Guest Blog Post from Karin Schei, Widen Marketing Coordinator

With the ever changing advancements in marketing software, the world of digital asset management is constantly evolving.  Today, there is a greater demand for the creation and consumption of digital media than ever before and that means here at Widen, we are constantly developing ways for clients to manage and deliver rich media.  Right now, we are working on a new feature that will allow clients to create a direct link to digital assets stored in the master repository to the online medium where they are used and consumed.  This means no more worrying about whether updates within the DAM system are being received by everyone – with DAM as the master platform – it automatically takes place.  This process also allows marketers, webmasters and designers to refrain from duplicating digital asset repositories in other locations for that particular online medium – web content management, e-commerce websites, email marketing, etc. – which ensures brand consistency.  More details to come on this exciting new step in digital asset management.

Guest Blog Post from Ben Johnsen, Widen Sales Representative

Last weekend while attending a wedding reception, I had the opportunity to have a very memorable conversation with the bride.  She came up to me and asked how work was going?  She said since all the rain and flooding, business must be doing well!  Now, my friend, the groom, has a good idea on what we do here at Widen, and I had thought his wife would to, but apparently when she saw my Facebook status as “Ben is selling DAMs” she literally thought I sold dams - as in dams for water containment and hydroelectric power.  She then went on saying how she was very impressed, and did not realize that people actually went around and sold dams. 

It was my fault she did not have a good idea on what I am selling.  Although quite funny, I realized when talking about Widen with other people, I sometimes forget they might not be familiar with Digital Asset Management.

In an ideal world, everyone would know DAM means Digital Asset Management, but in reality people who do not work directly with marketing, communications or creative groups might not realize that the amount of digital media created and consumed warrants a need for a DAM system.  Each day, creative departments are creating photos, logos, graphics and any other branded promotional materials to help drive revenue and build brand recognition for their organization, and each day they need a place to store and organize these files in addition to a means to easily distribute them. 

That’s what Widen does.  We help you contain the flood of digital media and direct it wherever it is to be used and consumed. 

When’s the last time YOU saw roller derby?  Well for me, it was last weekend in Madison, Wisconsin – home of the Dairyland Dolls AND Widen.  Is there a connection between flat track roller derby and digital asset management software?  Well, here goes. 

The Women’s Flat-Track Derby Association is a relatively new group established to organize the 100+ roller derby leagues in North America – and has over 4000 registered skaters.  Now think about all the stuff this group has … team pictures, logos, graphics for posters, t-shirt designs, video clips … lots and lots of digital media from all across the country.  And I’m guessing not much of a staff to help them organize everything.  Now if the association had Widen’s digital media management platform to organize and distribute their digital assets – I can guarantee that we would make the staff SO happy that they might not want to knock down another woman from another roller derby team! 

If the association had a web-based DAM system, they could allow users from ANYWHERE in the world access to certain things on the site.  The beauty of DAM SaaS means not having to be stuck with some software installed at only one location for an organization.  And when an organization has members spread out across North America – a web-based solution sure seems to be the way to go.  With each league or team being not only part of a national association, but also being their own ‘brand’ – the association and its members would definitely benefit from an asset management system. 

The goal of the Women’s Flat-Track Derby Association is “World Domination,” which is ironic because we want to help organizations with that goal.  Hey Women’s Flat-Track Derby Association – give us a call!

Widen will be sponsoring and exhibiting at the Henry Stewart Business Briefing on Digital Asset Management on Monday, October 27, 2008 at the Avenue Hotel in Chicago.  Henry Stewart Events cover Digital Asset Management, Marketing Resource Management, and Best Practices in Marketing Operations.  The comprehensive one-day briefing will cover the challenges, opportunities, problems and solutions with digital media management.

See below for the full conference program or learn more at www.damusers.com.

