Digital Asset Management

Road Map
Success Criteria
Trends

Thesecretsofasuccessful DAMimplementation.

Pitfalls
Tips

security

workflow user interface

scalability

metadata taxonomy collaboration

social media

leadership

desktop/ mobile

test before youbuy

ROI

$$

time saved!

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DAM Road Map

Much has been written, discussed, presented, and illustrated to summarise Digital Asset Management (DAM) and its impact in a world exploding with content. But it never does any harm to remind oneself of the key criteria for success, tips to follow on the journey, and pitfalls to avoid. And just where is DAM heading? What trends should you look out for? Review the following DAM Road Map to ensure you reach your desired DAM destination.

Pitfalls

Trends

strategy

versioncontrol

taxonomy

security

technology

test before youbuy

Tips

desktop/ mobile

time saved!

ROI

$$

Success Criteria

measurementprocesses

Success Criteria
Measurement processes Production savings & profit opportunities Equal combination: people, process, assets, and technology Workflow Metadata

Success Criteria

Many DAM projects start from a moment in time when a catastrophe hits and the panic mode creates the shoots of a solution. Time should be taken to ensure that a clear business case is built to support DAM that stands the test of time - a long term strategy that has the flexibility to change with the times. If possible, create in advance the measurement processes that track the ROI of DAM. DAM will create production savings, but it will also offer profit opportunities. Lets just be clear here. DAM is not a technology alone, but an equal combination of people, process, assets, and technology. Many businesses are built around silos of activity. Different departments do not integrate. DAM brings about the need to form new alliances between people and departments; its not all about technology. It is useful to storyboard the user experience, defining all touchpoints along the journey of the asset. A most important feature is to ensure a change management initiative is adopted to smooth the path for new collaborations. DAM is not a repository of assets; it is a living, breathing, state of content. The journey of an asset touches many places in an organization. It is imperative to define the life of the asset and define the workflow upfront. Authorities, approvals, and permissions are key to efficiency in DAM. Metadata makes content more visible to users searching for relevant items as well as supporting a wide range of more complex information applications. The taxonomy within which it sits is the particular grouping or classification that can be applied to the organizational infrastructure. A DAM without metadata is like a text book without an index. Assets are frankly useless in a DAM system without a well-defined taxonomy surrounding the metadata. The enterprises own culture determines the vocabulary and architecture of its metadata. It proves extremely worthwhile to invest in a taxonomy strategy in advance of the implementation of DAM.

Tips
Tips
Increased collaboration & ROI Avoid project creep Plan for scalability Test before you buy

ROI

$$

Whether you are at the beginning of the journey to adopt DAM or a well-healed user, it is a worthwhile task to revisit the viewpoint of the user. What do I want from this DAM system at a really simplistic level? Who do I interact with when passing the life of an asset from one department to another? What file formats do I require to perform my job function? Piecing together this roadmap draws out unexpected requirements, links in the chain, and improved opportunities for increased collaboration and return on investment. DAM tends to make its way to the creative and marketing process applications, but once in place it becomes apparent how many other departments can benefit from access to content if the correct tags and metadata are applied. Be creative. How can HR and research, for example, benefit from DAM? Not only does it create new opportunities for a return, but it widens the scope of engagement. It begins to create the process of knowledge management within an organization and flattens the often inherent hierarchical structure of knowledge.

DAM deployment can have operational and financial project creep. You dont know what you dont know. This really is a broad brush comment, but budget for twice the value of the technology purchase and you will at least have a head start. Costs of deployment, both internal and external, can continue randomly and contractually for a long time to come. Be aware of the difference between software modification and customization. Make sure ongoing costs of deployment are fully mapped out. No one wants surprises on the cash front. It is also encouraging to have early wins - easily demonstrable financial gains from a simple process improvement through a DAM strategy. Having those in the bag provides early project encouragement. Equally, plan for scalability of the solution. We are experiencing exponential growth in the creation and use of assets, so the capacity for storage now will have no bearing for what you will require in the future. There should be no glass ceiling for expansion. If you are in position of appointing a vendor, be it for the first time or the third time, after the evaluation process has been narrowed down, ensure a real-time bake-off takes place between the final short list test of likely suitors. Quite simply, test before you buy. Ensure this is done with your assets, inside your before workflow, with real users. All too often what is promised is not fully delivered. This may not, in truth, youbuy be anyones fault. Terminology, clarity of understanding, and detailed user requirements all serve to make it possible to genuinely create a misunderstanding which is far more difficult to manage after the contract is signed than before. Sometimes something as simple as a different or restricted browser can be a problem. It also allows you to get inside the culture of the customer support service of the vendor. Some companies are simply easier to do business with than others and personal relationships can be the difference between make or break of a successful project. While on the subject of vendors, a key question should be asked. How mission critical will the DAM become to other operations? Downtime occurs on all technology platforms although hopefully rarely. The support infrastructure and the time taken to get the enterprise back up and running may not be critical to a few hours, or even a day. But if your business relies on it to function, the appropriate service support contract has to be in place. This may impact critically on your choice of vendor and their location. Be aware of what standards exist in the sector and which are applicable to you. There is not one default standard in the DAM industry, so research what will be most suitable for you to adopt. Equally, if your enterprise works globally, be aware of any international legal compliancy issues that might affect your DAM solution and its deployment.

