Digital Asset Management Programs

What About What You Want, Marketing?

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Jake Athey

“IT wants our Digital Asset Management solution installed at our location.” … I’m sorry to remind you Marketing but are you sure IT knows what is best for you? Does IT do everything else you want? Do they provide the timeliness in response you need? Have they ever dropped the ball on a project before? Do you ever get the feeling like you’re left on an island? I don’t mean to bring IT down or even make reference that you’re IT department is lacking in support for marketing, but we’ve seen it time and time again… IT has way too many other business critical responsibilities and projects going on to give little ole marketing the attention it needs. Marketing requires immediacy in action and a certain degree of understanding of your processes.

Marketing, remember to consider your DAM needs first. You have the right to work with a team that understands creative and marketing workflows. You have the right to a timely and guided DAM software implementation. You have the right to have your administrators and DAM users receive the proper training they deserve. You have the right to have a help desk with DAM specialists that can help when you and your users have questions. You have the right to receive regular upgrades with new features and innovations in DAM and marketing technology. You have the right to contribute ideas and feature requests. You have the right to have a system that is scalable to grow with your needs. You have the right to have a DAM system that can work with other systems. You have the right to a responsive team that can restore digital assets that are accidentally deleted. You have the right to have the peace of mind to know your digital assets will always be accessible. You have the right to know what you’re paying for and only pay for what you use. You have the right to know that your digital asset management programs will be a success.

Digital Asset Management Governance: What Sets Widen Apart?

Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Matthew Gonnering

Common challenges with digital asset management programs include segmenting internal and external groups of users to have varying levels of access to specific groups of digital assets. Widen makes this easy by empowering clients to govern their user base and the level of interaction they have with different digital asset libraries. Roles and Permissions controlled by client administrators make governance a critical yet manageable part of DAM software deployments in organizations of all sizes. Watch the video to learn more.

Not your Grandpa's Digital Asset Management System

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 by Mark Norris

Digital Asset Management for Lemonade Stands aka SMBs

Digital Asset Management has long been the domain of the large enterprise – those companies that have front page stories on Time Magazine or companies whose owners make the Forbes 500 richest list 5 years running. But, is all that changing?

Is the DAM system that we know and love morphing into a tool that is useful to not only the PepsiCo's of the world, but also that little lemonade stand down the street? And more importantly, is DAM software entering the price range of that lemonade stand?

In this multi-part series of blog posts, we’ll look at the growth of DAM in the small- to medium- sized business space… from the why’s to the how’s and everything in between.

This first article, "Not your Grandpa's Digital Asset Management System," focuses on the why, as in "why is DAM growing in popularity among smaller size companies?" What is driving that growth?

Research shows there are four main drivers today in the SMB (small- to medium-sized businesses) space for Digital Asset Management programs:

Number of Files -- There is no indication that the number of digital files SMB companies create, manage and store will decrease in the foreseeable future. In fact, all signs point to extreme growth in this category over the next 5 years (and beyond). The IDC (EMC, 2009) estimates that “the digital universe will double every 18 months.” Internally, we estimated that our own company (with a marketing department of five) used approximately 47 gigs of video in the past year – a several times increase over the prior year and a number that we expect to increase by several more factors over the coming years.

Video Growth -- As SMB companies realize the benefits of video (customer testimonials, product demonstrations, training, marketing, etc.) the need to manage, control and distribute these files to the necessary parties will inherently increase as well. According to CMSWire, “organizations are looking for lighter-weight solutions (than [current] video management products) to manage their video assets. We see this as more and more websites offer videos and allow user-generated content in the form of video.” Furthermore, over 65% of companies using online videos and that number is expected to continue increasing (VideoBloom, 2009). This increase in video will also mean an increase in the amount of bandwidth required to serve the video – a requirement that many SMBs may struggle with.

Project Collaboration -- A long-time hot topic in the world of DAM, the advances of web 2.0 “is another trend that is moving DAM away from being more than a basic repository” (Mosher, 2009). According to Eric Barroca of Nuxeo, “users want to work together on developing this type of content, so features such as tagging, annotation for documents, pictures and video, collaborative filtering and viewing assets via a web interface are key to building a better repository of digital assets.”