Conference Chair:  Michael Moon, President & CEO, GISTICS

What is DAM – introduction, latest developments, how to get started and how to upgrade

• What is it?
• Who needs it?
• DAM for improved efficiency
• DAM for consistency, e.g. specification and billing
• DAM for better marketing
• DAM for generating new products

Michael Moon, President & CEO, GISTICS

Benefit analysis, ROIs, implications for the bottom line and the construction of an internal business case for implementation and improvement

• Evaluating costs and risks of an enterprise wide asset management solution
• Identifying harvestable benefits: short term and long term
• Strategy from the organizational level to the individual perspective
• Using statistical methods for ROI analysis and forecasting the future

Mary Yurkovic, Manager DAM and Distribution, Playboy Enterprises, Inc

Evaluating and Selecting DAM Technologies

• Fundamentals of DAM technology
• How to categorize the DAM/Media Asset Management marketplace
• Rough cost estimates for different types of projects
• Selecting the right offering to meet the identified business objective
• Typical pitfalls in tool selection and implementation, and how to avoid them

Tony Byrne, Founder, CMS Watch

The Management Challenges In Installation and Operation

• Golden rules to ensure an implementation goes right
• The pieces that need to be in place
• Getting your vendors to work with you
• Managing inevitable changes

Linda Burman, CEO, L.A. Burman Associates

Understanding the critical importance of metadata and adopting a metadata approach suitable for your organization and its activities

• Why metadata is so critical to effective Digital Asset Management
• Taxonomies, metadata and search – combining components to improve findability of content
• Making the punishment fit the crime – how much metadata is enough?
• Who does what? – developing a workable governance policy around development, maintenance and application of metadata

Seth Earley, Principal, Earley & Associates

Case studies – who has done what, how and with what results?

Case Study: Extending the Brand Experience through DAM

• The digital asset management software helped Knaack marketing implement and launch the new system enterprise-wide quickly and seamlessly.
• The web-based DAM system was integrated with the Knaack Partner Gateway allowing channel partners to access images, videos and PDF files in a variety of formats from the same single sign-on portal they use to access other Knaack Resources.
• The Big Achievement: Knaack’s digital media is stored in one location, eliminating redundant and outdated libraries. More importantly, Knaack’s assets are repurposed across multiple interactive media channels to extend the brand experience from corporate marketing to channel partners.

Jim Scarlata, Director of Marketing Operation, Knaack LLC, Division of Emerson Electric Company

Case Study from General Motors

• Designed, implemented and managed a process to streamline the digital asset creation, storage and distribution process in the area of Advertising & Marketing for General Motors Corporation.
• Worked with Marketing Teams at GM, their Ad agencies and Production houses to understand their workflows and create a Digital Asset Management process that improves their workfows. Also, identified redundant systems and migrated those to a common global platform
• All GM brands are now using one common global system to store, share and collaborate advertising assets across the world. This has resulted in multi-million dollars in cost savings and also driven significant efficiencies.

Manish Mallick, Program Manager, Asset Manager, General Motors Corporate

Case Study from Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon deployed its Digital Asset Management system to centrally archive artwork created to support consumer product initiatives for Nickelodeon Shows such as Blue’s Clues, Dora the Explorer, Rugrats and SpongeBob SquarePants. A B2B, rights-managed website, Nicksource.com, was developed in tandem as a means of delivering content to licensing partners, lowering printing/shipping costs and expediting delivery to developing markets. Over time the archive has grown to over 200,000 files and the B2B site has become a globally accessed central hub for creative content. In addition to all internal lines of business (On air, On line, off air design teams, marketing, advertising, press, publications and all international offices) 3,000 users access Nicksource to download 2,000 files a day on average. More recently the Nickelodeon DAM system has been used as a central screening point for viewing QuickTime files of on air promos, reviewing and routing digital photography and serving as a repository for audio, mechanical and Aftereffects files.

Our main challenges:

• An ever growing amount of content that is regularly being revised, updated and retired.
• Limiting content by contract rights, region and timing which coincides with broadcast.
• Global delivery of large amounts of content in a simple, visual manner as quickly as possible and routing artwork simultaneously to offices throughout the world
• Distributing exclusive artwork to select partners.
• Dealing with large, difficult and complex file sizes.
• Routing artwork simultaneously to global offices.
• Receiving content.

Opportunities our DAM System Presents:

• Ability to create active user and work groups for particular pods of creative.
• Ability to track download history
• Targeted delivery of cataloged assets.
• Cataloging of an enormous body of character art
• Ability to deal with assets in multiple formats: Quark, InDesign, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Quicktime, Audio and others

Miles Rohan, Senior Digital Asset Manager, Nickelodeon

It’s that time of year again – school buses, textbooks, and back to school shopping.  And speaking of school shopping, any idea what many colleges and universities are shopping for?  In the past 4 months, myself and several colleagues have had numerous conversations with people who work in colleges and universities about hosted digital asset management and photography approval.  It seems that regardless of the department (athletics, marketing, communications, alumni, business) – all have problems with managing and routing their digital files. There are pictures of football games, alumni events, and concerts... New student marketing materials... University promotional materials...  Video footage of campus speakers.  All of these things seem to not only get lost in the vastness of the university – but take up precious space on university servers. 