Pitfalls
Lack of ownership Not having a champion Overly complex solution Not having a defined workflow Poor version control

Pitfalls

A most significant hiccup to a successful DAM implementation is the lack of ownership. DAM does not sit naturally in any one department so it often lacks the sense of place. This can lead to a lack of buy-in by those who feel it is not core to their roles and responsibilities. Avoid not having a champion; engage someone on the board or in the C-suite who is prepared to make tough decisions and build a team of supportive people.

DAM is often new ground for people and organizations to consider. The strategy can too often be led by vendor capabilities, which once combined into a wish list of functionality develops an overly complex solution. It is important to define what your organization requires, not what might be good for you. Here is where the journey of the users comes into its own. The benefits of DAM only ensue when the routines are disciplined. Not having a defined workflow leads to breakdowns. All people involved with DAM, including those on the periphery, need the appropriate training, and must adhere to the workflow and collaboration. Assets often have long-term value that creates the need for them to stick around. However, new iterations of the assets need careful managing, particularly in the case of documents. Poor version control impedes the success of DAM.

Trends
Immediacy of content Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) Mobile platforms Social media Semantic web technologies

Trends

DAM never stands still. Technology, user experience and the growth of social media in particular determine that we need to be aware of whats coming, if not already here. The changing world of marketing and advertising has led to a major shift in the way we consume messages. Increasingly, we select our content over having it pushed at us. From a DAM perspective this drives a new urgency for the real-time availability of assets. The discipline of a framework for adding metadata as content is created is becoming essential, not a nice-to-have. Authors of content have the responsibility to tag content according to the architecture of taxonomy and of the organization upon creation. The immediacy of the availability of content can be the difference between opportunity and visibility, profit and loss. In this context, increasing relevance will be placed on Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) which serve to improve the connectivity between Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. Much activity is in place to establish a common set of standards within the DAM industry and the wider ECM and Document Management communities. Of equal importance is the recognition of the platform on which the content is viewed. It is commonly understood that the world is moving to mobile and tablet. This means that the platform on which the assets are viewed and managed has to be mobile enabled, taking into account the major platforms for mobile and their key differences. Users in different countries might also have different trends to look out for. The features we have come to accept as common on social media will find their way into DAM system technologies. How useful will it be to incorporate like, + and recommend features into the DAM experience? The development of tools and features which offer this kind of functionality will serve to enhance the DAM user experience and provide an added level of value to the asset itself, providing real-time value and immediacy of useful information to the enterprise. Further, to hang a collaborative communication environment specifically around the DAM, a social platform if you will, will become an emerging feature. If we can use such platforms to arrange a beer with friends then surely it can be justified to manage the valuable brand assets of the enterprise? This adds a new level to the expression workflow that we might call collabflow.

Semantic web technologies will find their way into the DAM experience. The development of data about data as well as documents on the web that machines can process, transform and assemble, will enable new value to be gained from that data in really useful ways. At a practical level, we will see increased use of image recognition technologies in search. Selecting a colour palette common to a suite of images will allow us to find images of similar colourific values stored in the DAM. A whole new dimension to the feature of search.

desktop/ mobile

And last but not least, we will see increasing use of cloud-based technologies as the platform for DAM with improving user interfaces and dashboards which will make our experience more valuable and enjoyable.

The real deep dive value of DAM has yet to be realized. The value of the asset and the intelligence contained within the metadata surrounding it will increasingly drive the business benefit of DAM. The DAM solution will increasingly form the back-bone of the knowledge management of the enterprise we might even call it Business Asset Management, or BAM! Additionally, new measurement tools will develop out of the metrics of DAM which will help to justify the return on investment. So there we are. As we promised: Success Criteria, Tips, Pitfalls, and Trends that together make a road map for your successful journey with DAM. Enjoy the ride!

Authored by Nigel Cliffe with Mary Yurkovic for Createasphere. All rights reserved. For more information on Createaspheres Digital Asset Management events and education contact: Mary Yurkovic Manager, Digital Asset Management Conference and Community p: 00-1-818-842-6611 e: mary@createasphere.com

DAMroadmap.com | Createasphere.com