Digital Asset Management Solutions

As the Brand Development Manager here at Widen I’m constantly looking forward. Where are the markets going? What are the latest trends? What is the next Big Thing in rich media management that we need to be a part of?


So it was kind of a fun “looking back at looking forward” exercise I went through when Newsweek re-published an article that they had originally published in 1995 titled The Internet? Bah!.

In it, Clifford Stoll, the journalist who is unfortunately linked to his couldn’t-be-more-wrong predictions for life, laments against the value of the internet and how it will never be a big life-changer everyone wants it to be.

While I could pick nearly any sentence out of the article and show how Clifford was wrong (e.g. “The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper” – tell that to the newspapers of today!) the more interesting aspect was what Clifford got right by getting it all wrong. You see he came to those conclusions by considering the tools that were available at the time and to illustrate that he started it off with “Consider today’s online world.” That was his first mistake. If the online world stayed how it was in 1995 (think text based usenet groups and 2400 baud modems – a 30k image would easily take 30 minutes to download!).

If you consider the future based on the tools we have available today then the future will always look impossible. What he wasn’t considering was that cell phones of today would have 100x the power as the computers of 1995. Or that downloading a full movie today would take 5 minutes, when downloading a simple JPEG image in 1995 takes 30 minutes!

But in uncovering all these problems Clifford was uncovering opportunities – unfortunately he just didn’t know it or didn’t care to act on it. In the article he talks about the lack of social communities in 1995 – hello Facebook, MySpace, etc. He calls the internet a “wasteland of unedited data” – hello Google! And his rant against the future of ecommerce because of a lack of secure online purchasing (PayPal, Google Checkout, SSL, etc.) and lack of social feedback (Amazon rating system, review sites).

The point is that every single one of the problems he mentioned later became billion-dollar industries and, in many cases, companies in their own right. So Clifford was so right by being so wrong!

How does this all relate to DAM Asset Management? Well, just like Clifford I’m not sure yet.

We as a company and an industry have become comfortable with the markets we serve and the use cases from those markets. For example here at Widen we started off serving primarily the manufacturing and retail industries (via their Marketing departments), though more recently DAM software is catching on with Healthcare, Government, Education and other sectors.

We make some assumptions that our product is not the right fit for, say, an individual. Or a sole-proprietor. For all the reasons you might think and agree with—it’s too complicated. Individuals don’t need all those features. People prefer storing their images locally for speed reasons.

But after seeing Clifford’s 1995 example I have to challenge you and myself on these – how many of these are legitimate roadblocks, and how many are glowing opportunities waiting to be solved by the next Bill Gates?

I’d be willing to be bet that the 2025 version of us will kick ourselves for not acting on these ideas sooner.

“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.

Why is it that IT departments want Digital Asset Management solutions that are installed on-site? Is it because they own it? Is it because they can customize it? Is it because they want their assets behind their firewall? These are all valid questions. DAM SaaS providers and SaaS adopters deal with these questions all of the time. There are answers to these questions, but the DAM project owners should ask these questions back to their IT managers as well.

The truth is you don’t own the installed software. You only own it if it’s a home grown solution and many large companies are finding that their home grown solutions, after years of development, do not compare to modern-day DAM solutions. Many home grown solutions don’t embrace the feature set, ease of use, and scalability of today’s enterprise-class DAM solutions. If you’re thinking an installed solution belongs to you, you’re not entirely correct. You don’t own the code. If you want to customize it, you must ensure the parts to customize fit with what your needs are and that you have the competency to customize it.

You’re still subject to the release cycles, support and professional services offered by the installed provider. There’s a certain level of expertise it takes to implement and maintain DAM software and many IT departments are not staffed with “DAM experts.” Consider the competencies of IT and the competencies required for a DAM implementation, ongoing maintenance and expansion. In most organizations, the IT team’s time is filled in maintaining the other business critical systems. Does DAM carry that high of a priority with IT?