So, what should these departments put on their back to school shopping list?  Widen’s Media Collective – aka – digital asset management application, of course.  With this software as a service application (no IT involvement needed!), a university marketing department has an efficient and affordable solution to manage all their digital files (brands, images, pdfs, videos, etc).  Digital files are not only organized, but controlled and available for easy reuse!

Based on that title you may think, “oh no, not another blog bashing the stability of cloud computing.”  Not even close.  DAM is the industry acronym for digital asset management and Widen has geared up its’ digital asset management system to leverage the power of cloud computing. 

Widen defines cloud computing as a technology revolution enabling infinite scale to meet a rising demand for processing and storage with a pay-for-what-you-use pricing model to accommodate the peaks and valleys of demand without breaking the bank.  It’s not just a marketing term, it is very real and it will change the way organizations do business.

Cloud computing is the push software-as-a-service needed in the bloody battle with installed software.  Installed software providers scamper to enter the software-as-a-service market because they played their cards wrong when they started.  They see a dead-end; an end-of-life to their products and we are happy to report that the regime that strangled marketers and internal I.T. departments with over-priced and under-performing technology is over. 

Freedom from limitation, freedom from legacy applications, freedom from lackluster service, and freedom from the resource drain that is installed software – that, my fellow marketers and technology enthusiasts, is what digital asset solutions leveraging the power of cloud computing is enabling you to do. 

It enables internal I.T. teams who are challenged trying to keep pace with the exponential growth of digital media, specifically graphics and video files.  These types of digital media are the most desirable for marketers because of the high impact and direct ties to capturing market share and maximizing revenue opportunities

The benefits of cloud computing for customers using Widen for digital media management is the use of digital media throughout the entire internet (corporate sites, brands, distributors, dealers, outlets) and electronic communications (email, blog) using only one file location.  Widen digital asset management serves as a true central location of digital media that is repurposed through embed links using the power of the cloud.   

So you want to place a 25 minute video of your CEO speaking on your intranet so your employees can watch it.  I.T. says they cannot handle it because 5,000 people watching 25 minutes of video at 10:00 a.m. would cripple the infrastructure.  The answer is simpler than you think; upload it to the Widen media asset management system, copy the unique URL and paste it into the intranet site.  When 5,000 people watch it they are viewing it from Widen DAM that is leveraging the power of cloud computing. 

I love that DAM cloud.

We often overlook our marketing software for the on-demand leader in customer relationship management (CRM) – Digital Media Organizer (DMO) and Marketing Template Creation (MTC), but it’s important we mention these as we’ve seen a growing international demand for these two applications.  DMO is Widen’s digital asset management system and MTC is the dynamic media building application, both available on the Salesforce.com AppExchange.  The idea behind the integration with Campaigns, Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities is to bring the content closer to the consumer.  What better place to do it than the place where the people dealing with the customers manage all their data?  Digital Media Organizer allows marketing people to centralize the assets used for executing multi-channel campaigns.  Also, when salespeople need to send a product brochure to a key customer contact, they can do so with a few quick clicks.  All of the activity history continues to be maintained with the record.  Our more popular application, Marketing Template Creation, allows a marketing team in the U.S. to provide brand-approved templates and content options to a dealer in Australia, who localizes the brochure for a special event in their market.  Now, not only can the marketing content be consumed on-demand, it can be customized by the salesperson needing the content in support of a particular selling situation on-demand.

DEAR DR. DAM: My name is Floyd and I work in marketing for a company that carries several different brands. There's dozens and dozens of distributors and dealers nationwide that sell our products, and we've put a lot of effort into developing our marketing channel mix. With a recent revamp of our brand collateral, I realize how difficult it is to get our updated materials out to the masses. We've updated our corporate and dealers only sites, in addition to all-new branded promotions. I've urged our distributors and dealers to follow suit in collecting and using all of the new stuff. It's obvious from our current market presence that it's no easy task. Outdated information is flooding the marketplace! Please help!