Lower Cost to Entry -- With many DAM solutions still in the 6-figure range and most SaaS solutions in the 15-25k range, many SMBs struggle to justify an enterprise DAM. According to Frost & Sullivan (Frost & Sullivan, 2007) a lower-cost SaaS model “is expected to help the market grow significantly by luring price sensitive customers to adopt DAM technology.”

So the momentum is building… the need is building… But, how is the DAM industry responding to meet this need?

In the next article we’ll look at the DAM industry as a whole and in particular, how it is addressing this growing need.

CMO Council on Marketing Supply Chain

Monday, November 16, 2009 by Matthew Gonnering

The CMO Council released information today regarding marketers lagging in optimizing their supply chains. Digital asset management is mentioned as something that 30.1% of the respondents have already embarked on as part of their online strategy. The lack of visibility is one element of the challenge where Widen DAM SaaS has provided insight to CMO's.

As part of the relationship with Widen, we are providing customers with visibility into the critical measurements of Digital Asset Management programs. These critical measurements include the repurposing ratio, a way of monitoring how frequently digital assets are reused in the marketplace. These statistics provide CMO's with a higher level understanding of their digital media assets and how they can leverage more value from them.

Mike Perez, Vice President of NVISION, also makes a reference to SaaS by stating the following: "Marketers are clearly recognizing that they can gain significant efficiencies and cost-savings, which will allow them to re-direct spend and resources to more gainful programs. But to do this, they need the right information systems, process controls, knowledge, expertise and physical infrastructure to implement process improvements and better handle procurement, warehousing and just-in-time delivery of marketing materials worldwide. Often this is a competency that can be more cost-effectively outsourced."

That quote strings together beautiful words.....gain efficiencies, cost-savings, invest in better programs, need the right I.S., JIT marketing materials worldwide, more cost-effectively outsourced. It all fits the value of Widen digital asset management with a high-powered service model and 62 years of business operations at the core.

The CMO Council press release, also available below, can be found here:
Marketers Lag in Optimizing Global Supply Chains; Big Opportunities Exist to Reduce Cost, Improve Yield and Increase Accountability

PALO ALTO, CA -- 11/16/09 -- Nearly two-thirds of senior marketers have never undertaken a comprehensive audit of the costs and processes that contribute to their marketing supply chain and most admit their resources and suppliers are poorly integrated across global networks, reports the Chief Marketing Office (CMO) Council.

The milestone "Define Where to Streamline" study (www.marketingsupplychain.org/report) provides a comprehensive assessment of how well marketers are managing, controlling and introducing sustainability practices across increasingly complex global supply chains. These include hundreds or thousands of printers, exhibit and merchandise suppliers, warehouse and fulfillment operations, communications agencies, media channels, independent contractors, as well as creative and digital service providers.

The online audit of more than 300 senior marketers conducted by the CMO Council found marketers are inadequately positioned to introduce new efficiencies and waste reduction programs into their marketing ecosystems. The study is the first initiative in a sweeping program under the umbrella of a new think tank, the Marketing Supply Chain Institute, which is dedicated to examining the economics of spend in the marketing services sector. The study was conducted with the support of NVISION®, the Marketing Supply Chain Group of North America Corporation.

While only 25.2 percent of respondents have undertaken a comprehensive audit and analysis of costs and process efficiencies in their supply chain, the study found that roughly the same number -- 25.9 percent -- track obsolescence on marketing and event management consumables. However, just over 50 percent of the marketers audited acknowledge that ROI could be the greatest reward from an optimized supply chain as a streamlined process will likely speed time-to-market and time-to-value from marketing spend. These numbers reflect a lack of visibility into marketing supply chain operations and poor tracking and accountability of marketing materials and merchandise inventory, which often involve millions of printed items, including product packaging, corporate brochures, sales literature, premiums and point-of-sale display units.

"Auditing the effectiveness of producing, storing and shipping marketing consumables is the first step towards a more integrated, efficient and streamlined marketing supply chain," said Mike Perez, Vice President of NVISION. "Marketers are clearly recognizing that they can gain significant efficiencies and cost-savings, which will allow them to re-direct spend and resources to more gainful programs. But to do this, they need the right information systems, process controls, knowledge, expertise and physical infrastructure to implement process improvements and better handle procurement, warehousing and just-in-time delivery of marketing materials worldwide. Often this is a competency that can be more cost-effectively outsourced," he added.