Installed or SaaS, You Still Own Your Digital Assets

Whether you deploy an installed solution or work with a hosted provider, you still own the assets. It’s just a matter of where they live. Of course with an installed solution, they live behind your firewall. With a SaaS solution, your assets live in the hosted provider’s secure data center or the cloud. This is much like banking… you keep your money in a bank because you trust they can do a better job managing it than you can. Certainly, there are good reasons to have asset libraries on the client site. That’s why Widen introduced the Appliance. With the Widen Appliance, companies have replicated assets on-site to support internal creative operations and business continuity planning in the event of catastrophe causing the internet to go down.

One of the many reasons companies – big, medium and small – choose to work with a SaaS provider is because the hosted DAM provider has a better infrastructure to support a widespread network of internal and external users. A hosted provider can often offer greater scalability of the infrastructure. This includes scalability to scale resources up as the demand increases and scale the resources down when so much storage and bandwidth is not required. Scalable SaaS DAM deployments can be more cost-effective as they support a true pay for what you use model.

We had a prospective client share their DAM story with us last week and their needs matched up very closely with what Widen could provide in a hosted Digital Asset Management solution. They needed a central repository for images and videos, easy to use, easy to find assets, multiple levels of control and access, and asset tracking and usage reporting.

However, after learning the Widen online digital asset management solution matched up very well to the needs of this particular client, they came back to us saying that their IT department would only consider solutions installed on-site. Regrettably, Widen is a 100% DAM SaaS provider and delivers web-based DAM solutions where the asset libraries are hosted in Widen’s data center.

Do they want the internet installed too?

I thought it was interesting that this particular client’s IT team would only consider an installed solution since they’ve been unable to maintain the current system. This is something we hear all of the time. Ironically, most of their digital assets – images and videos – end up online. Do they want the internet installed too? If the destination for your digital assets is to be online, then wouldn’t it make sense for the digital asset management solution to be online as well?

A recent Forrester ECM (Enterprise Content Management) report by analyst Stephen Powers shows that more interest was seen in SaaS products (than on-premise or open source), with 43% of the respondents expressing interest in SaaS WCM and 39% in SaaS DAM. “Because content stored in these systems are often public-facing, organizations were less concerned with sharing the content outside the firewall,” reports Powers.

Consider the use and destination of your digital assets in defining your goals and needs with a DAM system. In a large organization with multiple divisions in multiple locations, an installed solution isn’t always the best option. Consider all internal and external users? Will the installed solution be the single point of reference for everyone in the organization? Will everyone adopt the solution or will people still work in the same siloed environments their used to? One of the main goals for deploying a DAM solution should be making it easy for users to access the system, enjoy using it and make it easy to get want they need so they will come back again.

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.

Widen provides Digital Asset Management implementations with a phased approach. As a service provider, it’s important to Widen that we work with your team at the pace that you see fit. What does “done” look like? We want to know your expectations so we can help you manage the success in phases. Technologically, we provide the scalability to meet your demands as the system grows. Watch the video to learn more.

The Digital Asset Management system is the hub of the digital asset life cycle. DAM covers the management portion of the life cycle. Widen has developed tools upstream from DAM to support the creative workflow and approval cycles in addition to marketing and sales tools downstream. Watch the video to learn more.

Widen recognizes that digital assets need to be externally distributed, but also need to be internally consumed. Creative workflows demand hi-resolution files be accessible at local speeds. Marketing networks require remote access to the most current assets. Watch the video to learn more about the hybrid approach to digital asset management with the Widen Appliance as the creative workflow extension to the hosted model… entirely under the Software as a Service approach to DAM.

Every user experience is important to Widen. An important part of the user digital asset management software experience is having a clean, friendly, intuitive user interface. Widen continues to advance the User Interface to make the user experience as enjoyable as possible. Watch the video to learn more about how Widen shares in the success of adoption with digital asset management system deployments.

Everyone wants to know about best practices in digital asset management. Best practices with digital assets metadata and taxonomy development, categorization, etc. As a DAM SaaS provider, Widen takes digital asset management best practices to another level by leveraging the collections of digital asset usage data to help clients compare against past usage and performance within their DAM system and with other Widen clients. Watch the video to learn more about Widen’s ratios referred to as “Digital Asset Management Success Metrics.”