DEAR FLOODING FLOYD: I understand what you're going through. It really is up to you to make it easy for your sales channels to promote your products. Redundant and outdated information can confuse your customers and make you, as the marketing lead, look bad. This is where you can be a champion in your organization, with the help of Widen. Widen's digital asset management and sales enablement tools can help you keep your materials and messages current while making it easy for your distributors and dealers to access and use the latest and greatest assets. Not only can you keep materials current, you can ensure the right file formats are used for the right purpose, helping to control brand consistency and integrity in your mix while extending brand recognition.

DEAR DR. DAM: My name is Sam and I'm a marketing manager for a mid-size manufacturer. We have over 400 SKUs of products and thousands of salespeople all over the country. I'm responsible for making sure that our salespeople have the marketing and promotional materials they need in the field. I work with the creative department in developing brochures, sell sheets, and catalogs in addition to supplying presentation templates, images and logos. I send this stuff via email, websites, CDs and hard copies.

Salespeople know that the support materials are the lifeblood of their efforts. But, why don't they use my stuff! Salespeople scavenge for images and content on the web, and from old printed materials. They sometimes call in to re-request stuff I've already sent. Then, they use the materials as they see fit, oftentimes compromising our brand. Everything must be customized for the sale, you know?

DEAR SALES SUPPORT SAM: You're in quite a pickle when it comes to upholding the integrity of your brand and making it easy for your salespeople to get what they need. Salespeople don't want to spend a lot of time on administrative tasks and preparation, but they do need to put their best foot forward in front of clients. Presentations must be personalized for their clients and promotions must be localized for their market.

In addition, they need the final form fast, and at all hours of the day! I recommend you check out Widen's solutions for digital asset management and sales enablement. Widen's software as a service solutions help your salespeople get the latest and greatest materials and customize them for their clients, while you as a marketing administrator retain central control and maintain brand consistency.

DEAR DR. DAM: My name is Deb and I'm a brand manager with a top sporting goods manufacturer. We make hundreds of products and sell them through a national and international dealer network. We pride ourselves on our brand and try to make it very apparent in our products.

However, most of our dealers are "mom and pop" shops and they don't have the resources to create top-quality ads and store signage. They're basically getting by with using our images and materials as they see fit. The way many of my dealers depict my brand makes me cringe! Images and ads are poor quality. Many of the materials are outdated. How can I cost-effectively help my dealers get the resources they need to promote our products, while enforcing our brand guidelines?

DEAR DEALERS MAKE ME CRINGE DEB: I understand your situation. You work day in day out to build your brand, but your dealers lack the resources to promote your products to their customers as well as you'd like them to. You could ship them the materials they need but that becomes very costly. Plus, your dealers need localized materials specific to their market.

I suggest you check out Widen's brand asset management software solutions to solve your dilemma. Widen systems allow your dealers to access your brand's digital assets online. What's more, Widen's self-service promotional resources allow your dealers to create professional-quality ads and signage using your branded templates. No design experience necessary - just simple point-and-click. The various image and content options offer tremendous freedom for your dealers to connect with their market. All materials can be localized with contact information, store hours and directions. Widen helps you control your brand, while providing you and your dealers with the competitive edge to enhance customer relations.

How does Digital Asset Management from Widen help simplify brand management and marketing?

Gauges effectiveness of marketing campaigns and brand assets with automated tracking and reporting tools to influence future decisions.

How do you do that?  Using real-time reporting tools, administrators can view and evaluate user access and asset usage.  Standard reporting tools can be used to show reports matching a variety of statistics including trending graphs that allow you to monitor trends over time without having to do the calculations and build the graphs yourself.  You also have the ability to run custom reports that can be mixed, matched and exported to Excel.  Want to know what was the most popular product image representing X-model widget in China last month?  That’s easy with just a few clicks.  Widen Digital Asset Management is not only a tool for marketing organization and execution in dealing with rich media management; it’s also a key part of marketing planning and strategy.

How does Digital Asset Management from Widen help simplify brand management and marketing?

Empowers sales channels to create personalized on-demand marketing resources according to brand compliance guidelines and marketing-approved messaging.

