A national supplier asked us to end a very specific kind of email: the one where a distributor requests a data sheet, someone searches three drives, and the right file arrives two days later. The obvious answer is 'put the files online.' The real problem is the access model.
We settled on three roles. Admins own the taxonomy - the product hierarchy every asset hangs from - plus uploads and user management. Internal staff see everything. Distributors see exactly what their relationship entitles them to, through one login per company rather than per person, which matches how distribution businesses actually share tools.
Browsing needed three modes, because people look for files in three ways: by popularity (the 20% of assets requested constantly), by folder (when you know the product), and flat search (when you only know a keyword or a product code). Building all three was cheaper than teaching hundreds of external users a single 'correct' path.
The immutable key underneath everything is the product code from the supplier's ERP. Files come and go, marketing renames things, but the code persists - so a bulk CSV import can reconcile 2,000+ assets without ever creating a duplicate.
Outcome: requests that took days of correspondence now resolve in seconds of self-serve. The system's best feature is the absence of a process.