Digital Asset Management is not all about technology. If you’re considering Widen in your digital asset management project, then service must be important to you. Widen is a service company. We’ve been that way for 62 years. Watch the video to learn more about how Widen provides Digital Asset Management Software as a Service, emphasizing the last “S” in SaaS.

What Digital Asset Management technology is going to fit the needs of your company? How often are upgrades provided? How are upgrades determined? Watch the video interview to find out more about how Widen goes about involving clients and delivering DAM software upgrades.

Awhile back, we participated in a RFP for a digital asset management system at a large enterprise. In working through the RFP, we put together several video responses to the different sections. In the videos that follow, I'll talk about Widen’s qualifications, experience, practices and approach to providing digital asset management solutions as a service provider.

Watch the video to learn about why Widen understands digital asset management software and, more importantly, what goes in a DAM system.

What is the best digital asset management product? That’s a good question… and a common question among those beginning to research digital asset management technologies and vendors. The purpose of this post to help those understand how to decide what is the best digital asset management product for you.

Organizations of all shapes and sizes are adopting digital asset management systems and practices to improve efficiency, brand consistency, accountability, intelligence and effectiveness. When asked, “what kinds of companies need digital asset management?” my response is typically any company that has sophisticated enough creative or marketing operations that they’re creating significant amounts of digital content – images, videos, brochures, etc. – that need to be used and repurposed. That digital content is to be centrally managed and readily available for multiple users to access the content they are supposed to. DAM is particularly valuable to organization’s that have distributed user networks and workers who require remote, self-serve access to a central library of digital assets. There is no exact right or wrong answer to know if a company needs DAM. The size and scale of a DAM implementation varies. When the “traditional” methods of using the shared drive, email attachments, and FTP site start to bring reoccurring pain, then DAM might be something worth considering.

Organizations that are finding success in adopting DAM software solutions include the following vertical markets:  manufacturing, retail, marketing & advertising agencies, media, entertainment, publishing, sports, colleges & universities, healthcare, insurance, financial services, non-profit organizations, hospitality, food service, government, engineering, construction, hi-tech.

When asked “What is the best digital asset management product?” … There really is no right answer. It varies. The digital asset management analyst community will tell you the same thing. The best DAM solution really depends on you and your company. It depends on what kind of company you are and what your functional goals are. The size of your company or industry you’re in may matter (or may not). The size of your digital asset library may matter (or may not). The types of assets you predominantly need to manage may play a part. The quantity of users and their location (internal or external) may make a difference.

The digital asset management analyst community will tell you to consider the types of solutions vendors offer to fit different use cases. It is important to understand the business scenarios that fit each vendor’s product strategy to find the best digital asset management product for your particular circumstances. The DAM analyst community has helped those looking for DAM solutions by rating vendors according to common scenarios useful for understanding which types of products tend to work better according to the type of projects. These use case scenarios can be divided into three buckets to include: (1) Image Management, Brand Management and Marketing Operations – segmented further by Digital Asset Library, Photo Archive, Brand Management, Marketing Collateral Production and Distribution, and Ad Production services; (2) Publishing – segmented further by Periodicals Production & Distribution, Multi-Channel Publishing, Catalog Publishing, Rights-Managed Content Syndication and Distribution services; (3) Video Production – segmented further by E-Learning, Video Review and Approval, Short Form Video Production, and Broadcast Video Production services.

Other things to consider when looking for a digital asset management vendor (in no particular order) include:

How long has the vendor been around? … How long have they been offering DAM? … How much of their focus is on DAM? … Is DAM a core part of their business or just a side activity? … How many DAM clients do they have? … How many DAM clients have they lost? … Do they have experience in your industry? … Do they offer complementary services? … Where does their experience come from? … How stable is the company? … Have they been bought or sold? … Is their DAM offering home grown or purchased from someone else? …  How sophisticated is it? … Is it evolving as the marketplace changes? … What does their product roadmap look like? … Do they have one? … How often do they come out with new upgrades and innovations? … Who installs them? … Do they have a technical services team? … Do they have a help desk? … What are their hours? … How do you reach them? … Who handles the implementation? … Do they offer training? … Do they perform integrations? How? … What information technology resources will be required internally? … What is the cost to deploy? … What is the cost to maintain? How do you achieve an ROI? … What are the extra costs? … What are their security practices? … How can they ensure my assets are safe? … Is it customizable? … How much customization is required to make it work? … Is it scalable to grow with my business?