Interestingly, the CMO Council study suggests that a trend toward greater sustainability and carbon footprint reductions may lead many marketers onto the right path for gaining a deeper understanding of their supplier network and value chain. More than two-thirds of respondents -- 63.6 percent -- said they are targeting print production, warehousing and delivery of marketing consumables and 37.1 percent said they were targeting transportation and logistics with an eye toward realizing sustainability gain and carbon footprint improvements. Delving into these areas will enable marketers to exact cost-savings and efficiency improvements from many of the greatest areas of spend within their marketing supply chains.

"The marketing supply chain is clearly not a strategic area of focus for many marketers, yet there are significant improvements that can be driven by change-minded executives willing to dig deeply into the operational side of the marketing function," noted Donovan Neale-May, the CMO Council's executive director. "You are going to see a much tighter linkage between the CMO, CFO and CPO (chief procurement officer) going forward and more involvement by the CIO to integrate back-end information from ERP systems to better synchronize marketing supply operations and partners."

Other key findings from the report include:

-- With 89 percent of companies indicating they are not generating real
    economies or efficiencies in their marketing supply chain process,
    marketers are further challenged as one third of respondents indicate they
    have no internal resource of expertise in supply chain management. In
    fact, 47.8 percent of marketers surveyed indicate that marketing supply
    chain management is an evolving functional area that needs more attention
    or a discipline growing in importance of value.

-- 30.4 percent of respondents said they weren't fully realizing the
    value and potential of the Internet and instead are managing partners
    through traditional means while 30.1 percent clearly have adopted an online
    approach, saying they were seeing major improvements in workflow,
    collaboration, content access and digital asset management.

-- Marketers acknowledge that a streamlined supply chain can improve go-
    to-market strategy and speed time-to-value from marketing spend, and play a
    critical role in managing the potential variance in customer experience.
    The delivery of accurate and relevant content, the uniformity of
    communication and consistency of message, and the timely provisioning of up-
    to-date sales and marketing messages and materials are the top three
    critical values an optimized marketing supply chain to go-to-market
    strategy.

-- Creative, once an area often left in the hands of agencies or
    advertising, may come under greater scrutiny as a significant number of
    marketers -- 40.5 percent -- identified creative design and development as
    an area in the marketing supply chain with the greatest potential for
    process, productivity and performance improvements.

Why Now is the Right Time to Implement Digital Asset Management Programs

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 by Jake Athey

There are a lot of companies that will say “now is the time to gear up for the new year so that you can hit the ground running,” but this customer video compilation goes to show why top marketers implemented Widen digital asset management programs to improve their marketing operations. See why these marketers have made the investment in Widen’s hosted DAM software to create efficiencies, improve productivity, and increase brand consistency throughout their marketing channels.

Are you wasting precious time and resources managing and fulfilling requests for brand assets?
Are you looking for ways to improve marketing efficiency, effectiveness and agility?
Are you seeking fool-proof ways to achieve brand consistency across all customer touch points?
Do you want to empower sales channels to be more effective?

In the first segment, Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager at InSinkErator, talks about their growing problem managing and distributing brand assets. He explains what a problem it was to regularly get calls from customers, sales reps, ad agencies and PR firms needing digital assets and there was no easy way to provide them what they needed in a timely matter. Sound familiar? He knew they needed a more efficient digital media asset management system so he wouldn’t lose precious time having to duplicate the same process over and over again fielding requests such as “I need an image and I don’t know what format I need.” Each time, he would have to stop what he’s doing to find the asset, convert it, ship it, etc. Widen DAM asset management services changed all that and removed the burden of having to manage and distribute assets “the old way.”

In the second segment, Jim Scarlata, Senior Marketing Operations Manager for Knaack LLC, explains that there was one gatekeeper to their digital asset library and there was no easy way to achieve brand consistency across all marketing channels, ensure the most current brand assets were always available (and used), and make assets easily available to all channel partners. With Widen’s help, Knaack has a single online location for all of the most current digital content to be globally available to any approved user.

In the third segment, John Wernecke, Global Marketing Manager (Former Public Relations Manager), Motorola Mobile Devices talks about the ease of use when it comes to digital assets management with the help of Widen. The Widen Media Collective provides Motorola with enterprise-wide ability to share and collaborate interactively 24 hours a day, which has allowed marketing and creative groups to come together at a central location that is always accurate and working.

