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. 

A prospective customer and I were discussing their current digital asset management vendor and DAM solution evaluation processes and how those have changed with the recent economic climate.  They pointed to a previous software implementation they had gone through two years prior as a scenario that was one to learn from.  During the evaluation process they had brought in a major consulting firm to help pinpoint their requirements, prepare a formal and lengthy RFP, evaluate responses, and prepare a risk assessment and so on.  They ended up selecting a licensed software solution that cost them a couple hundred thousand dollars after the dust settled.  That included the cost for the solution they purchased as well as the licenses for all of the required hardware and software needed to get it up and running.  They also had to account for ongoing annual maintenance, training and implementation fees.  What was surprising to me was that nearly a quarter of the cost was for the consultants. 

They were never presented with a hosted option though some ASP providers were on the list of early vendors to look at.  He couldn’t immediately recall why none of them were ever included on the list of vendors to receive the RFP though.  I asked him if the consultant was involved in the implementation process at all and he confirmed that they had been.  We got to talking about how DAM SaaS solutions provide the consulting and change management services as part of the package.  Hosted solutions are designed to eliminate most of the heavy lifting and costs associated with licensed software implementations.  Hosted providers typically bundle all of the costs into a single subscription fee of some kind, have fast and easy implementations and because they are working with their own software can make changes, configurations and even customizations fairly easily.
 
Consultants have a right to say that they save the customer countless thousands by ensuring they get a software solution to exactly match their requirements.  They can make a case about hidden costs for hosted solutions and how many customers have no idea how their own businesses are even run and require a steady hand to figure it out.  The prospect I was talking to was implementing another digital asset management system the first go around.  This is in fact why we were speaking in the first place.  They were in the market to replace the solution they had previously purchased with something that will work for them.  The solution they originally chose is still not implemented and is only supporting a handful of administrative users at present, though they planned a rollout to thousands of people.  This time around, they have decided to forego a formal evaluation process and speak directly to the vendors.    
 

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.  

The other day a colleague asked me about a previously unknown Digital Asset Management software vendor that they had seen advertised on a website.  I had never seen or heard of this particular vendor or their solution but it got me thinking.  I am continually hearing about random vendors that have appeared or disappeared in our industry.  In fact, it happens so often that I decided to perform a little experiment.   I searched for 60 seconds on Google to see how many digital asset management companies I could find and ended up with over 25 organizations that identified themselves as offering some kind of a DAM solution.  I only counted those companies that actually listed what they do as “digital asset management” for my experiment.  The actual number of vendors in this space must be many more and perhaps even reaches as high as a couple of hundred companies. 

As you might have guessed, most of those I found were pulled from a list of recognizable names.  Those companies with the budgets to afford search marketing resources primarily, since they naturally appeared at the top of the list.  As you continue down that list though you begin to run into many lesser known applications that pitch their version of a  niche solution, low cost platform, or even some that just get by on hipster marketing with little real meat behind them.  Actually, some of these solutions seem to be really viable applications with a history that shows a developing product and the customer successes to back it up.  Others market all kinds of neat features and tools but show little on their website because it’s mostly just smoke.   They are waiting on your dollar to actually build it out.  Today customers are left with too much information and too many choices in many cases.  When it comes to implementing a DAM system I would encourage you to look beyond the initial demo to your prospective vendor’s successes and plans for their DAM system. 

The unknown solution is not necessarily the wrong choice and some even offer new features and perspectives that the old guard should probably adopt.  However, be careful who you choose as a partner.  You might find out that their validity as a DAM provider is being tested out on you.  The truth is that well established software companies have an advantage because they have had the opportunity to identify what their customers want and need in a solution and how best to support those requirements.  They paid their dues to get where they are.  There will of course always be a new generation of vendors rising through the ranks but identifying the hits and misses from the crowd can be tough.  

A recent press release got me thinking about the role advertising and creative services agencies play in the Digital Asset Management market.  I have seen numerous agencies attempt to develop and productize digital asset management solutions and fail miserably.  I think the reason behind this is that advertisers don’t understand the processes and disciplines of software development.  They usually build the application around a single customer’s environment with little thought put into how best to develop a platform to meet the market’s expectations or needs.  They focus on building the brand and not the solution.  They assume they will just continue to customize and build upon the application as their customers have the desire and ability to pay for it.   No thought gets put into process or future support and this ends up being their downfall.  When they finally realize that they can’t support tens, if not hundreds of one-off customized applications the service fizzles away.  As advertisers, they have already marketed their solution as the next, best thing and those customers that jumped aboard get left without a suitable platform in the long run.

This isn’t to say that advertisers and creative services providers don’t have a place in the DAM market.  Their customers and they are largely responsible for the content that ultimately gets stored in DAM systems.  They often find themselves helping customers define their requirements for DAM or even selecting the appropriate vendor.  Creative agencies should consider partnering with proven DAM providers so that they can enhance the services they offer to their customers and increase their market share and ours.  With the right partnership both companies can focus on what they do best and the customer will get a much better experience.

