Two Ways to Succeed with That DAM Adoption
This week Digital Clarity Group published a pair of fresh new tools. Created by Cathy McKnight, head of our consulting practice, they offer information, tips, and checklists to help your organization succeed with the adoption of a new Digital Asset Management system (DAM).
While it is often an overlooked and misused tool, the Digital Asset Management system is a mission critical business application for any enterprise level organization. Today, when many organizations undergo a comprehensive digital transformation, these systems are often upgraded or replaced as a necessary ‘side project’ to support a higher order objective such as improving the overall path to purchase by replacing PIM, eCommerce, and CMS.
However, whether a new DAM is the goal of your transformation or merely a result of it, there are sure to be a few sophisticated new features for your team to understand. Even if that’s not the case, it’s always a good time to improve the use of existing features and functionality.
Getting it right with DAM workflows
The first is the Beginners Guide to Digital Asset Management Workflows, but don’t let that name fool you. Both of these tools are for all team members involved in the process of managing digital assets within the organization. From administrator to user, learning more about workflows will help you succeed.
Cathy starts by defining DAM workflow before moving onto a four-step process for success:
The questions to ask before getting started
Setting up for success
Structuring the workflows
Making the most of the workflow
The tool ends with a section dedicated to DAM workflow best practices.
Getting it right with DAM metadata
Cathy’s second new tool is entitled 6 Steps to Digital Asset Management Metadata Success. No surprise, it’s focused on the strategy and practice around tagging and categorizing assets in a DAM. It’s also for anyone involved with these mission critical systems.
It starts with a general exploration of metadata before diving into the six steps for success. The are:
Defining a strategy
Sourcing the data
Populating the DAM
Setting up the metadata
Defining a metadata schema
Making the most of the metadata
Why it pays to succeed with DAM
The biggest and most salient payoffs from improving your team’s use of a DAM will be in the category of improved efficiency. Better use of metadata will dramatically improve the findability of assets while simultaneously reducing the possibility of a misused asset. Better use of workflow will brighten lines around roles and responsibilities while improving collaboration across organizational silos. Better use of a DAM will also improve brand consistency by ensuring proper assets are used.
Digital Clarity Group provides research and advisory services on Digital Asset Management, as part of our Digital Workplace practice group. If you need help with DAM or any of the other technologies that help teams collaborate and be more productive, please contact us. There is no charge for an initial consultation, and we’d love to hear from you.