In the fourth segment, Michele Bedard, Vice President of Marketing, Sub-Zero, Inc. and Wolf Appliance, Inc., explains how Sub-Zero and Wolf is all about the brand and making sure customers have a consistent brand experience across all touch points. The Widen online digital asset management tools provide the people in the field with access to the most current assets so Sub-Zero and Wolf brands look the same from whatever source anyone would see it.

In the fifth and final segment, Michele Kowalkowski, Catalog Manager North America, Brady Worldwide, Inc., talks about how the Widen corporate image library empowers sales people to carry out their jobs and supports relationships with their distributor networks. Without always having to be reliant on the marketing team, they have a digital asset library they can trust to be accessible when they need assets and get them instantly in the format needed to complete their project.

To get more takes from the pros, watch more Widen Customer Interviews.

The Last “S” in SaaS for DAM Software as a Service

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 by Jake Athey

Watch the video compilation from several marketing professionals discuss their experiences with Widen Digital Asset Management Software as a Service (DAM SaaS).

This short video compilation includes three different customer interviews making a case for the SaaS deployment model for digital asset management programs. The first customer is Jim Scarlata, Senior Marketing Operations Manager for Knaack LLC. He speaks about why SaaS makes the most sense for companies with limited IT resources. He argues that DAM software is a subject area outside of the core competencies of Information Technology personnel responsible for critical business systems. Digital asset solutions reside more in the area of creative and marketing and should be handled by a company whose core competency is digital asset management workflow. Widen has 15+ years of experience in DAM software implementations across a variety of business models and vertical industries. Furthermore, Widen’s service-driven culture offers the consultation and suggestions to make the implementation go as smooth as possible.

The second customer is Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager at InSinkErator, and he states that he turned to Widen as a DAM SaaS provider because of two main promises—technological expertise to solve problems and the service commitment backing the technology. As a self-proclaimed “non-technical” person, Jim Magruder and his team at InSinkErator have both the technology and service experts to make life easier when it comes to managing brand assets and promotional materials.

The third customer is John Wernecke, Global Marketing Manager for Motorola Mobile Devices, and he talks about the rapid response from Widen support teams and how they go “above and beyond” with no questions asked. He explains that when there’s a problem, it’s quite simply “What happened? ... What were you doing when it happened? … And, we’ll fix it.

For the latest about Widen’s commitment to service when it comes to digital asset management software support, watch the video about Widen25.

What’s the Big Deal About Widen25?

Friday, October 9, 2009 by Widen Marketing

“Widen25” is the new service mantra for Widen Collective digital asset management customers.

As a DAM Software as a Service provider, Widen has always believed that service is just as important as the technology, but now we are putting a number to it. Internally, Widen support has always had rapid response initiatives… Now we are shouting it. And by shouting it we have, in effect, upped the ante.

Watch the Widen25 Collective Support Promo Video

Widen25 is a commitment to response times within the various communications methods used by customers and the user community to request assistance from Widen support teams. During expanded Help Desk hours of 7 am to 7 pm CST, the 25 refers to the following three service commitments:

25 seconds from dial to the voice of Widen help desk personnel.
25 seconds from online chat initiation to Widen help desk response.
25 minutes from email inquiry to a Widen help desk reply.

How is it different than what we did before? Quite plainly, it’s a simple way to communicate what we have been doing already, but emphasizes what DAM SaaS customers can expect for chat, email, and phone support.

What is Widen doing differently? Customers now have direct toll free access to the Widen help desk staffed in Madison, WI through a dedicated support line. We’ve increased staffing levels, expanded help desk hours, implemented new processes to advance how we respond to support inquiries, and are recording support calls for team training and quality control purpose.

We're not guaranteeing a service level... We're making a commitment to response times. Service is a top priority for Widen Digital Asset Management programs.

Widen customers and users of Widen systems are invited to contact the service team using any of the following methods:

Toll Free: 1-877-WIDEN25
Online Chat support in the Help/Support section of each customer application
Email: Widen25support@widen.com

Learn more about Widen25 Collective Customer Support

Become a Fan of Widen on Facebook

Tuesday, October 6, 2009 by Jake Athey

Do you want all the latest and greatest news and updates about Widen digital asset management programs and premedia services? Become a Fan of Widen on Facebook.

The Widen Facebook fan page provides a central location for everything “Widen” with links to all of the latest articles, news, blogs, videos, photos and more.

