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Michael Waldron

Hiring Your DAM Dream Team: Recruiting Everyone You Need For Your DAM Journey

By Blog, dam-manager, User Adoption

Last year we helped you understand who should be on your DAM Dream Team (Yes, like the 1992 United States Olympic team!). But when it comes to your digital asset management system (DAM) and the people you’ll hire to implement, manage, and optimize it, you’ll need more than just an internal team of high-scorers—you’ll need to recruit a few folks from outside your walls to achieve gold-medal goals.

That’s why we asked DAM Specialist and Consultant Kristina Huddart to weigh in on hiring and recruiting everyone you need to run a successful digital asset management system. Some will be from within your organization, others will come on for temporary projects or as consultants to support various stages of your DAM journey.

In this article, we’ll explain the skills required for each role, one “x-factor” each role needs to stand out, and some interview questions you can ask to get the right fit. If you want to know what makes each of these folks first draft picks for your dream team, you should definitely read part one in this series. Your own dream team is waiting, here’s how to get them onto the court.

The Originator:
Business Sponsor

It all begins with the business sponsor—the high-level executive who recognizes the gap that digital asset management could fill and advocates for the journey throughout. Oftentimes, they’re the chief marketing, digital, or information officer who recognizes the need to scale up their marketing operation or personalize content at scale. Ideally, the staff who first hear specific needs or problems which could be solved with DAM would escalate to the executive who sees the value of DAM and chooses to champion it as the business sponsor.

It’s from the business sponsor that the funding and support for the DAM dream team originate. Think of them like the manager of your all-star NBA team—they have the final say on your players, the budget, and long-term strategy.

Business_sponsor

Skills Required

  • Established influence: They are an internal voice who is well-respected among execs. During a business sponsor transition, the current DAM manager and DAM specialist would take great care to impart the importance of the business sponsors’ support to the team.
  • Strategic thinking: They understand the scope of the project and are willing to commit to long-term relationship building with external vendors, consultants, and incoming DAM managers. They know that DAM is more than just technology and support a holistic DAM practice considering the right technology, people, process, and metadata.
  • Business-savvy: They are aware of the limitations of the organization to support the DAM system, the budget constraints, and organizational goals, and consider the team’s capacity needs. 

X-Factor: Passion

A passionate business sponsor is a successful one. They need to see the value of exploring a DAM (or supporting the current one) in achieving the business’ wider goals. If they’re passionate about the productivity gains, robust rights management, and creative workflow improvements the DAM provides, they will be inclined to support the dream team with whatever they need. 

Interview questions

The business sponsor is the one who asks the questions and will be hiring and recruiting the entire dream team. But in the case of a transition, where a DAM manager and specialist are discussing the role of the business sponsor to an incumbent leader, here are some questions to ask: 

  • What is your experience and understanding of DAM systems? Are you excited about learning more about the DAM space and technology? 
  • Could we host a DAM demo to walk you through the current structure and discuss the future strategic plan of the DAM?
  • What is your strategic vision for content management, creative production, and marketing operations?
  • Are you willing to advocate on behalf of the team for our needs (budget, capacity needs, IT support, etc.)? How can we support you in doing so?

The Gatherer: Business Analyst

The first person the business sponsor brings onto the team is the business analyst. That’s because the business analyst’s role is to understand the current problems, collect information, and begin thinking about solutions. Kristina suggests the business sponsor recruit an analyst from their internal IT team, “The analyst will conduct research, host workshops, and lead interviews with stakeholders across the organization. It’s best if they already have relationships with stakeholders and a good understanding of the business needs.”

It’s important not to skip adding this member to your DAM dream team—whether you’re starting from scratch or replacing a current system. If you skip that business analysis phase, it can lead to spending a lot of time and money on something that isn’t going to solve the root cause of your problems.

Business analyst

Skills Required

  • Analytical, detail-driven: They skillfully collect, collate, and interpret stakeholder feedback, business requirements, and current processes into distinct pain points. 
  • People-savvy: They host workshops, conduct interviews, manage stakeholders expectations, and understand their needs. 
  • Forward-thinking, strategic: They analyze the current issues and requirements and envision the people, technology, and support needed to implement their recommended solutions. If they had the right tech or the right people in place, how could those changes improve processes moving forward?
  • IT awareness: They understand your organization’s IT strategy and guide conversations and recommendations towards your IT requirements.

X-Factor: Change Management Skills

Your dream business analyst has a mix of analytical and people-driven skills. They are the first person most stakeholders will voice their concerns to. This also means they are the first agent of the change management process. They should understand the importance of their role in kicking off potential change and be skilled enough to give stakeholders reasonable expectations of what’s to come.

Kristina warns incumbent business analysts to avoid getting caught up in people’s assumptions and excitement while they’re collecting information. “Analysts often get stakeholders saying things like, “You’re asking me about my pain points. Is that because we’re going to get something better? How are you going to improve things for me?” Your business analyst should be empowered to share the businesses sponsors’ goals for this data collection process without over-promising on solutions.”

Interview questions

  • This data collection phase will be on a temporary project basis. How much of your time can you devote to this project? Are you able to hand it off to the DAM specialist and/or manager once it’s complete?
  • Would you consider yourself a people-person? How comfortable are you with conducting interviews, hosting workshops, and public speaking?
  • Are you excited about collecting qualitative and quantitative data? Organizing it, analyzing it, documenting it, and drawing conclusions?

The Secret Weapon: DAM Specialist

Your DAM dream team isn’t complete without a specialist. They will serve as the mentor, educator, and industry specialist every DAM team needs at different stages of their journey. They’re usually brought on by the business sponsor to take the requirements that the business analyst unearthed and help the organization find the right solutions to solve their problems.

According to Kristina, it’s best to recruit for this role externally. The DAM marketplace has dozens of vendors, lots of different solutions, and best practices are different depending on use cases. The DAM specialist has a breadth of experience across sectors, and they know how to match companies to the right solutions, recruit and train the right folks, and guide the plan for this new change and optimizing the DAM.

And among the most important tasks, the specialist should be involved in hiring the DAM manager—who is best added to the dream team shortly after the specialist joins. The specialist will work alongside the manager to help them upskill and fill any gaps in their knowledge as the team grows. Since the specialist is usually an external consultant, they can stay on as ongoing support or just for certain stages of the DAM journey as it evolves.

DAM specialist

Skills Required

  • Mentor, educator mindset: They prioritize sharing their DAM knowledge with the dream team. They help select the right vendor, support implementation processes, train on best practices, recruit new team members, and upskill members of the team. 
  • Well-respected and connected: They have experience across sectors, working with multiple vendors, and organizations large and small. They connect your team with the clients of potential vendors so they can understand how the product really works. They can connect the business sponsor with other executives in the same field to share their experience supporting the DAM journey. 
  • Focused and visionary: The specialist builds the documentation, processes, and best practices that will help keep the DAM working smoothly. They support strategic and business goals by offering insights and recommendations into how your organization’s DAM practice can improve now and in the future. 
  • Breadth of experience: They’ve built relationships across sectors like corporate, NGOs, and startups. They know what competitors are doing but also the unique challenges they’ve faced allow them to recommend unique solutions. They know how to transfer ideas from other spaces to help your organization improve processes. 

X-Factor: Connections

The magic words you want to hear when hiring your dream specialist are, “We’re in this together. I’ve got connections to the best vendors for your industry. I can help you get the right demos and introduce you to your peers in the industry so you can see how DAM works for them.”

Beyond the knowledge of the DAM marketplace, the conversations that a great specialist can facilitate are invaluable. Kristina often invites her clients to meet with other C-suite business sponsors or DAM managers in the same industry. Those open and honest conversations help teams understand how DAM might be embedded into their organizations. These connections also assist teams in building community, recruiting future team members, and keeping up as technology evolves.

“For a specialist, having the right network and being well-respected in the industry is so important—it’s such a close-knit community,” Kristina says. “We know what works and we learn from each other’s mistakes. If you can find a DAM specialist like that, you’re golden.”

Interview questions

  • What approach would you take to help us evaluate our level of DAM maturity and build a roadmap for optimizing our DAM practice to achieve our business objectives?
  • What are the key factors that help companies across industries to ensure long-term success with DAM? Give some examples from clients you have worked with of what a successful DAM practice looks like.
  • How can you help us to take the reins of our DAM practice and hire the right team of people for our future success?
  • What is your experience with educating and upskilling resources in DAM?
  • What is your experience influencing executives to get buy-in for DAM?

“If you’re looking to hire a DAM specialist for a vendor selection process, then you want someone who knows the landscape and understands how to pick the right platform. But if you’re looking for someone to help you to build out your metadata and taxonomy structure, that’s a very different skill set. Shift your interview questions accordingly.”

Kristina Huddart

The MVPs: DAM Manager (and soon, DAM Coordinators)

One of the most important members of your dream team—arguably your MVP—is your DAM manager. Once you’ve recruited a stellar specialist, now’s the perfect time to scout out a manager who will carry this journey forward. Keep in mind that DAM managers should be full-time, dedicated, permanent roles and shouldn’t be shared with other business functions.

In an ideal world, your incumbent manager already has some DAM experience under their belt. A few years of experience working in DAM already, DAM-specific courses taken, a certification, or degree in a related field like library sciences. But oftentimes, a manager is plucked from within your organization—they might be a star on the marketing team or someone in IT who is always trying to improve processes. In this circumstance, the manager is unlikely to have DAM knowledge. But fret not, as long as your DAM specialist can help them upskill and learn on the job before they’re left to take care of it all by themselves, hiring a DAM manager (and later coordinators) from within the organization can be a great way to grow the team.

DAM manager

In the case of DAM coordinators, they are usually brought on when the system becomes too untenable for a single manager. As more assets come into the system, more users need training and onboarding, and as the system is rolled out to more departments, the manager is very quickly going to reach out for support. At this point, the manager would take on a strategic and advisory role while the coordinators execute the daily operations. It’s important for the business sponsor to be connected with their DAM manager and keep their capacity in mind as the use cases, users, volume of assets, and business requirements grow.

As your organization is developing the foundations of the DAM, the coordinator takes on the daily administrative tasks of the DAM, while the manager handles the strategic ones. Some companies will even move from having their own internal coordinators to working with a third-party DAM-managed services company. Whether you hire and recruit coordinators or choose a third-party provider, your dream team will eventually require several coordinators to use your system to its full potential (and avoid burning out your DAM manager).

Skills Required: DAM Manager

  • Growth mindset: They pick up new things quickly and are willing to learn outside of their role. Great managers are curious, constantly learning, and interested in finding the connections between new tech and the DAM. They could also have previous experience in DAM systems, have taken courses, or have an understanding of best practices.
  • Problem-solving: They have the skills of a senior-level project manager. They’re driving the journey and helping to grow the best practices over time. They are running reports, analyzing data, and going to the business sponsor with their findings and ideas.
  • Creativity: A great manager is excited to get their hands on the DAM systems and is willing to experiment. They are creatively considering all the ways it can be improved and better embedded in the business. They are gathering requirements for new use cases and trying to understand what it would take to implement them.
  • Passionate about change: If you don’t hire or have a change manager in your organization, you need a manager with great communication skills who can create and execute an effective change management plan, especially during the adoption phase.