These are just a small set of the many questions to ask when looking for the best digital asset management product for your organization.

Leave a comment if you have other advice for those looking at DAM for the first time or share your experiences.

One of the many purposes of a Digital Asset Management system is to provide controlled access to an organization’s library of approved digital assets. Note the key word here is controlled! There are many types of marketing software systems that provide some sort of repository services for centralized storage of documents, images, and other files. However, only a true DAM system should suffice in a sophisticated marketing environment where you want to deliver tiered levels of control for the collaboration, management, and distribution of digital assets. In Widen’s world of DAM, tiered levels of control are managed via Roles and Permissions.

Without Roles and Permissions, you may as well post everything you own to a public-facing website for the whole world to access. In a web-based DAM system, every a user has a secure login which authenticates them into a Role with a predefined set of permissions.

Roles and Permissions determine 'who' has 'what' level of access to 'which' assets and 'how' the user can interact with the assets.

Roles and Permissions allow…

• The marketing team to prepare a campaign that will launch in six months.
• The product team to produce training materials for a product that doesn’t hit the market until next year.
• The regional field reps to only access current collateral and promotions created for them.
• The marketing team to ensure assets for products that have been taken off the market are not accessible by the sales teams and partners.

Although it can be a very complicated aspect of DAM to administrate, Roles & Permissions can be as simple as can be for a four-person workgroup or as complex as a multi-national enterprise with several departments, divisions, brands and channels for access and control. Maintaining the Role & Permissions structure is critical when rolling out updates and a key point in selecting the right partner. More than that, working with Roles & Permissions that allow for adaptability, flexibility and scalability with ease is vital to the ongoing success of your DAM system.

Read the article in E-Commerce Times: Whose Fingers Are in Your DAM?

Contact Us to learn more or to see the Roles & Permissions structure in Widen’s online DAM system.

Join Widen at the Premiere of Createasphere Digital Asset Management and Explore the Global Issues of DAM with the Experts

WHEN:    
February 17th & 18th, 2010 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM

WHERE: 
The Universal Hilton
555 Universal Hollywood Dr.
Universal City, CA

WHAT:   
The premiere of Createasphere Digital Asset Management Exposition is specifically designed to bring together technology leaders, entertainment and media organizations and an interdisciplinary group of practitioners to define the future, and current best practices specific to entertainment, broadcast, gaming, advertising and media.

WHO:   

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Keynote: Studio Panel - "Vision 2010 and 2020"
Stan Scoggins - Universal, Scott Phelan - Fox Filmed Entertainment, Tim Padilla - Warner Bros., Jamie Voris - NFL, Garrett Smith - Paramount Pictures, Paul Nicholson - ShowTime, Moderated by Dan McGraw - Seven Dials Media

Panels include:

• DAM 101- What is it and what you need to know
• dpBestflow – The Best DAM Resource on the Web
• The 21st Century Career: Digital Librarians, Archivists, Project Management and So Much More
• The Strategic Business Case for DAM: When, Why & ROI
• The DAM Admins Open Source Toolbelt - Free Tools You Need to Know This Year
• Distributing Rich Media: The Competitive Edge Is Knowledge
• Using Social Media in DAM
• Positioning of DAM
• Exploring the Process to Manage, Manipulate & Deliver Video Content

Thursday, February 18th, 2010
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM

Keynote: "The Evolution of DAM (Digital Asset Management)"
Alex Grossman, Active Storage

Panels include:

• The Role of Taxonomy & Metadata in Digital Asset Management
• Capitalization on Storage
• Metadata - The Message is IN the Media
• Reinventing Everything: The desktop paradigm moves to the web
• Rights Management & Content Protection of Assets
• Managing Worldwide Workflow: Digital Is a Global Initiative
• Order from Disorder: Taming the Digital Chaos
• Powerful Tools & Techniques for Enhancing Searching Capabilities

See Panel Schedule and Speaker Information

In addition to two days of panels and keynotes, the Createasphere DAM conference features lunchtime roundtables, networking opportunities, and other community building events and opportunities for education and connection. 