Become a fan of Widen on Facebook and join in on the conversations.

Introduction to the main features of the Widen Facebook Fan Page:

The Wall – View a log of the latest article placements, mentions in trade publications, press releases, blogs and member commentary. Some of the more notable recent postings include links to Widen articles in Adotas, ebizQ, DM News, Corporate Media News, Multichannel Merchant and the American Marketing Association’s Marketing Power.com. You can also find Widen quotes and client successes in recent trade publications including KMWorld, Processor.com and Big Picture Magazine.

Info – Catch a glimpse of Widen with a short company overview, mission and product snapshot.

A sample of the Widen Product snapshot:

Widen Media Collective - A web-based digital asset management software application for creating, managing and distributing photos, videos, marketing materials and other digital media.

Premedia Services - photography, color retouching, digital sampling, catalog production, color management and wide format printing.

Photos – Check out Widen photo albums including Widen magazine covers from the premedia open house, Widen company kickball, black and white historical images of Widen Engraving Co., and portfolios of Widen Digital Sampling, Color Markups and Color Retouching.

Videos – Watch Widen’s latest photoshop magic premedia viral videos and get 1-on-1 with Widen’s CEO and other subject matter experts.

Other areas of interest on the Widen Facebook page include RSS feeds of all the latest blogs covering Widen’s areas of expertise, links to other industry resources, and favorite pages linking to the fan pages of Widen Customers.

To learn more, become a Fan of Widen on Facebook.

Digital Media Management and Digital Asset Management Market Drivers

Thursday, October 1, 2009 by Jake Athey

The recent KMWorld article DAM takes on many roles reports “The market for digital asset management (DAM) solutions remains robust, driven by increasing demand for rich media on Web sites, for marketing materials and in technical documentation. Ideally, assets for those purposes are managed centrally and published as needed to different destinations.”

KMWorld reports the annual market stands at about $600 million, and historically has posted double-digit growth. ABI Research forecasts the market to top $1 billion in 2013.

Feeding the DAM growth is the increased volume of rich media coupled with the wealth of devices to create, send and receive digital media. Furthermore, The Association of Graphic Solutions Providers (IPA) reports an increasing number of multi-channel targeted marketing programs have caused an explosion in the number of digital assets to manage.

Moreover, Frost & Sullivan reports that apart from the increased creation and use of digital media, the average file size of content is also increasing. To take the example of images, both the files size and the pure number of digital images taken have steadily increased each year. This is true for almost all media types from text to images and audio/visual content. The emergence and popularity of high definition video has been further fueled by the availability of numerous devices to receive content. This burgeoning demand has created a huge infrastructure challenge. High resolution images and video are storage and bandwidth intensive. For more on the DAM Market Overview and Challenges, download the DAM as SaaS 2.0 Whitepaper from Frost & Sullivan.

It’s a “Wired” World – Devices to Create, Send and Receive Digital Media

The increasing volume of digital media is again fueled to the increasing number of devices available to create and consume digital media. The mobile wireless market for handheld devices is another market that has become a huge user of digitized media. Interestingly, Widen worked with a 3rd-party market research company in the first half of 2009 for an analysis of digital asset management programs and social media. One of the questions asked was “What consumer electronic devices do you own and use?” Just for fun, here are the results…

Digital Camera, Laptop/Notebook Computer, Portable Media Device (iPod) and Cell Phone with Camera are the most common electronic devices owned and used (n=94).

Top Digital Asset Management Market Drivers according to ABI Research

Increase in the need to collaborate workflows across divisions in an enterprise
DAM systems no longer operate in a silo environment
Move to nonlinear digital workflows will drive demand
Improved operational efficiencies maximizes the ROI on a DAM system
Increase in bandwidth, fall in the storage cost will boost the demand of DAM
Continued effort in marketing initiatives will increase the demand for DAM
Creative professionals adopt DAM tools
New and emerging markets will drive the demand for DAM systems
Adoption of digital media technology enhances the growth of the market
Multiple channels of content delivery will increase the demand for DAM solutions
Content is king: Premium content, HD and video services will drive the growth