Skills Required: DAM Coordinator

  • Excited by data and “tedious” tasks: They are energized by daily administrative tasks. They manage the uploads and ensure metadata quality stays up to standard. They are detail-oriented and passionate about data accuracy because they do a lot of data entry, data management, and quality control.
  • Healthy fear of rights management: They’re the person that internal teams go to to understand the rights of assets and what they can do with them. They should have enough of an understanding of rights management that they’d never copy and paste assets from Google Images *shudder* and they can guide users through the maze of rights management metadata.
  • Analytical, tech-savvy: The coordinator runs reports regularly, pulling analytics and user behavior to share with the manager. They have an understanding of how to contextualize that data and share it—how will the changes and improvements they make in the DAM make affect the experience of those using it? They’re always thinking about how to improve systems.
  • Customer service-minded: The coordinator provides access, regular training, and onboarding for all users. They get a lot of technical questions and they’re friendly and patient as they help users resolve issues.

X-Factor: Ability to Build Long-Term Relationships

A standout DAM manager is able to build long-term relationships—not only with executive-level folks like the business sponsor, but also with other leaders, internal stakeholders, and users. Their internal relationships will set the foundation for a years-long DAM journey that will touch functions across the business. If a manager can prove they have facilitated collaboration across functions and maintained positive relationships with executives and users alike, they are someone special.

Similarly, the manager’s relationship with the vendor is likely the longest and most important one they’ll build (or inherit). Having a trusted, productive relationship allows processes like implementing new integrations or suggesting new use cases smoother. “They should be confident enough to call the vendor and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a new use case. How do I do this?’ And get the answers and support they need,” Kristina says.

Interview questions: For the DAM Manager

  • What do you know about digital asset management? Where have you gained your knowledge and experience?
  • Do you learn quickly and enjoy picking up new skills?
  • What are some common use cases/problems that DAM can solve? How would you handle stakeholders coming to you with new use cases to implement?
  • How are you broadening your DAM knowledge right now? What are trends you’re noticing in the industry?
  • What’s your experience with change management?
  • How would you guide a resistant stakeholder to adopting a new way of working?

Interview questions: For the DAM Coordinator

  • What do you know about digital asset management? Where have you gained your knowledge and experience?
  • Do you enjoy working with excel spreadsheets and reviewing data? How would you manage a metadata audit?
  • Describe how you QC (quality control) metadata?
  • What’s your level of understanding of rights management in our industry
  • Would you consider yourself a people-person? Why or why not? Do you have experience in customer service?
  • What would you do if you discover a process or workflow is not working well for your users?

The Tech Partner: DAM Vendor

The average enterprise company is juggling 843 individual applications across their tech stack. And as any operations professional or IT team will tell you, most companies don’t use their tech stack to its full potential. When a company is investing in a big foundational tool like DAM, they’re  not usually considering any functionality beyond the basic use cases. “There’s so much more DAM can do. That’s why picking the right vendor—and developing a close relationship with them—is so important,” Kristina says.

You’re looking for a partner. A vendor that will prioritize evolving functionalities, new use cases, and listening to your businesses needs. The selection process is complex (and that’s where your specialist’s knowledge comes in handy) but there are a few things to look out for while scouting for a vendor. “I’m always looking for vendors who step up and help their customers make the most out of their tools. I evaluate whether vendors are able to get organizations to that next level and help them mature their DAM practices,” Kristina explains.

One way to understand the experience of working with a potential vendor is to ask your specialist to set up calls with managers and executive peers who are using vendors you’re interested in. Get their real feedback about their experiences and tap into your specialist’s network to do it.

DAM vendor

Skills Required

  • Fulfills your business and technical requirements: The vendor is able to fulfill the requirements and use cases set out by the specialist and manager. This vendor has the people, processes, and tech capabilities that meet your request for proposal (RFP).
  • Responsive customer service: The vendor’s customer support team is robust and able to handle requests promptly. Their customer success team is knowledgeable and willing to help.
  • Prioritizes innovation: They provide innovation and development roadmaps for potential clients and are open and honest about the future of their platform and technology. They are developing at a speed that keeps pace with the industry and the needs of their clients. They will be the right fit now and in three and five years because they’re releasing new use cases and features and thinking long term.
  • Willingness to develop partnership: Even if they don’t tick every single technical box, they’re willing to put the work in and communicate with their clients along the way. For example, their executives are willing to have open conversations with the executives of potential clients to talk about how to position their DAM for digital transformation and marketing operations. 

X-Factor: Change Management Skills

A stellar vendor will have many high-value, satisfied users that have been working in DAM for years. Kristina recommends looking out for the vendors who host yearly client forums to bring those users together. These in-person (and increasingly online) events organized by vendors are a treasure trove of community, knowledge sharing, and connection. “They’re problem-solving for a year’s worth of frustrations,” Kristina says. “It’s an opportunity for clients to share and learn from one another.”

These events not only only give the clients a chance to talk to each other, but they also give the vendor a chance to listen. Vendors use those forums to learn how their clients are using their tool right now and what functionalities they want to see in the future. And great vendors are acting on those insights to launch new features, use cases, and design their roadmaps.

Also, keep an eye out for vendors who host regular client webinars to share their client stories and best practices. Vendors don’t have to host yearly Salesforce-esque extravaganzas to bring together their community.

Interview questions

  • What’s your customer service/support system? What are your average response times?
  • Do you meet our business and technical requirements? How are you looking to meet those in the future if we select you?
  • What are your development roadmaps for this year? Next year? What are your innovation goals for five and ten years from now?
  • Can our leadership meet with yours? Can you connect us with DAM managers who are working in your system already and who can share their experience?
  • Do you offer ways for your clients to interact with one another? Yearly client forums, webinars, or Slack communities?

The Connector: DAM Integration Partner

If you’ve selected your dream vendor, you’re likely in the middle of connecting your new platform to the rest of your stack. This is where a DAM integration partner comes in. An integration partner supports your team in connecting your DAM to your desired platforms. Whether that’s connecting with a PIM, content marketing software (CMS), or content delivery network (CDN).

The key to hiring the right integration partner is to work with someone who has done that integration before—if you’re looking to connect your DAM to an existing CMS, hire someone with experience integrating those specific platforms. Depending on the integration you may need one developer or a team. And you might end up working with different integration partners for different integrations. Kristina suggests connecting with your vendor for their suggestions and recommended partners.

DAM integrations

Skills Required

  • Recommended by vendor: They are an integration partner that is familiar with your DAM system and they come recommended by your vendor.
  • Experience with desired integration: They have worked to implement the integrations you desire. They may be skilled at the integration between DAM and PIM, and you may choose a different integration partner for DAM and CMS.

X-Factor: Orchestration of Content and Data

The role of integration partners is to facilitate the flow of content and data from one system to another. Done seamlessly, your end users will barely notice they are switching tools or that content is being handed off. Give them a full overview of your processes—with the knowledge of your end-to-end digital asset lifecycle, they have the skills to ensure the right content and data flows automatically through your processes. They may also have IT specialists on their teams to support your integration needs.

If you’re not sure what an ideal end-to-end digital asset lifecycle should look like in an integrated ecosystem, bring your DAM specialist back to function as a liaison between end users and the integration partner.

Interview questions

  • What is your experience with the integration(s) we’re planning to implement? What support do you offer throughout the integration process?
  • What is your experience with the vendor?
  • What resources would you allocate to this project? (Number of developers, IT specialists, hours, etc.) 
  • How will you hand off integration management and maintenance to our in-house teams?

The Catalyzer: Change Manager

If we’re talking about your dream team, Kristina says that a change manager should be your first draft pick. Since DAM sits as a foundational piece within the whole marketing tech stack, their support early on is pivotal. A change manager understands how to best implement new processes so there’s minimal disruption to the business. Whether that’s improving onboarding processes or managing big cultural shifts, they work across the tech stack and asset lifecycle.
As a DAM specialist, Kristina is also brought on to offer her change management skills on a temporary basis. But she warns that, as helpful as specialists and DAM managers can be in the change management process, they shouldn’t be tasked to do it all. “I often see the DAM manager and change manager smooshed together, but in a dream team, they’d be separate roles working together to carry the change into the future,” she says.

Change_manager

Skills Required

  • Impeccable people skills: They are incredibly charismatic, thoughtful, and patient. They love talking to people and solving the problems that are bothering them. They are most at home in groups, collaboration, and conversation.
  • Passionate about education: The change manager is a great teacher, trainer, and mentor. They get early adopters excited and help coax the stragglers on board too.
  • Process-oriented: They are well-organized and always thinking about how to improve processes. The change manager recognizes the challenge of managing change at scale and they are focused on understanding all the risks and roadblocks that may arise in the journey. 
  • Top-notch communication skills: They are phenomenal communicators and even better listeners. They can empathize with anyone and mediate conflicts with ease and skill. 
  • Trusted and influential: Whether they’re an external consultant or internal change managers, they are trusted by their peers. They know how to work with people resistant to change and juggle the human emotions associated with change. They know that developing and maintaining relationships across the business are key components to implementing and sustaining change. 

X-Factor: Tech-Savvy

Your dream change manager doesn’t need DAM experience, but it’s valuable. Often the specialist can help upskill them. They should be open to new technology, willing to learn (being an early adopter themselves is ideal), and be confident to turn around and teach others.

Interview questions

  • Describe situations where you have built and executed change management plans within a business. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?
  • How do you get buy-in from all levels of stakeholders?
  • Do you enjoy facilitating training and mentorship? Describe your coaching techniques.
  • How do you manage conflict and resistance to change in the workplace? Walk us through your process.
  • How would you rate your communication and listening skills (from 1-10) Why?

The Generalist: IT Information Architect

The business sponsor should go to their IT team and recruit this role at the start of your DAM journey, especially to offer their insights to the business analyst and DAM specialist. They could be added to the team on a temporary basis to work on a particular stage of the journey (often during initial implementation and future integrations) or devote a percentage of their time to DAM-related projects.

They are embedded in the business and have deep knowledge of your tech stack, how data currently flows, and the wider IT goals the DAM should adhere to. Request their support while implementing the software, working through integration processes with your vendor, and integration partners, or when new use cases arise.

You may also choose to bring on external IT consultants or specialists when the scope of a DAM project is outside the skills of your internal team.

IT architect

Skills Required

  • Knowledge of your existing tech ecosystem: They are embedded in your IT team and your technical architecture. They understand your organization’s goals, how data is collected, and how information flows. 
  • DAM experience: Ideally they have some DAM experience and understand how the system and data is different from other platforms in your marketing stack.

X-Factor: User-Centric Focus

While your typical information architect is thinking about how content will flow through a complex tech stack, a great information architect truly understands users and prioritizes their needs. Great architects will be supremely focused on how changes to your systems affect user experience and how the addition of the DAM fits into the puzzle of your tech stack.

Interview questions

  • What is your technical experience with DAM? Are you willing to learn on the job?
  • Can you envision how the DAM will work in our current tech stack? What are the challenges you see arising from that change?
  • Are you willing to support this project on a temporary basis? Or devote a percentage of your capacity to support the DAM on an ongoing basis?

If Your DAM Team is Just a Dream, Upskill Them

Your dream is to have a team filled with people who are skilled with DAM. The reality is often quite different, and Kristina is here to assure you that’s perfectly okay: “In reality, your team can have people who don’t have any DAM experience. The key to success is prioritizing hiring folks with a learning mindset—people who are curious and want to grow their knowledge.”

Your dream team should be filled with people who love problem-solving and have the desire to replace the sentence “I don’t know” with “I don’t know yet, but we’re gonna find out.” Those folks can take advantage of the myriad ways to upskill. Conferences, webinars, and courses (see resources below) offer regular educational opportunities to learn DAM best practices.

Kristina’s most important team-building advice is to keep that learning mindset going as technology and DAM best practice evolves. “Keep upskilling your team. The digital industry is moving quickly, so send your DAM manager to the vendor-client forums and conferences. Give them the opportunities to learn and bring that knowledge back to your organization.” It’s never too late to get your dream team off the bench and onto the court.

