A few days ago, the Widen team met with a client that needed a better way to manage video assets.  This particular client had video of all shapes and sizes for use in many different types of media channels – from broadcast to web.  The dirt on video asset management can be found in a different blog, but the bottom line is we’re now in a time video is on the forefront as one of the most rapidly growing media channels within marketing organizations.  As we’re faced with growing amounts and types of media, the goal of centralizing these assets and making them easy to repurpose is that much more of an issue.

The Diagnosis:  Lost time due to the inability to locate your digital assets greatly adds to your sunk costs and is a good signal for change.

A success here was this client had defined a quick checklist of what to look for in a digital asset management system, making it a lot easier to bring about change.

DAM Quicklist:

1. Metadata
2. Versioning
3. User registration requests
4. Transformation of assets
5. Downloading assets
6. ID / Password requirements
7. Asset sharing via email
8. Asset previews
9. Permission levels
10. Robust reporting capabilities
11. Implementation Timeline to Live – another one of the many reasons software as a service is becoming so popular. 

Here’s what the Widen team came up with about 18 months ago when we supplied a list of what we define as the "Top 15 Functions of a DAM" for use in the 2007 Frost & Sullivan Digital Asset Management Markets Study.

The Definition: Top 15 Functions of a Digital Asset Management System

1. Asset / Metadata Ingestion
2. Asset / Metadata Storage
3. Asset / Metadata Search
4. Asset / Metadata Search Results Display
5. Asset / Metadata Previews
6. Asset / Metadata Order / Delivery
7. Asset / Metadata Placement
8. Asset / Metadata Versioning
9. Asset / Metadata Approval
10. System Access
11. Site Branding
12. System Reporting
13. Asset / Metadata Administration
14. User Administration
15. Roles & Permissions Administration

For more details on how Widen defines the makeup of Digital Asset Management, see: http://www.widen.com/damtop15.html.  I hope this helps you define what to look for in a digital asset management system.

Stay tuned for more cases…