Hello all, I’ve been a guest blogger at Widen for awhile and want to catch you up on some of my previous blog posts.  Here’s a summary of some of my more popular ones:

The Shocking News of SaaS – Upgrades

Recapping an experience describing Widen’s four-time-per-year release cycle to a group of IT people – a feat unparalleled in the content management industry.  To an IT department where resources are very limited, they saw our release schedule as a real concern and liability.  However, that’s the beauty and a core advantage of Software as a Service – you don’t have to worry about upgrades. 


The DAM Middle Class

Commenting on Theresa Regli’s (CMS Watch) blog on Digital Asset Management about the lack of what she calls a “Middle Class” DAM software solution.  Theresa points out that an empty gap exists between smaller desktop solutions with price points under $5,000 and those enterprise solutions costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.  With the lack of options available to them, more and more companies are looking to hosted services – like the one offered by Widen – as the answer.  This is because SaaS solutions do not force customers to choose between functionality and price.


Digital Asset Management Implementation: Complex or Simple

Do you realize how complex a DAM implementation can become?  In many cases, it just doesn’t need to be that big of a deal.  Many vendors tell customers they need to invest months and months in planning and preparation for a DAM solution, define very complex processes and then spend tens of thousands on RFP development, vendor shootouts, risk analysis, consulting fees, and then the implementation and integration.  If all that worked then why are so many companies looking to migrate to a second or even a third DAM system?  That’s why the hosted or on-demand model works well…


You have the right to a quick, successful Digital Asset Management system implementation

How can any company trust a vendor as a future partner and service provider who can't even respond to a simple RFP and instead provides a list of weak excuses?  This is an interesting story illustrating how some DAM vendors don’t recognize that service starts before the sale.


My Take on DAM. Period.

DAM should be more than just a simple repository of rich media.  The DAM platform should be the base of your entire digital media environment.  DAM should feed all of your media portals and websites so partners, agencies, offices, vendors, your boss and your grandmother can go to the get the latest image, logo, commercial or brochure they need.  Right?  Read On.


What Have Vendors Got to Hide?

Have you noticed how hesitant most enterprise digital asset management vendors are to actually let potential customers see their products?  We have found that more and more customers are showing an interest in really digging in when evaluating our rich media management solutions and services.  (And you should…) Read on to understand why.


Digital Asset Management Software as a Service – selecting a partner

We talk a lot about hosted vs. installed software and it’s becoming more obvious why organizations choose DAM SaaS, but here are a couple more things to look for:  Support, Product Improvement, Cost, Experience, Ease-of-use (and do your users use it?), Features, Vision.


Accountability From Your Software Vendors

An interesting press release reminded me again of a key difference between traditionally licensed software products and those offered through the Software as a Service (SaaS) model – Upgrades.


Where have all the DAM SaaS Providers Gone?

There has never been a shortage of vendors claiming to offer some sort of tool to manage, archive or distribute rich media files.  Of the throngs of Digital Asset Management vendors that cloud the market, few competent pure play vendors and even fewer DAM as Software as a Service (SaaS) providers remain.  A landscape that has traditionally been characterized by companies who focused exclusively on providing solutions for managing digital media files has been taken over by the larger Content Management behemoths that have gobbled up the original inhabitants to offer DAM modules instead of solutions.

In a number of recent discussions with prospective DAM users I have been asked about customizing the digital asset management software to meet additional needs such as blogging, wikis, budgeting and resource workflows, or other capabilities.  The need to tie such functions into your media archiving and distribution engine has obvious advantages.  However, I question the idea of having your digital asset solutions vendor write custom code to build out solutions that they have little experience with when there are specialized vendors and platforms available on the market right now.  It seems to me that it makes more sense to integrate with an existing solution that’s already tested and offered as a proven product or service on the market.  A lot of DAM vendors seem to be surviving on professional services dollars lately and are expanding into arenas in which they just have no expertise.  I mean, why would you have a DAM vendor build out your blog site when a simple Google search brings back a host of solutions that I am sure offer much more cost effective solutions that will be far more successful.  

I believe customers should look at a solution’s abilities to integrate with outside applications and websites and a vendor’s experience in doing so before sitting through the customization pitch.  When asked if they meet a particular requirement, too many vendors use the “we can customize it” line as way to say yes.  Ask the vendor what kind of partnerships and relationships they have developed in the industry and what integration means to them.  DAM solutions should be built with integration in mind because they are only one part of a digital media file’s lifecycle.  The files reside in the DAM repository but are actually being used and referenced outside of it.  And while one vendor might mean one point of contact for support, I think you will find that customization often turns into a blank check that vendors will keep cashing in at the end of each quarter.  Look at integrating first.