The Originator:
Business Sponsor

It all begins with the business sponsor—the high-level executive who recognizes the gap that digital asset management could fill and advocates for the journey throughout. Oftentimes, they’re the chief marketing, digital, or information officer who recognizes the need to scale up their marketing operation or personalize content at scale. Ideally, the staff who first hear specific needs or problems which could be solved with DAM would escalate to the executive who sees the value of DAM and chooses to champion it as the business sponsor.
It’s from the business sponsor that the funding and support for the DAM dream team originate. Think of them like the manager of your all-star NBA team—they have the final say on your players, the budget, and long-term strategy

Business_sponsor

Skills Required

  • Established influence: They are an internal voice who is well-respected among execs. During a business sponsor transition, the current DAM manager and DAM specialist would take great care to impart the importance of the business sponsors’ support to the team.
  • Strategic thinking: They understand the scope of the project and are willing to commit to long-term relationship building with external vendors, consultants, and incoming DAM managers. They know that DAM is more than just technology and support a holistic DAM practice considering the right technology, people, process, and metadata.
  • Business-savvy: They are aware of the limitations of the organization to support the DAM system, the budget constraints, and organizational goals, and consider the team’s capacity needs. 

X-Factor: Passion

A passionate business sponsor is a successful one. They need to see the value of exploring a DAM (or supporting the current one) in achieving the business’ wider goals. If they’re passionate about the productivity gains, robust rights management, and creative workflow improvements the DAM provides, they will be inclined to support the dream team with whatever they need. 

Interview questions

The business sponsor is the one who asks the questions and will be hiring and recruiting the entire dream team. But in the case of a transition, where a DAM manager and specialist are discussing the role of the business sponsor to an incumbent leader, here are some questions to ask: 

  • What is your experience and understanding of DAM systems? Are you excited about learning more about the DAM space and technology? 
  • Could we host a DAM demo to walk you through the current structure and discuss the future strategic plan of the DAM?
  • What is your strategic vision for content management, creative production, and marketing operations?
  • Are you willing to advocate on behalf of the team for our needs (budget, capacity needs, IT support, etc.)? How can we support you in doing so?

The Gatherer: Business Analyst

The first person the business sponsor brings onto the team is the business analyst. That’s because the business analyst’s role is to understand the current problems, collect information, and begin thinking about solutions. Kristina suggests the business sponsor recruit an analyst from their internal IT team, “The analyst will conduct research, host workshops, and lead interviews with stakeholders across the organization. It’s best if they already have relationships with stakeholders and a good understanding of the business needs.”

It’s important not to skip adding this member to your DAM dream team—whether you’re starting from scratch or replacing a current system. If you skip that business analysis phase, it can lead to spending a lot of time and money on something that isn’t going to solve the root cause of your problems.

Business analyst

Skills Required

  • Analytical, detail-driven: They skillfully collect, collate, and interpret stakeholder feedback, business requirements, and current processes into distinct pain points. 
  • People-savvy: They host workshops, conduct interviews, manage stakeholders expectations, and understand their needs. 
  • Forward-thinking, strategic: They analyze the current issues and requirements and envision the people, technology, and support needed to implement their recommended solutions. If they had the right tech or the right people in place, how could those changes improve processes moving forward?
  • IT awareness: They understand your organization’s IT strategy and guide conversations and recommendations towards your IT requirements.

X-Factor: Change Management Skills

Your dream business analyst has a mix of analytical and people-driven skills. They are the first person most stakeholders will voice their concerns to. This also means they are the first agent of the change management process. They should understand the importance of their role in kicking off potential change and be skilled enough to give stakeholders reasonable expectations of what’s to come.

Kristina warns incumbent business analysts to avoid getting caught up in people’s assumptions and excitement while they’re collecting information. “Analysts often get stakeholders saying things like, “You’re asking me about my pain points. Is that because we’re going to get something better? How are you going to improve things for me?” Your business analyst should be empowered to share the businesses sponsors’ goals for this data collection process without over-promising on solutions.”

Interview questions

  • This data collection phase will be on a temporary project basis. How much of your time can you devote to this project? Are you able to hand it off to the DAM specialist and/or manager once it’s complete?
  • Would you consider yourself a people-person? How comfortable are you with conducting interviews, hosting workshops, and public speaking?

  • Are you excited about collecting qualitative and quantitative data? Organizing it, analyzing it, documenting it, and drawing conclusions?

The Secret Weapon: DAM Specialist

Your DAM dream team isn’t complete without a specialist. They will serve as the mentor, educator, and industry specialist every DAM team needs at different stages of their journey. They’re usually brought on by the business sponsor to take the requirements that the business analyst unearthed and help the organization find the right solutions to solve their problems.

According to Kristina, it’s best to recruit for this role externally. The DAM marketplace has dozens of vendors, lots of different solutions, and best practices are different depending on use cases. The DAM specialist has a breadth of experience across sectors, and they know how to match companies to the right solutions, recruit and train the right folks, and guide the plan for this new change and optimizing the DAM.

And among the most important tasks, the specialist should be involved in hiring the DAM manager—who is best added to the dream team shortly after the specialist joins. The specialist will work alongside the manager to help them upskill and fill any gaps in their knowledge as the team grows. Since the specialist is usually an external consultant, they can stay on as ongoing support or just for certain stages of the DAM journey as it evolves.

DAM specialist

Skills Required

  • Mentor, educator mindset: They prioritize sharing their DAM knowledge with the dream team. They help select the right vendor, support implementation processes, train on best practices, recruit new team members, and upskill members of the team. 
  • Well-respected and connected: They have experience across sectors, working with multiple vendors, and organizations large and small. They connect your team with the clients of potential vendors so they can understand how the product really works. They can connect the business sponsor with other executives in the same field to share their experience supporting the DAM journey. 
  • Focused and visionary: The specialist builds the documentation, processes, and best practices that will help keep the DAM working smoothly. They support strategic and business goals by offering insights and recommendations into how your organization’s DAM practice can improve now and in the future. 
  • Breadth of experience: They’ve built relationships across sectors like corporate, NGOs, and startups. They know what competitors are doing but also the unique challenges they’ve faced allow them to recommend unique solutions. They know how to transfer ideas from other spaces to help your organization improve processes. 

X-Factor: Connections

The magic words you want to hear when hiring your dream specialist are, “We’re in this together. I’ve got connections to the best vendors for your industry. I can help you get the right demos and introduce you to your peers in the industry so you can see how DAM works for them.”

Beyond the knowledge of the DAM marketplace, the conversations that a great specialist can facilitate are invaluable. Kristina often invites her clients to meet with other C-suite business sponsors or DAM managers in the same industry. Those open and honest conversations help teams understand how DAM might be embedded into their organizations. These connections also assist teams in building community, recruiting future team members, and keeping up as technology evolves.
“For a specialist, having the right network and being well-respected in the industry is so important—it’s such a close-knit community,” Kristina says. “We know what works and we learn from each other’s mistakes. If you can find a DAM specialist like that, you’re golden.”

Interview questions

  • What approach would you take to help us evaluate our level of DAM maturity and build a roadmap for optimizing our DAM practice to achieve our business objectives?
  • What are the key factors that help companies across industries to ensure long-term success with DAM? Give some examples from clients you have worked with of what a successful DAM practice looks like.
  • How can you help us to take the reins of our DAM practice and hire the right team of people for our future success?
  • What is your experience with educating and upskilling resources in DAM?
  • What is your experience influencing executives to get buy-in for DAM?

“If you’re looking to hire a DAM specialist for a vendor selection process, then you want someone who knows the landscape and understands how to pick the right platform. But if you’re looking for someone to help you to build out your metadata and taxonomy structure, that’s a very different skill set. Shift your interview questions accordingly.” Kristina Huddart

The MVPs: DAM Manager (and soon, DAM Coordinators)

One of the most important members of your dream team—arguably your MVP—is your DAM manager. Once you’ve recruited a stellar specialist, now’s the perfect time to scout out a manager who will carry this journey forward. Keep in mind that DAM managers should be full-time, dedicated, permanent roles and shouldn’t be shared with other business functions.

In an ideal world, your incumbent manager already has some DAM experience under their belt. A few years of experience working in DAM already, DAM-specific courses taken, a certification, or degree in a related field like library sciences. But oftentimes, a manager is plucked from within your organization—they might be a star on the marketing team or someone in IT who is always trying to improve processes. In this circumstance, the manager is unlikely to have DAM knowledge. But fret not, as long as your DAM specialist can help them upskill and learn on the job before they’re left to take care of it all by themselves, hiring a DAM manager (and later coordinators) from within the organization can be a great way to grow the team.

DAM manager

In the case of DAM coordinators, they are usually brought on when the system becomes too untenable for a single manager. As more assets come into the system, more users need training and onboarding, and as the system is rolled out to more departments, the manager is very quickly going to reach out for support. At this point, the manager would take on a strategic and advisory role while the coordinators execute the daily operations. It’s important for the business sponsor to be connected with their DAM manager and keep their capacity in mind as the use cases, users, volume of assets, and business requirements grow.

As your organization is developing the foundations of the DAM, the coordinator takes on the daily administrative tasks of the DAM, while the manager handles the strategic ones. Some companies will even move from having their own internal coordinators to working with a third-party DAM-managed services company. Whether you hire and recruit coordinators or choose a third-party provider, your dream team will eventually require several coordinators to use your system to its full potential (and avoid burning out your DAM manager).

Skills Required: DAM Manager

  • Growth mindset: They pick up new things quickly and are willing to learn outside of their role. Great managers are curious, constantly learning, and interested in finding the connections between new tech and the DAM. They could also have previous experience in DAM systems, have taken courses, or have an understanding of best practices.
  • Problem-solving: They have the skills of a senior-level project manager. They’re driving the journey and helping to grow the best practices over time. They are running reports, analyzing data, and going to the business sponsor with their findings and ideas.
  • Creativity: A great manager is excited to get their hands on the DAM systems and is willing to experiment. They are creatively considering all the ways it can be improved and better embedded in the business. They are gathering requirements for new use cases and trying to understand what it would take to implement them.
  • Passionate about change: If you don’t hire or have a change manager in your organization, you need a manager with great communication skills who can create and execute an effective change management plan, especially during the adoption phase.

Skills Required: DAM Coordinator

  • Excited by data and “tedious” tasks: They are energized by daily administrative tasks. They manage the uploads and ensure metadata quality stays up to standard. They are detail-oriented and passionate about data accuracy because they do a lot of data entry, data management, and quality control.
  • Healthy fear of rights management: They’re the person that internal teams go to understand the rights of assets and what they can do with them. They should have enough of an understanding of rights management that they’d never copy and paste assets from Google Images *shudder* and they can guide users through the maze of rights management metadata.
  • Analytical, tech-savvy: The coordinator runs reports regularly, pulling analytics and user behavior to share with the manager. They have an understanding of how to contextualize that data and share it—how will the changes and improvements they make in the DAM make affect the experience of those using it? They’re always thinking about how to improve systems.
  • Customer service-minded: The coordinator provides access, regular training, and onboarding for all users. They get a lot of technical questions and they’re friendly and patient as they help users resolve issues.

X-Factor: Ability to Build Long-Term Relationships

A standout DAM manager is able to build long-term relationships—not only with executive-level folks like the business sponsor, but also with other leaders, internal stakeholders, and users. Their internal relationships will set the foundation for a years-long DAM journey that will touch functions across the business. If a manager can prove they have facilitated collaboration across functions and maintained positive relationships with executives and users alike, they are someone special.