How do you do that?  Using brand approved templates and marketing-supplied content, dealers, distributors, franchisees, branches, sales people or anybody else who doesn’t have the know-how or access to Quark or InDesign (but still rep your brand) can build professional quality marketing collateral.  Users point-and-click to build ads, brochures, POS and direct mail customized, localized or co-branded for any selling situation – ad campaigns, special events, or in-store displays. 

How does Digital Asset Management from Widen help simplify brand management and marketing?

Speeds time to market with new product introductions, ad campaigns and sales promotions by automating the distribution of marketing materials in the proper formats to print and web channels.

How do you do that?  First, automatic file conversions allow you to store only one file type as the master and access other derivative formats on-demand.  Need an image for a website, presentation and brochure – you can get a 72 dpi JPEG and a 300 dpi TIFF from the master hi-res EPS file stored on Widen’s servers.  We do the same for Audio and Video assets as well.  Secondly, where do the files need to go?  If you need the files now and can download them from the web… no big deal.  What about when you’re unable to download a 2GB image or a 60-minute video?  That’s ok too because Widen will burn / author the files to a CD / DVD and ship them overnight on your behalf.

How does Digital Asset Management from Widen help simplify brand management and marketing?

Enables real-time marketing for geographically dispersed employees, external agencies and creative partners to manage, create, collaborate, share, upload and download your digital media 24 / 7.
 
How do you do that?  Internal and external teams all dial into the same set of master assets via web based DAM system to ensure the latest version is accessed when re-working or re-purposing digital media.  When new versions are created, approved users can upload the new versions and attach them as the new current version or create new assets with the simple click of a button.  Haven’t quite reached the final version?  Widen Project Collaboration allows you to route new digital media files (in their pre-asset state) to other internal users to gather and track all comments and approvals.  When the final version is reached, the project (PDF document, image, audio/video file or presentation) can be released as an asset available to all general users with permission to view the file.

How does Digital Asset Management from Widen help simplify brand management and marketing?

Reduces the chaos in managing the latest product images, logos, presentations, audio/video and other marketing materials with one master library under Widen’s DAM SaaS platform.

How do you do that?  Manage all your digital media from your very own branded web portal, while your master assets reside at Widen’s secure hosting facility.  Administrators control who can access what assets via roles and permissions.  Additionally, administrators can control when assets are to be released to general users or expired / archived and made unavailable for general access.

How does Digital Asset Management (DAM) from Widen help simplify brand management and marketing?

• Reduces the chaos in managing the latest product images, logos, presentations, audio/video and other marketing materials with one master library under Widen’s DAM SaaS platform.

How do you do that?  Manage all your digital media from your very own branded web portal, while your master assets reside at Widen’s secure hosting facility.  Administrators control who can access what assets via roles and permissions.  Additionally, administrators can control when assets are to be released to general users or expired / archived and made unavailable for general access. 

• Enables real-time marketing for geographically dispersed employees, external agencies and creative partners to manage, create, collaborate, share, upload and download your digital media 24 / 7.

How do you do that?  Internal and external teams all dial into the same set of master assets via web based DAM system to ensure the latest version is accessed when re-working or re-purposing digital media.  When new versions are created, approved users can upload the new versions and attach them as the new current version or create new assets with the simple click of a button.  Haven’t quite reached the final version?  Widen Project Collaboration allows you to route new digital media files (in their pre-asset state) to other internal users to gather and track all comments and approvals.  When the final version is reached, the project (PDF document, image, audio/video file or presentation) can be released as an asset available to all general users with permission to view the file.

• Speeds time to market with new product introductions, ad campaigns and sales promotions by automating the distribution of marketing materials in the proper formats to print and web channels.

How do you do that?  First, automatic file conversions allow you to store only one file type as the master and access other derivative formats on-demand.  Need an image for a website, presentation and brochure – you can get a 72 dpi JPEG and a 300 dpi TIFF from the master hi-res EPS file stored on Widen’s servers.  We do the same for Audio and Video assets as well.  Secondly, where do the files need to go?  If you need the files now and can download them from the web… no big deal.  What about when you’re unable to download a 2GB image or a 60-minute video?  That’s ok too because Widen will burn / author the files to a CD / DVD and ship them overnight on your behalf. 

• Empowers sales channels to create personalized on-demand marketing resources according to brand compliance guidelines and marketing-approved messaging.