For Information and Registration, visit: http://www.createasphere.com/damem_february

Saints Win! Saints Win! The 2010 Super Bowl between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts was watched by more than 106 million viewers, surpassing the 1983 finale of "M-A-S-H" to become the most-watched televised event in American history. This is the fifth consecutive year that the Super Bowl has averaged more than 90 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

That’s a lot of football fans and a lot of consumers that want to be the first to have the apparel the champions wear.

Minutes after the big game, I received this email from DICK’s Sporting Goods announcing the availability of the official Locker Room Merchandise from Reebok, the authentic outfitter of the NFL. No doubt, there are a lot of fans out there who want the Super Bowl XLIV Champion hat and t-shirt worn by their champagne popping locker-room heroes as soon as the outcome of the big game is decided.



How do retailers like DICK’s Sporting Goods get their hands on these images to have their emails and websites ready to go as soon as the champion is declared? More importantly, how does the Sports Licensed Division of The adidas Group make this process efficient, accurate and cost-effective?

With the help of Widen Digital Sampling and Digital Asset Management services, adidas can get official product images in the hands of their retailers who, in turn, get marketing messages in front of the eyes of the consumer as soon as a buying decision is ready to be made.

Widen digital sampling processes and digital asset management tools help ensure the entire digital supply chain is equipped with compelling, consistent and cost-effective content for commerce.

The Widen Digital Sampling process assists in the creation of digital apparel samples and the Widen web-based digital asset management system is used to manage, distribute and provide access to authentic image assets. As the official provider of licensed apparel for the NFL, NBA, and NHL, the adidas Sports Licensed Division (includes adidas and Reebok brands) uses Widen premedia services and DAM technologies to meet hot market demands for the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, and Stanley Cup Finals.  

Widen-powered technology and processes help retailers such as DICK’S Sporting Goods market championship apparel merchandise as soon you see the players wearing the hats and t-shirts after the big game is over.



What’s all included in the Widen Digital Sampling process? This premedia production process generally begins with photography of one neutral grey apparel sample. Next, digital sampling operators digitally create all color swatches according to league approved team colors. Lastly, graphics are applied according to Reebok/NFL technical guidelines and the final approved images are loaded into the image database where they can be centrally managed and available for download in a working file format.

All Reebok / adidas digital samples are loaded into the Widen-powered web-based image library, which holds the all apparel and headwear styles for the current and coming sports season for the NFL, NBA, and NHL. Since many of the physical apparel styles are not yet available in stores or online (or even physically produced en masse), many of the images are on hold and are tightly controlled using Widen’s governance tools. Styles and logos are often determined 6-7 months in advance of the coming season for the major sports leagues.

When it’s time for these assets to go to market, orders are placed in the DAM system and retailers can download the files according to exact specifications for print or web use. All users are required to sign off on a rights release agreement before they have access to the images. For example, DICK’s Sporting Goods was granted permission to access championship apparel images for the Saints and Colts so they could prepare their email marketing templates in advance of the Super Bowl.

As you can guess, the digital apparel sample production and distribution process shaves weeks off the time to market versus the process of physically producing, photographing and shipping physical samples. Plus, it streamlines a very difficult process—particularly when meeting hot market demands such as with championship merchandise. Besides the time savings of digital sample creation, adidas is able to drastically reduce costs of physically producing each item and team combination and the photography and shipping costs to go along with it.
 