Similarly, the manager’s relationship with the vendor is likely the longest and most important one they’ll build (or inherit). Having a trusted, productive relationship allows processes like implementing new integrations or suggesting new use cases smoother. “They should be confident enough to call the vendor and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a new use case. How do I do this?’ And get the answers and support they need,” Kristina says.

Interview questions: For the DAM Manager

  • What do you know about digital asset management? Where have you gained your knowledge and experience?
  • Do you learn quickly and enjoy picking up new skills?
  • What are some common use cases/problems that DAM can solve? How would you handle stakeholders coming to you with new use cases to implement?
  • How are you broadening your DAM knowledge right now? What are trends you’re noticing in the industry?
  • What’s your experience with change management?
  • How would you guide a resistant stakeholder to adopting a new way of working?

Interview questions: For the DAM Coordinator

  • What do you know about digital asset management? Where have you gained your knowledge and experience?
  • Do you enjoy working with excel spreadsheets and reviewing data? How would you manage a metadata audit?
  • Describe how you QC (quality control) metadata?
  • What’s your level of understanding of rights management in our industry
  • Would you consider yourself a people-person? Why or why not? Do you have experience in customer service?
  • What would you do if you discover a process or workflow is not working well for your users?

The Tech Partner: DAM Vendor

The average enterprise company is juggling 843 individual applications across their tech stack. And as any operations professional or IT team will tell you, most companies don’t use their tech stack to its full potential. When a company is investing in a big foundational tool like DAM, they’re  not usually considering any functionality beyond the basic use cases. “There’s so much more DAM can do. That’s why picking the right vendor—and developing a close relationship with them—is so important,” Kristina says.

You’re looking for a partner. A vendor that will prioritize evolving functionalities, new use cases, and listening to your businesses needs. The selection process is complex (and that’s where your specialist’s knowledge comes in handy) but there are a few things to look out for while scouting for a vendor. “I’m always looking for vendors who step up and help their customers make the most out of their tools. I evaluate whether vendors are able to get organizations to that next level and help them mature their DAM practices,” Kristina explains.

One way to understand the experience of working with a potential vendor is to ask your specialist to set up calls with managers and executive peers who are using vendors you’re interested in. Get their real feedback about their experiences and tap into your specialist’s network to do it.

DAM vendor

Skills Required

  • Fulfills your business and technical requirements: The vendor is able to fulfill the requirements and use cases set out by the specialist and manager. This vendor has the people, processes, and tech capabilities that meet your request for proposal (RFP).
  • Responsive customer service: The vendor’s customer support team is robust and able to handle requests promptly. Their customer success team is knowledgeable and willing to help.
  • Prioritizes innovation: They provide innovation and development roadmaps for potential clients and are open and honest about the future of their platform and technology. They are developing at a speed that keeps pace with the industry and the needs of their clients. They will be the right fit now and in three and five years because they’re releasing new use cases and features and thinking long term.
  • Willingness to develop partnership: Even if they don’t tick every single technical box, they’re willing to put the work in and communicate with their clients along the way. For example, their executives are willing to have open conversations with the executives of potential clients to talk about how to position their DAM for digital transformation and marketing operations. 

X-Factor: Change Management Skills

A stellar vendor will have many high-value, satisfied users that have been working in DAM for years. Kristina recommends looking out for the vendors who host yearly client forums to bring those users together. These in-person (and increasingly online) events organized by vendors are a treasure trove of community, knowledge sharing, and connection. “They’re problem-solving for a year’s worth of frustrations,” Kristina says. “It’s an opportunity for clients to share and learn from one another.”
These events not only only give the clients a chance to talk to each other, but they also give the vendor a chance to listen. Vendors use those forums to learn how their clients are using their tool right now and what functionalities they want to see in the future. And great vendors are acting on those insights to launch new features, use cases, and design their roadmaps.
Also, keep an eye out for vendors who host regular client webinars to share their client stories and best practices. Vendors don’t have to host yearly Salesforce-esque extravaganzas to bring together their community.

Interview questions

  • What’s your customer service/support system? What are your average response times?
  • Do you meet our business and technical requirements? How are you looking to meet those in the future if we select you?
  • What are your development roadmaps for this year? Next year? What are your innovation goals for five and ten years from now?
  • Can our leadership meet with yours? Can you connect us with DAM managers who are working in your system already and who can share their experience?
  • Do you offer ways for your clients to interact with one another? Yearly client forums, webinars, or Slack communities?

The Connector: DAM Integration Partner

If you’ve selected your dream vendor, you’re likely in the middle of connecting your new platform to the rest of your stack. This is where a DAM integration partner comes in. An integration partner supports your team in connecting your DAM to your desired platforms. Whether that’s connecting with a PIM, content marketing software (CMS), or content delivery network (CDN).

The key to hiring the right integration partner is to work with someone who has done that integration before—if you’re looking to connect your DAM to an existing CMS, hire someone with experience integrating those specific platforms. Depending on the integration you may need one developer or a team. And you might end up working with different integration partners for different integrations. Kristina suggests connecting with your vendor for their suggestions and recommended partners.

DAM integrations

Skills Required

  • Recommended by vendor: They are an integration partner that is familiar with your DAM system and they come recommended by your vendor.
  • Experience with desired integration: They have worked to implement the integrations you desire. They may be skilled at the integration between DAM and PIM, and you may choose a different integration partner for DAM and CMS.

X-Factor: Orchestration of Content and Data

The role of integration partners is to facilitate the flow of content and data from one system to another. Done seamlessly, your end users will barely notice they are switching tools or that content is being handed off. Give them a full overview of your processes—with the knowledge of your end-to-end digital asset lifecycle, they have the skills to ensure the right content and data flows automatically through your processes. They may also have IT specialists on their teams to support your integration needs.

If you’re not sure what an ideal end-to-end digital asset lifecycle should look like in an integrated ecosystem, bring your DAM specialist back to function as a liaison between end users and the integration partner.

Interview questions

  • What is your experience with the integration(s) we’re planning to implement? What support do you offer throughout the integration process?
  • What is your experience with the vendor?
  • What resources would you allocate to this project? (Number of developers, IT specialists, hours, etc.) 
  • How will you hand off integration management and maintenance to our in-house teams?

The Catalyzer: Change Manager

If we’re talking about your dream team, Kristina says that a change manager should be your first draft pick. Since DAM sits as a foundational piece within the whole marketing tech stack, their support early on is pivotal. A change manager understands how to best implement new processes so there’s minimal disruption to the business. Whether that’s improving onboarding processes or managing big cultural shifts, they work across the tech stack and asset lifecycle.
As a DAM specialist, Kristina is also brought on to offer her change management skills on a temporary basis. But she warns that, as helpful as specialists and DAM managers can be in the change management process, they shouldn’t be tasked to do it all. “I often see the DAM manager and change manager smooshed together, but in a dream team, they’d be separate roles working together to carry the change into the future,” she says.

Change_manager

Skills Required

  • Impeccable people skills: They are incredibly charismatic, thoughtful, and patient. They love talking to people and solving the problems that are bothering them. They are most at home in groups, collaboration, and conversation.
  • Passionate about education: The change manager is a great teacher, trainer, and mentor. They get early adopters excited and help coax the stragglers on board too.
  • Process-oriented: They are well-organized and always thinking about how to improve processes. The change manager recognizes the challenge of managing change at scale and they are focused on understanding all the risks and roadblocks that may arise in the journey. 
  • Top-notch communication skills: They are phenomenal communicators and even better listeners. They can empathize with anyone and mediate conflicts with ease and skill. 
  • Trusted and influential: Whether they’re an external consultant or internal change managers, they are trusted by their peers. They know how to work with people resistant to change and juggle the human emotions associated with change. They know that developing and maintaining relationships across the business are key components to implementing and sustaining change. 

X-Factor: Tech-Savvy

Your dream change manager doesn’t need DAM experience, but it’s valuable. Often the specialist can help upskill them. They should be open to new technology, willing to learn (being an early adopter themselves is ideal), and be confident to turn around and teach others.

Interview questions

  • Describe situations where you have built and executed change management plans within a business. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?
  • How do you get buy-in from all levels of stakeholders?
  • Do you enjoy facilitating training and mentorship? Describe your coaching techniques.
  • How do you manage conflict and resistance to change in the workplace? Walk us through your process.
  • How would you rate your communication and listening skills (from 1-10)?
  • Why?

The Generalist: IT Information Architect

The business sponsor should go to their IT team and recruit this role at the start of your DAM journey, especially to offer their insights to the business analyst and DAM specialist. They could be added to the team on a temporary basis to work on a particular stage of the journey (often during initial implementation and future integrations) or devote a percentage of their time to DAM-related projects.
They are embedded in the business and have deep knowledge of your tech stack, how data currently flows, and the wider IT goals the DAM should adhere to. Request their support while implementing the software, working through integration processes with your vendor, and integration partners, or when new use cases arise.
You may also choose to bring on external IT consultants or specialists when the scope of a DAM project is outside the skills of your internal team.

IT architect

Skills Required

  • Knowledge of your existing tech ecosystem: They are embedded in your IT team and your technical architecture. They understand your organization’s goals, how data is collected, and how information flows. 
  • DAM experience: Ideally they have some DAM experience and understand how the system and data is different from other platforms in your marketing stack.

X-Factor: User-Centric Focus

While your typical information architect is thinking about how content will flow through a complex tech stack, a great information architect truly understands users and prioritizes their needs. Great architects will be supremely focused on how changes to your systems affect user experience and how the addition of the DAM fits into the puzzle of your tech stack.

Interview questions

  • What is your technical experience with DAM? Are you willing to learn on the job?
  • Can you envision how the DAM will work in our current tech stack? What are the challenges you see arising from that change?
  • Are you willing to support this project on a temporary basis? Or devote a percentage of your capacity to support the DAM on an ongoing basis?

If Your DAM Team is Just a Dream, Upskill Them

Your dream is to have a team filled with people who are skilled with DAM. The reality is often quite different, and Kristina is here to assure you that’s perfectly okay: “In reality, your team can have people who don’t have any DAM experience. The key to success is prioritizing hiring folks with a learning mindset—people who are curious and want to grow their knowledge.”

Your dream team should be filled with people who love problem-solving and have the desire to replace the sentence “I don’t know” with “I don’t know yet, but we’re gonna find out.” Those folks can take advantage of the myriad ways to upskill. Conferences, webinars, and courses (see resources below) offer regular educational opportunities to learn DAM best practices.

Kristina’s most important team-building advice is to keep that learning mindset going as technology and DAM best practice evolves. “Keep upskilling your team. The digital industry is moving quickly, so send your DAM manager to the vendor-client forums and conferences. Give them the opportunities to learn and bring that knowledge back to your organization.” It’s never too late to get your dream team off the bench and onto the court.

Top Three DAM Productivity Reports

The Three Top DAM Productivity Reports You’ll Need This Year

By Blog, dam-manager, Data, Productivity-Reuse

It’s a year of recession and uncertainty, but there is one thing we do know for certain: the demand for high-quality digital brand content is still growing.

So how does a company meet that need with (likely) fewer resources than they’ve had in the past, and more scrutiny on how those limited resources are spent?

Tools like digital asset management (DAM) platforms are the answer. We know that DAMs can be a productivity multiplier for creative and marketing teams, allowing them to create, publish and share content faster than using old tools like Google Drive. And yet, it’s sometimes hard to know for sure.

To that end, together with John Horodyski of Salt Flats, we’ve put together three must-have DAM productivity reports you can pull today that will help you understand how the system is being used, find opportunities to be more efficient, and demonstrate ROI to your leaders who may otherwise question that big tech spend.

Report #1: User Adoption

So you might be thinking: wait a minute, what does user adoption have to do with productivity? The answer is, everything.