How do you do that?  Using brand approved templates and marketing-supplied content, dealers, distributors, franchisees, branches, sales people or anybody else who doesn’t have the know-how or access to Quark or InDesign (but still rep your brand) can build professional quality marketing collateral.  Users point-and-click to build ads, brochures, POS and direct mail customized, localized or co-branded for any selling situation – ad campaigns, special events, or in-store displays. 

• Gauges effectiveness of marketing campaigns and brand assets with automated tracking and reporting tools.

How do you do that?  Using real-time reporting tools, administrators can view and evaluate user access and asset usage.  Standard reporting tools can be used to show reports matching a variety of statistics including trending graphs that allow you to monitor trends over time without having to do the calculations and build the graphs yourself.  You also have the ability to run custom reports that can be mixed, matched and exported to Excel.  Want to know what was the most popular product image representing X-model widget in China last month?  That’s easy with just a few clicks.  Widen Digital Asset Management is not only a tool for marketing organization and execution in dealing with rich media management; it’s also a key part of marketing planning and strategy.

DEAR DR. DAM:  I’m a Director of Marketing for a sporting goods company.  We have three different divisions and each of them have their own separate archives of marketing materials and brand assets.  As the head of the marketing activities for the enterprise, I’m challenged with needing to minimize costs by centralizing all of our marketing content.  Our distributors and dealers have been begging for more online capabilities to access and assemble materials for POP displays, signage and advertisements.  I’m in search of an easy to use application that would allow all of our divisions to centralize their creative content including POP displays, ads, images, graphics and other collateral and share it with our sales network.  It must be scalable for all but separate for each division because of different workflows and brand recognition.  Can you help?

DEAR SKATING FOR SAVINGS SAM:  I have a system in mind and it rhymes with “hidin’.”  They can set you up with a hosted digital asset management system that can provide you with one central location for everyone to access, one database for all assets, but have separate site skins to represent each individual brand.  In fact, with the robust roles and permissions structure, you can keep users and assets separate in addition to different features and workflows specific to each division.  You’ll find cost savings from a reduction in capital investments for I.T. with web based DAM, in addition to a tremendous amount of soft dollar savings by automating redundant administrative tasks and creating more efficient workflows internally and externally.  You’ll be more effective with all marketing activities using a DAM system as users reuse and repurpose your rich media.  For divisions that need to provide sales channels with access to not only find materials for POP, signage and ads, the Widen Media Builder will allow dealers to build customized materials specific to location, special events and other promotions within brand compliance guidelines.  I know you’ll find cost savings and satisfaction from you users.

DEAR DR. DAM:   I’m a brand manager with an international cruise line.   No, it’s not hurricanes or icebergs that I’m worried about, it’s managing over 20,000 digital assets that exist in various archives across the organization.  My dilemma is finding a way to make a portion of these assets available to external partners, agencies and consumers while controlling proper use.  I’m looking to create a secure web-based library of our creative materials so external affiliates can access our logos, images, ads and videos for use in other print promotions and websites.  Help me protect against the use of out-dated logos and inappropriate graphics and messaging.  I did some internet searching and came across widen.com, which looks to have much of what we’re looking for in brand asset management software.  What do you think?
 
DEAR FLOAT YOUR BOAT FLO:  If you want to be king of the world like Leo in Titanic when it comes to business branding, then yes Widen can provide you with a powerful, yet easy-to-use DAM system.  You’ll be online with a corporate image library in as little as two weeks.  Their DAM SaaS model makes it very easy to scale as your creative library grows.  Plus, your external users will find value in the ability to get exactly what they need in the appropriate file formats and publish the assets to offline and online mediums with just a few clicks.  As a brand manager, you’ll find peace of mind in maintaining one set of media assets and metadata in only one location. The costs won’t put you overboard and their service level is sure to get all hands on deck.  Go ahead and have a fruity island drink by the pool because your corporate branding is safe with Widen.

To revisit my previous post with content contributed by guest blogger Sean Banahan, “Accountability From Your Software Vendors,” I want to discuss three areas that marketing and I.T. departments looking at implementing a Digital Asset Management software solution should consider. 

With enterprise content management technologies and other software, you have options between installed software solutions, hosted / Software as a Service solutions, and options including both flavors.  When it comes to evaluating systems and service providers that help you create, manage, distribute, publish and archive the digital media that is the lifeblood of your brand and promotional materials, you’ll want to keep these 3 things in mind.