Won’t you be my neighbor? Level III Services and Print On-Demand

Thursday, May 7, 2009 by Widen Marketing

Widen is continually working to build strong partnerships with third party vendors who provide technologies and services that are complementary to our own digital asset management programs. By partnering with industry leading vendors we can expand into new markets and bring more features and functionality to our own Widen Media Collective customers. It’s a win win for everyone. Through strategic partnerships and the technologies that they bring to the table, Widen can help our customers build out entire media workflow environments that go far beyond digital asset solutions. One of the central messages I have tried to focus on in some of my previous blogs was that DAM systems should be the backbone to our customer’s larger marketing operations, brand and creative software technology environments. So I thought it would be helpful to start a series of blogs highlighting some of our partner relationships and how our customers are using these external services and technologies to streamline and improve their internal media workflows. Level III Services is one of those partners who immediately came to mind as a great place to start.

Level III Services offers print on-demand and product fulfillment services that are second to none. Their online suite of products leverages Widen’s hosted DAM platform to give customers instant access to their marketing materials from anywhere in the world. Need to manage a large inventory of marketing literature or products online? Need to ship the latest brochure to the event for your biggest customer and need it there tomorrow? Tired of drowning in extra materials and cost because your printer requires you to adhere to large print runs instead of paying for just what you use and need? Yeah, they do all that. Level III Services saves their customers thousands by embracing the simple idea that less is more. You can save money and the environment by producing only what you need, when you need it. That sounds good to Widen and is one reason we think Level III is such a good neighbor. Customers of Widen’s hosted DAM service have been paying for only what they use, rather than what they can install, for over 12 years. For more info on Level III Services, visit www.level-3.com.

DAM Reporting Tools at Your Fingertips

Friday, March 20, 2009 by Widen Marketing

From images, to audio and video, Widen DAM SaaS applications provide the tools to help clients successfully manage and distribute their digital assets. For the majority of our clients, there are select individuals that become the champions of their digital asset management implementation. These are the people that hold the most responsibility in administering the applications and are the key decision makers into what the system manages and how to manage the system.

One of the great capabilities with a DAM System is that Administrators have the ability to run reports on all activity. These reports include determining who is logging in to the platform, which assets are ordered the most or even determining how many assets you have for a particular product.

Reporting is key to gathering market insights, determining product popularity, and understanding how/where to allocate marketing resources. Moreover, reporting is extremely important when it comes to managing rights and knowing exactly how, where and by whom your brand assets are being used. Reporting and tracking tools are vital to leveraging digital asset management programs as a true resource to marketing operations driving brand consistency and revenues.

Here’s a brief overview of a few standard reporting options for Widen Administrators:

Site Overview – Dashboard showing number of users, number of assets, total size (GB/TB), top users by number of logins, top assets ordered, and top asset quick searches.

Trend Graphs – Standard list of out-of-the-box reports showing trend graphs and data tables over time for Assets Orders, Assets, Versions, Asset Groups and Users

User Reports – Custom reports on user demographic info, roles, and activity such as logins

Registration Reports – Custom reports to control / monitor system access

Asset Reports – Custom reports on all asset metadata and security / release dates

Asset Order Reports – Custom reports with sender and recipient data

Asset Upload Reports – Custom reports on all assets entering the DAM system

Other Reports – Photo Routing (for Backdrop), Projects (for Collaboration), Templates (for Media Building) and Catalog Production

What’s the Cost of Not Implementing a Digital Asset Management Solution?

Wednesday, March 4, 2009 by Widen Marketing

Digital Asset Management solutions enable photographers, marketers, advertisers and other content creators to centralize, find and repurpose their digital media files. Vendors like Widen and industry analysts can point to a number of tools to help customers gauge a ROI figure for digital asset management programs with these concepts in mind. I often point customers to a tool found at www.digitalassetmanagement.com. Coming up with a figure can be tricky but it’s almost always based on the amount of resources it takes for a single user to find, download and do something with a file. These concepts and this line of thinking is paramount to judging if a DAM solution is right for your needs, what type of solution to go with and what vendor you should choose. I wouldn’t argue otherwise, but I will say that in many cases customers forget that WHO has access to your material and even WHEN they have access to it, might be more important when judging the value and ROI of your DAM system.

I have spoken with a number of customers over the years that began evaluating DAM systems or decided to switch vendors mid-stream because of some unfortunate incident when someone had access to, or was using a file they weren’t supposed to. This might have been something innocent like a sales rep using the wrong presentation template or something catastrophic like finding one of your images posted on Yahoo! or seeing an unreleased product shot floating around on blog sites. A key thing to consider when looking at a DAM system is how it manages access to your content.