If users aren’t in your system, using the tools you provide or the processes you’ve created, then you’ve got an immediate productivity issue. Users that are not operating within established processes are going to impact the users who are, slowing them down with questions, or forcing them to search for content and assets outside of the DAM.

It’s also an indication there may be a problem with your tools or processes themselves. If users aren’t adopting these things, there’s probably a good reason. This is a way for you to identify a potential productivity problem and fix it right away.

Here’s what you want to look at and build into your report:

  • % of total active users across groups
  • # of uploads / downloads / requests
  • Asset ingestion metrics
  • Standard web analytics (unique visits, pages, views, etc.)
  • Number and types of searches
  • Login frequency

Learn more about the three productivity reports you must have, and how to pull them!

Watch the webinar

Report #2: DAM Efficiency

This is the report you expected to see on this list. How much is your DAM improving efficiency and speed across the asset lifecycle? Is it making your creative teams faster? Is it getting assets into circulation faster? Does it allow users to get more done?

By looking at this report, you’ll be able to see if your tools and processes are paying off, or if there are opportunities to tweak or change what you’re doing to go even faster. Rather than focus on users like in the first report, this one is all about the system and process.

In this report, you want to:

  • Quantify / qualify the reduction in workflow times (ingestion / identification / use & reuse)
  • Quantify / qualify the reduction in support tickets
  • Measure product launch timelines

Report #3: Savings & ROI

It’s notoriously difficult to accurately measure the ROI of a DAM platform, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Some of the metrics in this report may not be easily available to you depending on your DAM, but it gives you an idea of where this type of report should go.

When you think about ROI in DAM, you need to look at a wide range of areas. From labor cost savings due to efficiency improvements, to risk reduction due to stronger controls on content usage, it all comes together to create value for the business. In this report, we’re focusing primarily on ROI due to productivity gains, but if you’re up to the task, you can go even deeper.

Here’s a look at metrics to include in your productivity ROI report:

  • Labor cost savings
  • Savings in agency spend
  • Asset reuse percentages
  • Total cost of ownership metrics
  • Cost savings due to self-service improvements

The Role of Technology in Reporting

This is going to sound straightforward, but the key to good DAM productivity reports is having a system that enables you to gain the insights you need.

Is your DAM good at reporting?

Not all DAMs are created equal. Some are limited to reporting very basic numbers, like how many users are in a system or the number of assets you’ve stored there. To really get to the heart of productivity, you need access to advanced reporting in two areas: asset lifecycle and metadata.

Asset lifecycle reporting lets you measure things like workflow completion rates and speed, and content reuse percentage. Your DAM needs to be able to tell you how an asset is moving through the system, how long it takes, and whether or not your content is being used (or reused) in a productive way.

Metadata reporting, on the other hand, lets you know how users are finding assets in the system. These types of metrics let you measure how long it takes a user to find content, how many failed searches they have before they find what they’re looking for, and if there are ways to better optimize your metadata to improve findability of assets.

Is your DAM configurable?

Every brand has a slightly different use case or process they want to measure in the DAM. This makes it really hard for any one DAM to provide all the insights you want straight out of the box. You need a platform that you can configure to tell you the things you want to know.

Ask yourself these two questions. First, can you easily configure the system to give you the reports you’re looking for, either through customized dashboards or things like role-based reports. Second, can you configure the metadata across your system easily so you have access to the insights you need at the asset-level.

If the answer is no, you won’t be able to get the full value you’re looking for.

Where is your data coming from?

Take a look at your tech stack and ask yourself: where is my data coming from?

This is a little more advanced than some of the other ideas in this blog, but the concept is straightforward when you think about it. There are many tools you have that impact an asset’s lifecycle, and that your DAM interacts with to get content from creation to publication and distribution. What you want to know is, how is your DAM pulling information from those systems to give you a more complete picture of that entire asset lifecycle?

If your DAM can’t receive or pass data along the tech stack, it’s limiting your ability to truly understand how the DAM is improving (or hurting) productivity for your users. This hinders you in terms of measuring ROI of the DAM, and of optimizing efficiencies to meet your aggressive content targets.

Get started on your DAM productivity reports

Getting started is easy. By using the above direction, you can start pulling together reports today that will serve you year-round and beyond. Your leaders will appreciate the insight into how the DAM is bringing value to the business – which helps justify the spend – and your stakeholders will value the direction you can give them on where to find opportunities to improve their productivity across the asset lifecycle.

To learn more about getting started, watch our webinar with John Horodyski of Salt Flats where he tackles this exact topic.

3 Productivity Reports You’re Going To Be Asked For This Year & How To Pull Them!

By Data, multi-personas, Productivity-Reuse, Webinars

3 Productivity Reports You’re Going To Be Asked For This Year & How To Pull Them!

Your Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform is full of incredible data, but like so many others, chances are you’re still struggling to measure your DAM’s true impact on productivity and performance.In this webinar, we team up with leading DAM data expert John Horodyski, Executive Director at Salt Flats, to identify the top three reports you simply must have in your repertoire to answer these and other important questions. We’ll then take a look at how you can find and build these reports in your DAM.

Key Takeaways:

  • What metrics, KPIs, and measurements matter when it comes to measuring productivity in DAM
  • How to build those metrics into a report that have value for your leaders
  • The role of technology in good productivity reporting

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Digital asset management challenges and why users hate your DAM.

Digital Asset Management Challenges & Why Users Hate Your DAM

By Blog, multi-personas, Platform-DAM, User Adoption

For enterprise brand users, the value of a digital asset management (DAM) platform is pretty clear: it’s a productivity tool that streamlines content creation by making it fast and easy to find brand-approved digital assets, approve that content, and distribute it to internal teams and external partners to achieve revenue goals.

But if it’s such a powerful tool, why do DAM managers find it so hard to get users to stay in the system? User adoption remains one of the top barriers to DAM ROI for enterprise brands today.

There’s little question of the value of a DAM at the enterprise level. It’s a necessity, not a nice-to-have, for teams to keep up with the growing demand for digital content. So then, why do users hate your DAM?

Here are four questions you can ask to identify and address digital asset management challenges.

1. Is the DAM intuitive and easy to use?

As with all things, not all DAMs are created equal. Some legacy vendors still sell technology designed more than 20 years ago. These platforms are functional, yes, but they are clunky and hard to use. Menus don’t make sense. Features don’t work the way you expect them to. Visually it’s a mess and finding what you want is an exercise in futility.

A big price tag doesn’t mean a good system. Modern DAMs are developed with the user’s experience in mind. They deliver a streamlined user interface, with workflows that make sense. Any barrier to productivity is removed, and you’re left with an enjoyable platform that encourages users to come back for more.

If that’s not your DAM, then immediately this is a problem. Your users have too much work on their hands already to spend time fighting a system they hate using. Instead, they’ll quickly turn back to old systems and processes that – in their mind at least – work better.

You’ll never achieve a good DAM ROI that way.

The solution: While looking for a new vendor may be the obvious answer here, we all know it’s more complicated than that. Vendor selection processes are lengthy, and migrating to a new DAM is a monumental task if you aren’t well prepared. 

Instead, start with evaluating how your DAM is configured. Many systems have different configurations you can adjust to make them a bit easier to use. In some cases the options are limited, but DAMs like Tenovos, for example, allow you to configure all sorts of areas of the DAM to give users a more streamlined experience.

It’s also a good idea to investigate with your users what exactly is keeping them from wanting to use the DAM. Is it too slow? Do the files not load properly? Maybe it’s just too hard to navigate… whatever the issues are, put some kind of plan in place to address these.

If, despite your investigations and efforts, you’ve been unsuccessful at fixing the problem, then it’s time to start looking at new digital asset management vendors. Poor user adoption is not something you can leave alone, and it might be better to start anew than try to salvage a poorly implemented, or a poorly selected, digital asset management platform.

2. Does the tool provide value and boost efficiency for all teams?

So the DAM’s UI/UX aren’t the problem. Why else could users be choosing not to use the system? Well, the next most likely reason is because it doesn’t actually help them do their job better.

We hear this one a lot, where stakeholders haven’t been included in the selection or implementation processes. This can lead to a brand choosing a DAM that isn’t right for the job – lacking key features or functionalities – or establishing processes and workflows that don’t make sense.

Remember, the DAM is meant to improve productivity and efficiency. If it doesn’t make your users’ lives easier, they won’t use it. Period.

The solution: Talk to your stakeholders. You need to understand if the system is meeting their requirements, or if it’s more of an issue with processes (how the DAM is set up).

Many times simply by communicating with stakeholders, you can get an idea for how DAM processes can be adjusted to make a little more sense for users. It’s not necessarily an easy fix – sometimes involving several teams and even IT if your DAM configurations are hard to change – but it’s a start in the right direction.

Some things to look for are:

  • Do workflows make sense?
  • Do users have the necessary permissions to do what needs to be done in the DAM?
  • Can users complete their tasks in the DAM or are they bouncing between too many systems?
  • If users can’t find content, do you have the proper processes in place to ensure content is being tagged properly when it’s ingested into the DAM?
  • If yes, then is your metadata structure the problem?

Also, make sure before you start changing processes that you evaluate them against the needs of all your stakeholders. You’d hate to fix one problem only to create another one somewhere else.

Having a user adoption problem?
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3. Do stakeholders have the necessary training?

Digital asset management platforms can be complex tools. That’s why training (at the time of implementation and ongoing thereafter) should be a key part of any DAM program.

If users don’t understand how to use the system, they’ll default to what they do know – legacy technologies and processes. It goes further than just the technology side. Have you trained users on your metadata structure? Do they know how to search for content (both in terms of how search works in the DAM and how to choose the right queries to find what they need)? 

And lastly, do they know how you expect them to use the system? It’s not enough to know how it works, they need clear direction on what they’re supposed to be doing with the tool. 

The solution: This one is simple: set up ongoing user and admin training in the DAM.

Whether you make this a resource users are expected to refer to or consume on their own, or a guided training program, it’s essential to any successful DAM.

Don’t forget you have different users from different parts of the company – and each group has its own purpose for being in the DAM. Tailor your training accordingly. For example, what the creative team needs to understand in the DAM is different from the social media team. Make those distinctions clear and put each user on the correct path.

Ensure your training covers the technology, the metadata, and the processes they need to know, and you’ll find a boost in user adoption once they understand how it all comes together to make their lives better.

4. Does the tool interact with my other technologies?

While this one could have been included with #2 above, integrations are worth their own section of this blog.

Previously we mentioned users having to jump around between too many systems. This is a productivity killer and sometimes, the DAM is just one more system they can’t afford the time to log into.

Some integrations are nice to have, while others are just essential. And while it depends on your use case for DAM, recognize that user adoption will suffer if you’re not connecting the right technologies.

The solution: As we’ve said a few times now, talk to your stakeholders and discover what integrated technologies are missing.

Common answers will be:

Reach out to your DAM vendor and find out if they offer these integrations. There will be a cost associated with it, so weigh that against the value it’s going to bring to the business. But if you’re boosting user adoption while facilitating the flow of data and assets across the organization, it could be a worthwhile investment.

If they don’t offer these integrations, that should trigger an evaluation of your company’s priorities when it comes to its enterprise tech stack. Best practices call for integrated technology ecosystems that pass data across platforms to improve transparency and drive better decision-making. If this digital transformation and integration is one of your company’s strategic directives, this may be the time to bring DAM into the project.

User Adoption of the DAM Platform

It doesn’t matter how much time and money you invest in your DAM – if users aren’t in the tool, it’s not helping you. The ROI will be non-existent, and your leaders will start to ask why they’re spending so much on a tool that no one is using.