Benefits of using hosted Digital Asset Management:

• Accelerated search and retrieval time in accessing official imagery
• Increased real-time collaboration of assets and approvals
• Cost savings through the elimination of physical delivery of samples
• Elimination of the cost of lost or misplaced work
• Reduction in time-to-market through digital delivery

Here’s an inside look at the market preparedness leading up to the Super Bowl:

1 week before the NFL Conference Championships – Conference Championship merchandise was created for the eight teams in the Divisional Round (Baltimore, Indianapolis, N.Y. Jets, San Diego, Arizona, New Orleans, Dallas, and Minnesota)

2 weeks before the Super Bowl – Super Bowl Champion merchandise was created for the four teams in the Conference Championship Round (Indianapolis, N.Y. Jets, New Orleans, and Minnesota)

What happens to the images for the losing teams that didn’t make it, you ask? Quite simply, those are destroyed.

CMSWire recently posted an interesting poll about Digital Asset Management. For those commissioning DAM projects, “What is your biggest Digital Asset Management challenge?”

The answer options to the poll question include:

• Taxonomy/Metadata development
• Selecting a vendor or product
• Building the business case or defining ROI
• The usability of the system
• User adoption of the system

A comment to the poll provides a good summary of the poll results after 2 days of data collection… “Usability of the system, User adoption of the system, and Taxonomy/Metadata development fall out as 1, 2 and 3…”

This poll couldn’t be more timely as two key areas for DAM development and enhancement in 2010 at Widen are Usability (UI) and Analytics.




Let’s talk “Usability”

Usability for a web based DAM system means that a user who logs in three or four times per year should know exactly what to do to find and retrieve an asset based on experiences working with other common web applications. In Widen’s world of DAM, clients generally have a few different groups of users. There are the power users or Admins who usually represent the smallest group in number but use the full features of the DAM system – ingestion through distribution. There’s typically another tier of regular users that use the DAM library with some regularity, but for more common purposes of finding and retrieving digital assets. Then, there are the hundreds or thousands of users that only login a handful of times each year. It’s that long tail of “once in awhile” users that the system should cater to in terms of ease-of-use. Other bells and whistles for more advanced users should exist, but shouldn’t over-complicate the UI, nor be too overbearing for the general purposes of the system—ingest, collaborate, manage, find, retrieve and distribute assets.

To provide a Widen customer example of user adoption, Steelcase—the global office furniture leader—had over 9,000 logins within the first two months of going live with their DAM solution. Interestingly, Widen serves five of the top 15 office furniture manufacturers. This type of user adoption drives the demand for DAM throughout the supply chain. While CMS Watch, an analyst firm who talks to DAM customers, reported that Widen has a “clean, well-designed user interface that appeals to business users,” we still recognize the magnitude of usability and opportunities for improvements in UI design.


Diving Deeper into DAM Data with “Analytics”

An Analytics application speaks directly to the business case for DAM endorsers and senior leaders who look at how DAM supports top-line revenue growth or impacts the bottom line. Digital Asset Management ROI is measured in a number of ways with hard dollar and soft dollar savings. Common buckets for measuring DAM ROI include: how DAM improves processes, how DAM reduces costs, how DAM increases revenues, how DAM adds new profit centers, and how DAM protects the brand. The time to realizing a DAM ROI is predominantly driven by two things – user adoption and subsequently asset usage and asset repurposing. Leveraging tracking, reporting and analytics tools offers more intelligence and thus greater ability to measure and prove ROI. For that reason, Widen developed four key ratios that help customers watch and evaluate adoption and success:

• Digital Asset Activity Ratio: A comparison between the quantity of assets that have been ordered and the amount of assets stored in the DAM system. This ratio provides insight into the relationship between download activity and all the assets stored in the digital asset library.

• Repurposing Ratio: A comparison between the active digital assets and the quantity of assets ordered. This provides insight into the amount of content repurposing that is taking place over a period of time. Repurposing continues to be a key component of digital asset management value.

• User Activity Ratio: A comparison between the total number of logins and the quantity of users that have logged in provides information about visitation frequency. This metric also provides insight into how frequently users visit to browse or check back on new branded materials.