1. Support

From the point you say go on a software solution, what type of support do you get for each stage in the process – technical implementation, marketing launch, user  training, helpdesk, upgrades, more training, user promotions, customization?  Who is providing that support? 

Who handles the implementation?  Is there assistance with collecting and migrating existing digital assets from whatever scattered locations they exist? 

If you’re looking at SaaS, is the company who actually hosts the software the same company that develops it?  How many levels removed are you from the developers who handle customization requests? 

Often overlooked, but extremely important, what type of training is available – for both administrators and end-users?  First consider how easy-to-use the solution is.  Can users basically walk right up and use it based on their experience working with other common desktop applications or web interfaces? Or, are extensive user training sessions required?

What about when you have questions and don’t want to go looking through heaping piles of documentation?  Can you pick up the phone and speak with someone? Email? Chat?

Consider the technical support, marketing support and every-day user support. 

2. Upgrades

How are upgrades handled?  Who’s responsible – internal I.T. or the hosted provider?  How often are new upgrades released?  Is there a cost or annual support fee to receive the upgrades?

Are upgrades available on a routine release cycle? Each time there’s an upgrade, what documentation and training is available?  How much of each release is dedicated to new innovations vs. bug fixes and technical backlog? 

Can you skip an upgrade?  What happens if you do?  Nobody likes a legacy software application and no vendor wants to support it.

3.  Risk

Lastly, consider the risk involved with making a DAM selection.  Who assumes the risk?  If you’re looking at installed software, you assume the risk.  If you’re looking at SaaS, the vendor shares in the risk because their livelihood depends on the longevity of the business relationship.

What’s the risk?  The risk is making sure you never lose an asset … disaster recovery plans ensure business continuity … access level controls enforce accountability … security protects against external threats … system scalability accommodates future growth.

With more and more DAM vendors entering the SaaS space, I encourage you to look into company background and challenge that there’s more to SaaS than just the software.  (Consider Al’s post SaaS: Widen’s definition of “Service” is different…in a good way.”)  Coming from a 60-year-old company whose business has always been providing professional services, we understand that SaaS has a double meaning.

Your message of “we are currently reducing our marketing budget at the same time the amount of marketing projects is increasing” is heard, but what are you going to do about it? 

If a marketing professional wants to make their presence known to the organization, the time is now.  Instead of cowering in the corner waiting for your job to be cut, rise up and take charge.  Establish yourself as a marketer that can work in all types of situations, even the darkest of economic hours.  Prove to the organization that marketing will not be steered off course in the effort to reach the marketplace with a consistent brand voice.

Your resources are being eliminated and your budget cut in half but what are you going to do about it?  The time to step up and advance your career is now; but how?  Let the spotlight shine in the corner of software-as-a-service.  You could not paint a better picture for the justification of software-as-a-service technologies:

• Marketing resources being eliminated – CHECK
• I.T. resources being eliminated – CHECK
• Marketing budgets being cut – CHECK
• Marketing project load increasing – CHECK

You have heard the message from every software-as-a-service provider but maybe this time that message will resonate.  When the provider says you can do more with less, they are talking about the situation you are currently in.  Trying to market in a downturn is an extremely difficult task but doing so successfully requires the right strategy, the right resources, and the right attitude. The attitude is all in your court but strategy and resources is where you can reach out and ask for help. 

Isolate the creation, management, and distribution of your digital media.  You cannot just stop creating the digital media that helps drive revenue.  In fact you are creating exponentially more of it because the impact is greater and it is the most cost effective way to reach the market with your message.

As you create more of it, you create larger problems with managing and distributing it.  Managing and distributing large and large amounts of marketing and creative files is a responsibility you can delegate to your sales and marketing channels.  Establish the process by which everyone in need of your digital media is granted self-service access.  Establish one central source of digital media that can be repurposed and distributed worldwide while maintaining the integrity of your brand.  Establish the foundation for reducing costs.  Establish a digital asset management system using a software-as-a-service provider.

As a fellow marketer, I have used software-as-a-service technologies to manage and distribute digital media and I can guarantee that software-as-a-service providers enable you to do more with less.  Whether it is customer relationship management with Salesforce.com, digital asset management with Widen, or web content management with Clickability, a software-as-a-service provider is the answer to the ultimate question; what are you going to do about it?