Ask yourself the questions above and go through the process of identifying why user adoption is so poor. Recognize this isn’t a problem unique to you, but with the right approach you can resolve your digital asset management challenges, boost user adoption, and get back to that positive ROI all of us are after.

To learn more about user adoption, watch this webinar with change management and DAM expert Kristina Huddart.

Identify & Address Red Flags To Achieve DAM ROI

By Blog, dam-manager, DAM-ROI

Enterprise digital asset management (DAM) systems are a big investment of resources. They can cost quite a bit to purchase, and require a commitment of people and time to select, implement, and ultimately manage this important tool.

So it goes without saying (but we’ll say it anyway) that few companies can afford to waste all that time and money on a system that isn’t providing a good return on investment.

As a DAM manager, the last thing you want is your CMO coming to you asking about this big expense, and you have nothing to show for it. Before things get to that point, here are some red flags you can watch out for that will let you know your DAM isn’t doing what it should – and potentially trigger actions to start seeing that ROI you and your leaders are looking for.

Let’s get into it.

1 - Poor User Adoption

Maybe the most obvious (and important) thing to look for is whether or not people are using the DAM – and using it the way it’s designed to be used.

You’ve put a lot of time and effort into understanding the needs of the business and your users (if not, this might be the root of the issue), and have selected the DAM accordingly. You’ve designed workflows and processes alongside your stakeholders, and yet still they’re refusing to abandon old ways of doing things, or legacy tools and systems.

If users aren’t using your digital asset management platform as intended, that’s an immediate red flag you aren’t getting the DAM ROI you want.

The cause can be any number of things, including poor user experience in the DAM or the system not actually having the functionality they need. But by far the most common reason we see that users aren’t in the DAM is a lack of ongoing change management practices on the part of the DAM team and leaders.

Remember, users are people, and people are creatures of habit. If they’ve been using processes or tools for a long time, getting them to change is hard. That’s why, as part of any new DAM implementation, change management should be an integral part of the process.

But where DAM managers often go wrong is thinking that once the system is launched, change management is over… Instead, you should have ongoing communications, training sessions, activities, and support for users to keep them in the tool. You should be making an effort to understand how the needs of users are evolving, and plan for ways to solve those before they become a problem that pushes them into old habits.Your DAM should evolve, too. So if user adoption is a problem for you, start with evaluating change management.

And if you need additional support to do that, check out our user adoption toolkit for some helpful tools.

2- Users Can’t Find Content

As the DAM manager, maybe one of your worst nightmares is users being unable to consistently and quickly find content in the DAM.

Modern DAM platforms like Tenovos exist to help you maximize the value of your content. We want to help your users find the right assets at the right time, and get in front of the right people, in order to achieve a goal. So, if the DAM isn’t doing that, it’s not giving you the ROI you need – and it’s impacting the ROI of your content, too.

That’s a problem.

Going back to change management, there is a human element here that can be part of the challenge. Your users may not be searching for content properly, and a few education sessions will go a long way to solving the issue. Do they know how to search? What advanced functions and filters exist to find content, or what taxonomy do you use to identify the right content?

If the answer is no, well, start there. If the answer is yes, then maybe it’s your metadata structure that is the problem. It could be time to reevaluate. You’ll want to look at how you’ve structured your metadata and organized your content, what keywords are you using and do they contain language that makes sense. You also want to speak with your users. How do they search for content?

A pro tip here:
look at searches in the DAM that failed to return any content. This will give you insight into how users look for content.

We’ve published a whole guide on metadata in DAM you can read through for even better insights into maximizing content findability in the DAM. Start with chapter 3 on keywording.

3 - Duplicate Content

If you’re finding duplicate content in your DAM, something’s wrong. This issue piggybacks off #2 above, and is often the result of users not being able to find content fast, so they remake it.

But it’s a big problem when you’re talking about spending more time and money (resources today’s creative teams just don’t have) to make content that already exists somewhere. It also leads to inflated agency/content licensing spend to pay for things to be recreated or a photographer to shoot (another) round of product images.

Duplicate content can be a symptom of the findability issue, but it’s an immediate indication your DAM isn’t performing in an optimized way. Many of the fixes for this issue we’ve already discussed – think about improving content findability in the DAM and educating users on how to find content quickly.

It’s also an opportunity to talk to your stakeholders about processes. Are users searching the DAM first? Are they trying to find the content, or just putting in a quick search and immediately abandoning it to create a new creative brief instead? Some of the responsibility has to be on users to look before they create, but at the same time, the DAM needs to surface that content without too much effort, otherwise this problem will persist.

There is another reason this happens, and if this is the case, while not technically your job as the DAM manager, it impacts your DAM’s ROI. Digital asset management platforms should empower creative teams to reuse existing assets as both a way to maximize the value of their content, but also to move faster in terms of productivity. This is one of the best ways to achieve a positive DAM ROI.

So, if your stakeholders complain that reusing content isn’t as good as building from scratch, remind them that not only does content reuse save them time and money, it can also be done in incredibly creative ways that drive audience engagement across multiple digital channels simultaneously.

4 - Little to No Productivity Gains

The DAM is a productivity tool (among other things). It helps your users get more done by making content accessible, fast.

Where once DAMs were just archives, today’s platforms are workflow power tools that let creative teams find, edit, review, approve and publish content without ever leaving the system. Which means, if your creative team says their output hasn’t increased or it’s harder for them to get their job done, something’s gone wrong.

This DAM ROI red flag is one you need to address. It will impact user adoption (as discussed above), and ultimately slow down your marketing team’s ability to drive audience engagement with your brand. In today’s digital landscape where teams are publishing more and more content every year, it puts a lot of pressure on the DAM to perform to its full potential.

No one wants to be bogged down by process, so start by evaluating how you’ve designed the DAM to work between teams. Does it have the capabilities it needs to achieve the level of integration you want with existing enterprise technologies? Do the workflows make sense with how stakeholders are expecting to use the system? Does the DAM effectively eliminate manual tasks or does it create more work in other areas?

These are all questions you want to ask, and get answers with the help of your users. Remember, the DAM is for them to use – therefore they’re your best resource for help at this point. The ultimate solution here could be as simple as a few process tweaks, or the extreme response of switching DAMs to something more suited to the needs of the business. But ultimately it’s something you can’t afford to wait on – action is required here.

To better understand how your creative teams are using DAM for productivity, read our DAM productivity guide.

5 - You’re Still In the Dark

How your marketing and creative teams decide what content they should make is all dependent upon data: what content is published to which channels, how it performs, who engages with it, who uses it. These are all things they care about, and while many digital channels provide that information piecemeal, the DAM should be a source of truth for all users to access important asset-level data to make better content decisions.

This is the next evolution of modern digital asset management. Not every system can achieve this for you, but it is still an expectation of your leaders that at least some of this data is available in the DAM. If not, that should be an indication you have the opportunity to extract more value from the DAM – whether by improving reporting in your existing tool or thinking about a new platform to give you those insights.

Today’s marketers just can’t afford to publish content in the dark anymore. They require asset-level insights to make the right choices – and it’s on you as the DAM manager to provide those through your system.

The good news is that data not only helps your stakeholders, it helps you calculate the true ROI of your DAM. You’ll be able to understand who is using the system and how, and when content performance metrics are included, you’ll even be able to understand the DAM’s impact on things like revenue.

Now that’s a goal to shoot for.

Want to understand how your DAM data can help you calculate true ROI? Read chapter 4 of our data guide, here.

Modern Digital Asset Management

Your DAM is a big commitment of time and resources to keep operating, and as its manager you’re always on the lookout for ways to improve ROI in order to justify that spend. It’s also going to help your career, help you secure additional resources for support (so many DAM managers are teams of one, even at the enterprise level), and budget to invest further in this integral piece of technology.

Keep an eye out for these red flags, be proactive in addressing them, and you’ll be well on your way to achieving positive ROI for your DAM.

8 Must-Have Digital Asset Management Features

By Blog, multi-personas, Platform-DAM

We’ve sought far and wide to find the top 8 must-have features you’ll want in your digital asset management (DAM) platform—whether you’re shopping for a new DAM or hoping to expand your capabilities with a current one.

From new AI features and expanded rights management, to drag-and-drop user interface settings, these eight features are the ones every DAM manager will want to have this year to boost productivity and performance.

1. AI Tagging and Metadata Creation

If your DAM doesn’t already have AI, it should be at the top of your wishlist. Rather than users manually watching videos and attempting to catch all the relevant tags, machine learning technology can automatically scan photo and video assets to assign tags related to products, people, and objects.

With the help of AI, your DAM will now:

  • Recognize a particular brand of item and tag the image or video accordingly
  • Recognize individuals and attribute the applicable tags across assets
  • Tag based on topic or complex concepts—like “glamorous theater”
  • Embed subtitling and speech-to-text translation in 30+ languages, making all audio effectively searchable in the DAM

And when machine learning does the tagging, or supplements users’ tags, all your content becomes a lot more discoverable.

2. Two-Way Integration with Your PIM

What if you could harness the power of your product information management (PIM) system with all your digital assets? If that sounds enticing, add a PIM integration to your DAM wishlist. A two-way integration between your PIM and DAM will:

  • Keep your PIM as the system of record for all product data
  • Give your DAM read-only access to product data from the PIM
  • Allow the DAM to automatically pull in product data and attach it to assets, making content searchable by product attributes like SKUs and dimensions
  • Let you quickly package product data and assets to publish a product details page (PDP) with ease

With a PIM and DAM integration, your PIM remains the source of truth but allows product data to be associated with assets. With those specifications, dimensions, SKU numbers, colors, and more, you’ll effectively add another layer of searchability to your assets. Are you looking for product photography but you want to search by SKU? Now you can.

Not to mention the productivity gains. Depending on your DAM, you can package asset and product data together and publish it directly to eComm platforms like Amazon or your website without leaving your DAM. With a bi-directional PIM integration, there are so many possibilities.

3. Robust Rights Management

Centralize your rights agreements and entities in one place so you can manage it all. Allow users to access only approved assets—whether that’s based on licensing entity, permitted regions, or expiry dates.

Consider adding download request forms into your rights management process to keep in compliance. When assets are requested for download, include a step to fill out a customizable form that notifies the team responsible for managing that asset. You can ask questions like: What’s the purpose for downloading this asset? Has it been approved to be used in these regions and for those uses?

If you’ve got the right DAM, assets that are no longer approved for use can be hidden from search, or available for viewing but not downloading. Robust rights management features protect brands from publishing unlicensed content or misusing content. Be confident that no legal fees, reputation damage, or non-compliance hiccups will hurt your brand.

4. Customizable Content Portals

Content portals are nothing new but they’ve never been easier to create, manage, and share with external partners. The next evolution you’ll want to add to your wishlist is customizable content portals (or as we like to call them, Storyboards), which allow any DAM manager to quickly create branded, secure content portals to store and share assets with partners, retailers, and agencies.

With branded content portals, users only view and download the content you want them to. All rights management and intellectual property rules are dynamically adhered to, and assets can be pulled with a click of a button when they expire. And the best part—all assets are securely shared with external teams without granting access to the entire DAM system.

5. Intuitive Workflow Features

Modern DAMs are increasingly adding workflow features to their platforms. If your approval workflows are still buried in endless email or Slack threads, it might be time to add this one to your DAM wishlist.

Centralizing your creative workflows in your DAM saves your team time searching for content (it’s all right there) and automatically triggers the right people to collaborate in review rounds. In many DAMs, you can mark up, comment, review, and approve assets right from the platform—anything from graphics and print assets to rendered video assets.

But don’t forget to give everyone involved in workflows their own logins—instead of bestowing one “admin” access to your agency partners. That way you can keep track of everyone contributing to your projects as they move through approvals.

