was getting full.
We needed a way to access photos and tag them in a way that everyone would know what these photos are, where these photos are, where they are from, and make these photos accessible.
So we started looking for digital asset management and other tools that we could use. That’s how we ended up with Pics.io. It helped us to take care of the challenge of having duplicate photos. Sometimes we have 10 photos but 4 of them are the same thing. So now we can sort through the photos, tag them, have all of them in one place, and not worry too much about storage space.
We started with the Solo plan just to test it and see how that works for us. At the end of the past year, we decided to switch to a Micro plan for more features.
- Can you tell more about what exactly your team does and describe your workflows?
We work with smallholder farmers and we visit them on their farms in East Asia (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania) and in Latin America (Peru and Colombia). We interview these farmers, so some of our digital assets are the videos that we've done with farmers in the field. We also do training with farmers, so some of our photos are the photos of the training sessions. Some of our photos are also just farmers in their farms with kitchen gardens for example. And, finally, we have photos of these farmers accessing and using different digital tools.
We want to show what happens with farmers in our network, the buyers that they engage with, and the network that we have on the ground. These photos end up on our website and our social media pages. Some of them also end up on our reports (quarterly or monthly ones), partner reports, etc.
"Thank you to the Pics.io team for always helping! Anytime I have a question, someone always responds very quickly. I'm the one who usually takes longer to respond. So, thank you, I'm grateful for that!"
- Do you have different team roles in Pics.io?
For now, 5 people are using DAM in total and all of them have equal access levels.
- What type of files do you store in Pics.io?
We have a few social media graphics developed by our graphic designers and some reports in PDF but mostly we’re storing photos and videos.
- What are the advantages of the DAM system for you?
Now, that we've moved to the Micro plan, many more people can access the assets from the field. I'm not always in the field and actually rarely go, so the rest of the team, especially for internal communications, can access all of these assets easily. The other thing is Slack integration.
Now, that we've moved to the Micro plan, many more people can access the assets from the field. I'm not always in the field and actually rarely go, so the rest of the team, especially for internal communications, can access all of these assets easily. The other thing is Slack integration.
"I know that the more refined our tags are, the easier it will be for the rest of the team to access files even without my help."
- Can you estimate how much time Pics.io saves you?
It saves up plenty of time. Uploading pictures is way easier and faster with Pics.io. I can select the photos that I want and then tag them in batches so that it's not one photo that I have to tag every time.
Also, search for assets got much quicker. One of the things we do is sell honey. We have some photos of farmers being trained or like wild beekeepers being trained. So when I enter the word “honey”, for example, Pics.io shows specific photos and even some that maybe I don't remember existed.
Also, with the grid view, I have the full landscape view of all the photos, so I can easily delete the ones that I don't need and tag the ones that I need, which makes it easier and faster for me.
- Do you have a favorite feature in Pics.io?
So far, it's tagging for me. It is the most useful because there are photos we can use differently and we can assign different tags to differentiate between such photos.
Thank you to the Pics.io team for always helping! Anytime I have a question, someone always responds very quickly. I'm the one who usually takes longer to respond. So, thank you, I'm grateful for that!
- Thank you so much for the interview!
Did you enjoy this article? Give Pics.io a try — or book a demo with us, and we'll be happy to answer any of your questions.