• Digital Asset Consumption Ratio: Comparing the quantity of files ordered to the users that logged into the system provides information on the amount of data being consumed by each user over a specific time period.

The ratios are further explained in the Business Management article “What Those DAM Statistics Can Tell You.”

So we’ve touched on the metrics for monitoring ROI once DAM is deployed, but how do we build the business case?


Finding It All While Saving A Bundle

If you’re unsure of the costs that come with unmanaged data, consider these factors, and then apply them to your own organization.

• Companies spend an average of $8,200 per person per year on file management activities. These include searching, verification, organization, backup, and security.
• Creative professionals spend an average of one out of every 10 hours of their time on file management. Their prime activity: searching.
• The average creative person looks for a media file 83 times a week and fails to find it 35% of the time.

A digital asset management solution could help alleviate some of these costs. According to findings from GISTICS Research, a DAM solution can cut the amount of time spent on file management by more than 85%. And rather than failing to find a file 35% of the time, users will not find something only 5% of the time.

SOURCE: GISTICS


Visit the DigitalAssetManagement.com ROI calculator for more assistance in putting together a DAM ROI.


Our thanks to all customers who continue to provide feedback and ideas for making the Widen Media Collective more valuable and enjoyable. Widen customers can expect more specific communications to come in the next few months about the User Interface (UI) enhancements and new Analytics application.

Digital Marketing and Digital Asset Management

Marketers shifting or integrating digital marketing strategies cannot ignore the importance of using DAM solutions to control and distribute approved digital media to authorized users. Digital media consumers demand the same amount of quality and consistency in the content they consume as they would offline media; they just might face more noise with the overabundance in clutter of messages. The brands that deliver quality content, including imagery and interactivity, are those that get noticed and drive brand awareness. Getting noticed in a digital marketing world holds tremendous value because of the opportunities for consumers to engage with marketers and other consumers in two-way communications. In the social web, satisfied consumers can serve as brand advocates whereas dissatisfied consumers can bring a brand down.  

Like Digital Marketing is more cost-effective than traditional marketing channels, Software as a Service (SaaS) DAM is the most cost-effective way to manage digital media assets. 

The explosion of digital content, including diverse content types such as rich media, forces organizations to invest in digital asset management tools to maximize the value of those assets by keeping them in a centralized location accessible for multiple purposes. That centralized location should be a SaaS DAM solution that enables the content to be most easily accessed by those that need it, when they need it. Those that need access to a digital asset library include multiple internal departments, partners, agencies, sales channels, and the media.

What are the Core Benefits of SaaS DAM Over Installed Solutions?

• Speed to implementation inside 30-90 days versus 6-9 months
• Low monthly subscription and minimal startup costs make it easier to budget
• Flexibility, adaptability and scalability to grow and change with client needs

What’s the big deal about DAM SaaS?

A recent Forrester ECM (Enterprise Content Management) report by analyst Stephen Powers shows that more interest was seen in SaaS products (than on-premise or open source), with 43% of the respondents expressing interest in SaaS WCM and 39% in SaaS DAM. “Because content stored in these systems are often public-facing, organizations were less concerned with sharing the content outside the firewall,” reports Powers. That’s a new way of looking at it... (at least for a SaaS provider)!

The content stored in a rich media management system (images, videos, ads, brochures, etc.) was developed with the intention to be public facing at some point in time—oftentimes serving advertising and marketing communications purposes—so it should be easy to access (and control). SaaS DAM solutions make it easy to access digital assets anytime, anywhere while offering the security controls to protect rights and release/expiration dates.

Powers reports other reasons that installed content management solutions often fail or fail to meet expectations include poor content strategy and a lack of IT and business alignment. SaaS solutions make up for that because it is the responsibility of the SaaS provider to share best practices, contribute to content strategy and help manage change in order for the system to survive beyond the implementation phases. Remember, SaaS providers are required to meet the client’s needs every month and repeat it on an ongoing basis in order to earn the ongoing business. Moreover, SaaS solutions cut out much of the internal IT resources necessary to implement and maintain the solution because the IT resources, for the most part, are provided by the SaaS provider.