6. Creative Suite Workflow Integration

Imagine this scenario. Your creative team gets design feedback, “Move this overlay down four pixels.” They have two options. Download the asset from the DAM, upload it to their design software, make the edit, and re-upload the asset to the DAM. Or, they access their design software from within the DAM, make the modification, and save it right away. Which workflow do you think they would prefer?

That’s the simplicity of adding an integration with your creative suite to your DAM workflows. Now, you open and modify assets using your creative tools, all within your DAM. This speeds up workflows and allows creatives more time to do what they love.

7. Drag-and-Drop Metadata and System Configurations

Today, modern DAMs come with easily customizable backend hubs to build the metadata systems you need without IT requirements or downtime. It can take minutes to create new tagging structures, asset collections, or add new metadata fields, rather than months to reconfigure your whole metadata structure.

Similarly, you’ll want the customizable system settings that come with modern DAMs. DAM managers can make adjustments to the user interface and experience using their admin tools. Drag and drop your DAM’s user interface to your heart’s delight. Adjust how your DAM appears to users based on permissions, role-based rules, or optimized for usability. Fast and simple—no coding needed.

8. Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

Do your legacy DAMs struggle with downtime? For many older systems when it’s time to push a major update, the entire service is interrupted and redeployed, which can be expensive and complex. Oftentimes, enterprise DAM clients will delay updates for years, risking the security issues that crop up with aging software just to avoid the cost.

Reduce anxiety and recover productivity by seeking out a modern, cloud-based DAM. Today’s DAMs use the CI/CD approach—meaning that anytime they push an update, it goes live right away with no downtime to the system. Many DAMs even push deployments without any additional cost to the customer or involvement with IT. With a CI/CD approach, large enterprise DAM users receive faster system updates, more new features, and fewer service interruptions.

Productivity and performance in DAM

The Future of DAM: Productivity & Performance Insights that Drive Engaging Digital Experiences for Consumers at Scale

By Blog, multi-personas, Productivity-Reuse

In case you missed the news, Tenovos has received a $10 million Series B investment from S4S Ventures and BDMI, two heavy hitters in the world of digital media.

So, why DAM and why Tenovos?

The obvious answer is that we’re a modern, data-driven digital asset management (DAM) platform. Unlike many competitors out there, we’re built specifically to help enterprise brands accelerate content development, effectively reuse content, and gain insight into content performance.

That said, there’s more going on here that brought these large investors to our door.

Digital Transformation and the Loss of Media Signal

Digital transformation continues to lift businesses to new heights. As more of the world’s consumers go digital, the opportunities for companies to transform engagement with their customers are multiplying.

While this is a positive thing for companies, it’s having unwanted repercussions. As more brands embrace transformation, the ubiquity of digital experiences is leading to fatigue.

Consumers are overloaded by a wall of digital noise, and brands are struggling to break through it to engage in meaningful ways. Add in the loss of media signal resulting from cookie deprecation and identifier for advertisers (IDFA) changes, brands are now doubly challenged to engage buyers.

What we’re seeing in response are companies trying to scale the creation of personalized and optimized content to cut through the clutter, meet consumers on new channels, and find new paths to engagement through content.

S4S Ventures and Bertelsmann’s BDMI Co-lead Series B Investment in Modern Digital Asset Management Provider Tenovos

Read the Press Release

How Tenovos Connects Content to Buyers

Here’s where things get exciting for Tenovos, our customers, and our new investors.

Achieving this level of scale requires a modern digital asset management (DAM) system that, from ideation to publishing, acts as the system of record for a brand’s product and marketing content. As the one source of truth for content, brand teams can streamline the creation process by leveraging the platform to improve content discoverability, reuse, and automate publishing to channels such as web, and social.

But, breaking through the wall of noise takes more than just a massive volume of content. Brands must pick the right content, for the right channel, and deliver it at the right time. That’s no easy task.

According to Forrester Research, 33% of B2C marketers are still unsure of what type of content to create, an issue compounded by the loss of signal we mentioned earlier. That’s why Tenovos built a DAM on the foundation of strong analytics, empowering brands with productivity and performance insights to not only help create content quicker, but also create more impactful content to drive engagement, revenue, and retention.

The teams at S4S Ventures and BDMI share a similar vision, believing in unlocking the capability for brand teams across media, content, and creative to have a direct conversation with the consumer by empowering them to own their data in-house.

By marrying both productivity and performance metrics in the DAM, Tenovos allows brands to answer questions like:

  • Is my content driving engagement and revenue?
  • Is my content even being used?
  • Do we have consistent creative and branding across all channels?
  • Which product image drives the most likes on Instagram?

This access to real-time productivity and content performance data within the DAM helps brand teams not only improve the efficiency of their storytelling (by reusing content that works), but also optimize future content (by creating more of what’s resonating).

Global product brands such as Amazon, Mattel, and Saks Fifth Avenue, are leveraging Tenovos not only because of the unique data but also because of some key features such as:

    • PIM Framework: Universal connection to enterprise PIM systems allowing users to leverage product information in the DAM to increase content findability, and package product creative and information for publication on eComm platforms.

 

    • Rights management: Built-in rights management to ensure compliance with licensing agreements, and easily manage, find, track and measure licensed content.

 

    • Storyboards: Secure branded content portals to easily share and manage content with internal and external partners or agencies.

 

    • Workflows: Automate creative editing, review and approval processes to speed up creative timelines and delivery.

 

    • Configurability: Boost user adoption by easily configuring the system to match user needs, and easily manage or evolve metadata structures that automatically apply across the platform, all without the need for IT.

 

Investing In the Future

This new round of investment is validation of our vision for the future of DAM, and the needs of enterprise brands in this evolving world of digital media. As a DAM-only vendor, the entirety of the investment will be used to drive innovation in our platform and success for our customers.

To learn more about our technology and why we’re the DAM for the future, click here.

You can read more about the recent round of investment here.

Simple Steps for a Successful DAM Migration

By Blog, dam-manager, User Adoption

Digital asset management (DAM) technology has come a long way over the last few years, yet many stick to legacy platforms with less functionality, just because it’s too much hassle to make the switch.

The truth is, buyers today are consuming content in new ways, and at a scale we haven’t really seen before. The top brands are those who successfully meet these buyers on their channel of choice, with the content they’re looking for, when they want it… but achieving this is no easy feat.

It takes incredible productivity to output that much content so quickly, the right tools to optimize each asset by the channel it’s going to, the ability to find those assets when you need them, and access to data and insights to know what content those buyers want in the first place.

In other words, it takes a modern DAM!

Now, let’s skip the part where fear is holding us back from migrating to a new DAM – whether that means leaving an existing DAM or some other storage solution like Google Drive – and instead focus on what steps you can take to make the migration as easy as possible when you decide to move forward.

Preparing Your Migration

Take inventory

Yep, this is the obvious first place to start. You’ve chosen your new DAM and it’s time to plan for the migration, so you first need to know exactly what assets are making the move.

Before you create a giant spreadsheet with all your content listed on it, begin by reviewing any and all existing content/asset-related policies. For example, you may have a retention policy that dictates how long you need to store content (popular amongst highly-regulated industries). These types of policies give you important information about what assets need to move, and where they need to go.

Next you’ll want to gather the content. Some things you’ll want to take note of include:

  • What type of content is it? – produced in-house, contracted through agencies, licensed, stock, etc.
  • Is there a standard file naming convention we need to follow in the new DAM?
  • What kind of existing metadata do I have for these assets?
  • What asset types and sizes are they?

The note about metadata is important, and here’s a pro-tip: Migration is not only about moving the physical files, it’s also about moving the metadata attached to them. At this stage, you’re gathering that metadata so that on the receiving end of all this content you can organize your files, and users can still find the assets they need.

Failing to map metadata at this stage can lead to mass confusion before the end of the process, which in turn impacts both the quality of the migration and DAM implementation, as well as the timeline to get everything done.

This is also the time to make any changes to your metadata structures before making the move.

Many DAM implementations fail because users don’t want to use the new system. We’ve built a toolkit to help you manage the change, drive user adoption, and ultimately have DAM success.

Download the toolkit

Prioritizing assets

By now you’ve compiled a giant list of assets you want to migrate over, but here’s a reality check: migrating content doesn’t happen overnight. It can take time depending on the volume of content you want to move over, and how well you’ve organized everything in the first step.

With that in mind, it’s a good idea to prioritize the content you want to move over. Some brands will choose to move any currently live content, or content needed for campaigns, as a starting point. Anything moving over that isn’t currently active in the market, or archives, gets deprioritized. Ultimately it’s up to you and your team how you want to prioritize content migration.

When it gets underway, this prioritization will allow users to be in the DAM right away, with access to the content that you feel is more important to them.

What is content migration lag?

Creative teams never stop making new content. However, because migrating from an old DAM or storage solution to a new platform can take time – often content uploads happen in batches – often the existing solution is still used during the migration. This means newly created content gets put in the older system and has to be moved over as well, creating ‘lag’ in getting these new assets into the DAM.

The overall DAM implementation plan needs to account for this. The new platform should be up and running as fast as possible, otherwise the backlog of new content that has yet to be put into the DAM extends the timeline for migration, which in turn can extend the backlog, creating a continuous cycle that severely threatens implementation timelines and deliverables.

Migration planning

As part of your new DAM implementation, you need to create a migration plan. This step will save you hours of stress and worry over timelines if you just have a good plan in place. Your migration plan should take into account:

  • How much content you’re moving over
  • When you can start moving assets over (what point of the implementation is the system ready to ingest  content)
  • The state of metadata and overall content organization
  • How many batches of content need to be migrated to the new DAM
  • Any predicted content migration lag that should be accounted for in the timeline.

With all of these in mind, your plan should provide clear dates for key milestones in the migration, including when the DAM can start accepting content all the way to the final migration. Sticking to the plan lets you better manage your resources, and the expectations of your stakeholders – who ideally have all agreed to the timelines presented.

Content staging

Most DAMs will have some sort of staging environment where content can be moved to while it awaits its migration.

Whether you’re managing this internally, or you have a migrations team helping you, content will be taken from the staging area and moved into the new DAM. That means at this stage, you’re essentially getting everything queued up to migrate, based on the structure and priorities you’ve set in previous stages.

Once this is done, we can start moving content.

Beginning the Migration

Confirm metadata configurations in the new DAM

As assets start moving into the DAM you want to make sure the metadata configuration was done right. Refer back to your original content audit where you included the metadata, and make sure it’s all carrying over the way you intended it.

You need to validate this now. Waiting can mean users catching the problem post-DAM launch, which is catastrophic for user adoption as it erodes their trust in the system. Maybe as damaging is the amount of work it could take to reapply new metadata structures to all of your content in the DAM if you miss it early.

Now, some DAMs like Tenovos actually make it pretty easy to adjust your metadata structures, but not all platforms have the same functionality. Regardless of which type of DAM you’re migrating to and its functionality, this is a best practice you don’t want to skip.

Confirm your timelines & set up checkpoints

In the preparation phase of the migration you outlined how long you thought the migration was going to take. Now that everything is underway, it’s time to validate that plan. 

Are any adjustments needed? Do you have the right resources, and did you give yourself enough, or too much, time to get the job done? 

To help you identify where you stand in the migration, refer back to your migration plan and establish specific checkpoints in the process – for example, create a checkpoint after the first batch of content has been uploaded. Are you on schedule so far? Is there anything that needs to be changed leading into the next batch of uploads?

Do this throughout the entire migration process to help you stay on top of everything and ensure it’s moving smoothly. The earlier you can identify issues in the timeline, the sooner you can correct them to mitigate the risk of missed deadlines.