Can you create the appropriate levels of access into the system?
Can you manage when users should have access to content and when those rights should expire?
Can you track who is using what and when?
Can you warn users about the appropriate use for a file?

It is these kinds of questions that will help you understand that there most certainly is a cost for not implementing a DAM system. This week I saw three different articles involving people suing companies and other people over how they were using images found on the web. One article described an image found on Flickr that made its way into a company’s advertising materials and another involved the rights to a Barack Obama image. In both cases, lawsuits were in the millions of dollars.

Images… Images…Where art thou?

Friday, January 16, 2009 by Kathy Lewis

I have been asked to find digital images that we can display throughout our building. Not being real familiar with the Widen Media Collective, I took it upon myself to try to do it on my own. And lo and behold it is a pretty simple system to use. I just typed in a specific keyword on each Collective site and was able to pull up amazing images. We have many companies we work with and thousands of images, so it was pretty fun to get a little more comfortable with our digital asset management programs. It was so very simple to order up an image and have it immediately sent to my inbox within seconds, so I was able to send it to our Graphic Designer for her to add the company logo to it and it was off to our prepress production department.

I wanted to get an image from one of our newest customers for our internal Widen gallery so I went to the National Trust for Historic Preservation Media Collective site to see if there happened to be any images in their digital asset library and they already had several images up and ready to use. So I chose one of their images and it will soon be on the wall near my desk. It is so nice to walk through our company and see all of the images that we have produced and we store here at Widen. My next project is to have a few products displayed here with an image created by our color production team once the product has been photographed in our photo studio. It is just amazing how it all comes together and how it falls into place so simply.

Digital Asset Management Best Practices: Focus on Metadata Part II

Wednesday, January 7, 2009 by Widen Marketing

What metadata fields will your organization require and use?
Here’s a list of considerations for common metadata fields:

I. Asset Type: What is the file – an image, video, brochure, etc.? Call it out… somewhere. Widen digital asset solutions have multiple options for this type of metadata association including metadata fields, categories, portfolios and/or flags.

II. Asset Metadata Type: In the Widen system, each asset has a metadata type. The key to remember is that different assets can have different metadata fields and this is done with multiple asset metadata types. Remember: Type warrants the fields available.

III. Key Dates: Date file created, data asset uploaded, date asset last updated – these are each required fields. Pay attention also to rights / release dates for controlling access to assets that are unreleased by designated users (i.e. for future campaigns or product releases).

IV. Creator / Photographer: Whether it is someone internal or an agency, it’s helpful to know who created the asset.

V. Product Model #s / Part #s: Another “good-to-know” bit of information and tag for all relevant assets with this data whether it be a product shot, lifestyle image or even point-of-sale piece.

VI. Product Marketing Names: Be sure to tag your assets with the most logical and widely-used descriptive terms used to reference the asset and/or product/service the asset represents. Your administrators may include a template for recommended terms within your DAM metadata guidelines.

VII. Asset/Product Geographic Availability: If you have products/services that differ by geographic region, then it’s important their accompanying assets are marked as such. These can be controlled by the use of Roles&Permissions for users in different geographies.

VIII. Geographic Use Restrictions: Related to point VII, this metadata field should reflect the regions where the asset can be used.

IX. Asset Protection: Roles and permissions determine what assets can or cannot be accessed by users; however your organization may see it necessary to use metadata features to classify assets as Public, Private, Internal-Only or Confidential/Restricted. A number of Widen clients also use flags for marking assets as Rights Managed, Protected and/or Unreleased.

X. Usage Rights / Restrictions: Again Widen’s robust roles and permissions features allow you to protect and control asset accessibility, however you may also use metadata to set unreleased or expiration dates. Additionally, a number of Widen clients require compliance with an End User License Agreement before they can access the asset. Digital asset tracking and reporting tools will be addressed in later DAM best practices posts.

These are just 10 basic elements to consider when initiating a metadata strategy for your digital asset management program. There are several other considerations when it comes to metadata. As you construct your metadata guidelines, be sure to list the name and contact information for the master administrators in case questions arise. Likewise, Widen DAM SaaS experts would be happy to provide a more in-depth consultation with your organization about metadata strategies.