By applying Box AI to enormous troves of digital files, Bluedog Design can now extract key metadata from images to make them easily searchable — and that helps the firm better serve its heavy hitter Fortune 100 CPG and quick-service restaurant clients.
Among the most influential product-innovation consultancies in consumer packaged goods, Bluedog’s team has spent more than two decades traveling the world to capture how products show up on shelves across regions, cultures, and consumer behaviors. Inside the company’s Chicago studio sits a rare, meticulously curated “Global Safari TM” — physical evidence of how products live and compete in a truly international context.
The problem? Bluedog’s digital archive told a very different story. Thousands of high-value product images sat buried in folders, disconnected, and nearly impossible to search. That changed when the firm partnered with Box to deliver an AI-powered digital asset management solution (DAM).
Some of the wins Bluedog Design gets from partnering with Box:
- Ironclad security: Granular permissions to manage DAM access across clients, employees, and freelancers
- Values-aligned AI: An AI approach that prioritizes people over efficiency cuts, with a partner aligned to its innovation-first operating principles
- Enterprise power for lean teams: A two-person IT team achieving transformations that could otherwise require a sizable team
A DAM based on rich metadata
With Box AI, Bluedog can now automatically extract rich metadata from decades of product photography: names, labels, ingredients, packaging structure, regions, and more. Combined with powerful digital asset organization, visual browsing, and search capabilities within Box, Bluedog’s once-hidden archive has transformed into a dynamic, intelligent system
Work that once took days of manual digging is now surfaced in seconds.
This living library now gives Bluedog’s Fortune 100 CPG clients a clear global view of contextual packaging trends, competitive positioning, and market evolution. Work that once took days of manual digging is now surfaced in seconds.
“We’ve tried for years to find a way to search these archives,” says Melissa Krchma, Director of Workplace & Digital Empowerment. “It’s been a literal two-year dream. Now we’re only a little ways away from turning this into a product.”
The security imperative that started it all
Bluedog Design’s journey with Box began in 2015 with a fundamental challenge facing every consulting firm: how to maintain security while ensuring easy collaboration with clients and freelancers. The company made the switch from a consumer-focused cloud storage app to ensure content security that could handle the complexity of the company’s business model.
“We’re a consulting agency working with multiple clients,” Krchma explains. “We need to be very aware of our employees and what work they’re doing at any one time.”
IT must ensure strict separation between different client projects to ensure that employees only see the work they’re authorized to see. This creates a requirement for what Krchma refers to as “permission-based access controls at a surgical level at all times.” Box brought that level of content security and granular control over permissions.
The agnostic advantage of Box over other solutions
Despite already having an all-in-one productivity suite, Bluedog deliberately chose Box over a bundled tool, a decision that speaks to a larger challenge facing modern consulting firms.
Because the team works with so many freelancers, customers, and partners outside the company, they need a digital asset management solution that’s agnostic and doesn’t create identity management obstacles. Krchma refers to the tool stack as “composable,” meaning that it’s a modular approach using different software tools to create a customized technology solution. She thinks of this as “building blocks that can work together,” including Slack for messaging, Microsoft 365 for productivity, and Adobe Creative Suite for design work.
The introduction of Box enabled native file origination and seamless functionality that Bluedog’s designers and strategists now rely on daily. This is only possible because Box has so many integrations with other tools, including all of the above.
Strategic AI implementation with Box Enterprise Advanced
Having a secure content layer on Box turned out to have other benefits for Bluedog Design. As Krchma describes it, “AI came onto the scene and hit everybody like a pile of bricks — us included.”
Her team didn’t rush to AI implementation. As a people-over-profits organization, Bluedog’s IT team needed an approach that synced with company values, and they found it in Box’s AI Principles and CEO Aaron Levie’s thought leadership.
“We know that we’re aligned with Box in terms of how the tool works. Now, we’re aligned with Box in the values of how we’re innovating,” Krchma notes. She even incorporated Box’s guiding principles into Bluedog’s internal AI strategy
We know that we’re aligned with Box in terms of how the tool works. Now, we’re aligned with Box in the values of how we’re innovating
This values-first approach meant Bluedog took its time evaluating Box’s Enterprise Advanced license. With only a two-person tech team supporting the entire organization, they needed certainty about business value before upgrading. After attending Boxworks, Krchma was all-in on Enterprise Advanced, which offers workflow automation, advanced AI, and secure contentmanagement in one plan.
Read about how Nomura Research Institute used Box Enterprise Advanced
Building for empowerment, not just efficiency
Krchma’s circular philosophy on technology adoption reflects Bluedog’s broader culture: “My job is to help you do your job for more time during the day than all of the other stuff you have to do in order to do your job."
And she says, “I wouldn’t be able to do that if it weren’t for the easy way Box is making it happen.”
This empowerment-first approach drives how Bluedog implements all new capabilities. The company has already built a Slack app that queries Box AI to answer common questions about computer applications. Krchma’s team is planning AI upskilling sessions for 2026. And they’re exploring how different AI models within Box can serve different use cases.
“We’re a very, very lean company,” Krchma emphasizes. “To even consider bringing another product into our environment to evaluate for security, to figure out a way to integrate it, to figure out a way to train people on it, to do all of those things, is a big lift for us."
The nimble small-team advantage
Bluedog’s journey shows what’s possible when a small, high-caliber team pairs its creative instincts with the right technology foundation, challenging the assumption that AI transformation requires massive resources. Box has evolved from a secure file storage solution to an AI-powered intelligence platform that makes it possible to tap into things like custom AI agents and metadata extracting from unstructured data. The goal here isn’t just efficiency; it’s enabling entirely new capabilities.
Box has evolved from a secure file storage solution to an AI-powered intelligence platform.
As more and more M&E agencies understand that AI transformation is imperative, Bluedog’s approach offers a blueprint: start with security and values, build incrementally, and never lose sight of the human element. Because in the end, as Krchma says (and as Bluedog proves daily), technology should help people “have a lot of fun doing their jobs really well.”
Read more about how Box helps M&E customers do big bold things.