Completing your Migration

You’ve followed all the steps above, and guess what? The migration is over!

Ideally you’ve hit your timelines and it’s time to cutover to the new system completely. This can be a scary process, but it’s important not to linger too long with multiple systems or you risk content lag as we discussed earlier in this blog.

If you’ve done the job well, your users will be able to dive into the new DAM and access all their content with ease, while leveraging the new and improved features you bought the platform for.

Too often, sub-par enterprise tech vendors (DAM included) will actually count on the difficulty of moving between systems as a way of helping retain customers, making it easier for them to overlook customer feedback on the platform.

In contrast, top vendors provide migration support to overcome perceived barriers to swapping vendors. By following the steps outlined above, and choosing a DAM vendor with the expertise and resources to support you through the migration, you can benefit from new, modern and innovative DAM technology in no time at all.

To read more about what you should expect from your modern digital asset management platform, download our vendor guide.

Brown-Forman: 5 DAM Tips from a Leading Global CPG Brand

By Blog, Customers, multi-personas

You may not recognize the name Brown-Forman off the top of your head, but you certainly know their brands – Jack Daniels, Woodford Reserve, Old Forester, and Finlandia, just to name a few.

This is a global CPG company that owns and operates some of the most recognized fine spirit and wine brands in the world, and you’ve no doubt been exposed to their content – either at local establishments or through various digital channels.

What you might not know is that Brown-Forman utilizes the Tenovos digital asset management (DAM) platform to manage their creative asset lifecycle across the organization and all of their brands, from ideation and collaboration all the way to distribution of content.

We recently hosted a webinar where the company shared how they’re using DAM as the central technology in their ecosystem to manage digital assets. We thought it would be interesting to share some key takeaways from the webinar, which you can also watch in its entirety here.

Let’s dive in!

DAM Should Enable Teams to Create and Deliver Great Content

As a global company, Brown-Forman has recognized the opportunity to both leverage content from their global brand team across the entire organization, as well as identifying content from local brand and marketing teams that can be impactful in other markets.

But how do they achieve it?

The answer is through their DAM. Brown-Forman uses Tenovos as their single source of truth for digital assets. And while some organizations may be tempted to set up the DAM to serve their global teams only, Brown-Forman has decided to address the needs of all their stakeholders within the platform.

What this means is that both the global, and local brand and marketing teams, have access to the platform. It allows them to engage with their various partners – retailers and agencies for example – and share assets through the DAM.

Then, if the global team has created something for the entire organization to leverage it can be found easily. And likewise, should a local team create something of wider value to the organization, it can be surfaced and circulated with ease.

At the end of the day, Brown-Forman says the entire goal of this configuration is to “capture the amazing creative we’re generating across the organization.”

Creating Content with Purpose

Brown-Forman manages hundreds of thousands of assets in their DAM, and a big part of their program is monitoring how those assets are being used.

They track things like download rates, reuse rates, usage, and uploads, looking to understand what content is being used, what isn’t, and why.

The idea here is straightforward: while the need for content across their company is growing, it’s important that content doesn’t get created just for the sake of it. Content must have a purpose, and so they’re always looking in their library to ensure the right content is being created by their teams.

Some ways they’ll gain that insight is by looking into how people search for content, and what they find as a result. It sounds like an exercise in metadata and search optimization (and it is that), but it also provides insight into what content is needed, and maybe what isn’t.

This allows them to focus their asset creation on the content people need, based on the data they monitor in the system. It helps them improve content findability, while also curating assets for their users that is truly relevant to them.

KEY INSIGHT: If you want people to reuse content, then you have to give them access to reusable formats.

It’s not realistic to expect an asset to be reused exactly how it was originally created. The Brown-Forman team allows raw assets and formats to be included in the DAM to encourage users to reuse assets and adapt them to their needs. 

Digital Asset Management Is Central in the Tech Ecosystem

One thing Brown-Forman has realized is that they’re always moving assets and data between systems. It’s constant.

You can think of it in terms of creative workflows, for example, where a final asset is in the DAM but needs to be adapted for a new campaign. Now it moves to a different system to be revised, and re-uploaded back into the DAM.

But for enterprise tech ecosystems, it’s often more than just one system. You may have technologies where you store data like a product information management (PIM) system, or a platform to help you optimize content. The list goes on.

Brown-Forman created a map of every technology that touches an asset throughout its lifecycle. Their approach is to look at the entire tech landscape as one connected ecosystem, rather than individual siloed platforms.

Why is that?

Before having this integrated approach, Brown-Forman brand managers never had clear insight into how their content was performing. Disconnected systems left too many gaps, and as assets moved through their lifecycle, the brand managers lost sight of how it was being used, where, and how it performed.

While their journey towards this interconnected ecosystem is not complete yet, the Brown-Forman team strives for an integrated, cyclical tech stack where assets are created, and seamlessly move between systems for optimization, reuse and redistribution, in a continuous cycle.

Watch the full webinar to hear directly from Brown-Forman how they’re leverage digital asset management to drive content performance.

Watch the webinar

Obsessing Over Metadata and Performance

During the webinar, participants were asked how they used their DAM to gather content insights today. The results were interesting.

Just over half of the participants said they tracked basic content usage data in the DAM. No one said they leveraged the DAM to track performance, and nearly a quarter said they didn’t track anything in the system at all.

It’s not uncommon to hear performance data is not a core focus for some brands, because it’s hard to accurately measure. However, Brown-Forman has found a way to leverage digital asset management for insights they can use to understand and optimize content performance across all their brands.

The secret for them is linking their taxonomy structure with performance data. Their goal is to be able to look at any asset and know where it ran, how much was invested in it, who saw the content, where it performed best, and so on.

From there, the insights they gather are passed on to their creative and brand teams, who use them to inform future creative and media decisions. In turn, this leads to performance improvements across Brown-Forman’s digital channels.

It’s worth mentioning this is enabled by the interconnected tech ecosystem they’ve built, as referred to in the previous section.

Driving Performance with Digital Asset Management

While the Brown-Forman use case for DAM may seem advanced for some companies, they’ve been able to create a tech ecosystem that drives performance by correctly identifying digital asset management as its central technology, and prioritizing the right integrations around it.

By connecting all systems that touch an asset through its lifecycle, and the clever use of taxonomy to help identify and measure performance, they’re able to successfully gather insights into their content that empowers teams to do more of the content that’s working, optimize what isn’t, distribute it across their global brands, and reuse impactful assets for maximum return on their creative investment.

To learn more about how Brown-Forman is driving content performance through DAM, watch the webinar here.

Integrate DAM and PIM

5 Reasons You Should Integrate a DAM With Your PIM

By Blog, dam-manager, Integrations

If you’re a company that makes or sells any kind of product – and yes, we include things like movies and other entertainment in that bucket – then no doubt you have a ton of data and important information about that product that needs to be managed.

And, it’s likely you achieve that with a product information management (PIM) system.

Your PIM platform should be a system of record for all your product information – things like descriptions of the product, specifications, unique ID numbers like SKUs, and hundreds or sometimes thousands of other product attributes. But what a PIM doesn’t do is host any sort of visual or other digital asset that’s been created for that product.

You do that in a digital asset management (DAM) platform, like Tenovos.

Some platforms will let you push assets from the DAM into the PIM, but you can unlock so much more value with a bi-directional integration between the two systems.

Before we dive in further on why this is so valuable, let’s start by just explaining what a bi-directional integration actually means.

PIM & DAM Integrations

The value of linking these two technologies is the ability to leverage their full functionalities while seamlessly sharing data and assets back and forth between them. A bi-directional integration between DAM and PIM will:

  • Allow the PIM to be the system of record for all product data
  • Give the DAM read-only access to product data from the PIM
  • Allow the DAM to automatically pull in product data and attach it to assets
  • Enable the DAM to push assets and asset data back into the PIM

At its core, the PIM and DAM integration is about enriching both systems with data from the other to enable greater efficiencies in terms of finding, managing and publishing product data and assets.

With that in mind, here are five reasons this integration should excite you.

DAM PIM Integration

1. Improved Content Discoverability in the DAM

In digital asset management, we’re always thinking about ways to make it easier for users to find the content they need. That takes the shape of new metadata structures, AI-tagging, keyword strategies, and so on.

But for the most part, these metadata fields in DAMs describe the asset and its subject, and not the product specifically.

Instead, shouldn’t you be able to just search for a SKU number in the DAM and pull up all assets related to that product? Well, yes! From there, you can use either more product information like specifications or dimensions, or use the DAM’s metadata tags and keywords, like colors or subjects, to filter and find the right content.

The ability to quickly and easily find content in the DAM using product information is an incredible time-saver for users, and has other productivity and ROI benefits, including…

2. Enabling Content Reuse

One of the added benefits of making it easier to find content in the DAM is also making it easier to find content you want to reuse. Brands spend millions creating content to help them sell their products. But sometimes, if content isn’t tagged the right way or is missing certain keywords, it can get lost in the DAM. That means companies are spending even more money to recreate assets they already have in the system (this actually happens way more than most companies like to admit).

Automatically pulling product data, and applying it to assets in the DAM, helps ensure content doesn’t get lost. It makes it easy for users to find assets they can reuse, thus increasing the value of each one of those assets while reducing content spending overall.

Choose a DAM vendor that helps you integrate your tech stack.

Read the Vendor Guide

3. Streamline Content Distribution

Listing a product on an ecommerce website isn’t always as easy as it should be. You’re often copying data from your PIM into a CMS or eComm platform, manually downloading an asset from the DAM and re-uploading it to the site, and then configuring a product detail page to make the listing just right.

Well, scratch that. When you integrate your PIM with your DAM, you allow the product information to automatically be attached to your content. And, depending on the DAM you have, you can then package the asset and product data together, and publish it directly to your eComm platform or website directly.

You might say that the productivity gains for just one asset isn’t worth the effort of integrating the systems, but for large product and retail companies that manage this at large scale, the benefits compound into a huge time and money saver.

4. Data Consistency

Enterprise brands have incredible amounts of data to manage, and keeping it all organized is essential to doing so successfully. Each new system that operates in a silo increases the risk that data standards aren’t followed – things like taxonomy, tags, and other sorts of metadata. At the scale with which these companies are creating content, it can quickly devolve into data chaos.

Bringing the DAM and PIM together is just another way to ensure the way you represent a product in your system of record – the PIM – is consistent across other systems like your DAM. It’s what allows data to be shared between technologies, and enables in-depth reporting and transparency that would otherwise be impossible to manage in any sort of automated way.

Brands spend significant time and resources undertaking data cleanup projects and realigning their systems. Integrating the DAM and PIM is one preventative measure that pays off in terms of processes and data transparency.

5. PIM Alternative

As members of the MACH Alliance, Tenovos is committed to being integration-first. We believe organizations are best served purchasing best-in-class technologies, and not tools that try to do everything.

That being said, there are cases where brands may not be ready to invest in two technologies. For that reason, a DAM with a built-in bi-directional PIM integration framework – like Tenovos – can be configured to also manage product information and act as a functional, though ultimately limited, solution until a true PIM can be purchased.

In doing so, you can still benefit from combining the DAM’s assets with product information, albeit when you’re able to purchase a PIM and connect the systems instead, we feel that’s the best approach to maximize the true capabilities and values of both systems.

Integrating Your DAM with Your PIM

Modern DAM platforms like Tenovos are designed to connect to other enterprise technologies in order to facilitate this two-way communication of data. Not all DAMs are created equal, and so it’s important to investigate with your vendor, or potential vendor if you’re in the evaluation phase of a new DAM purchase, their ability to connect to your PIM and enable the aforementioned functionalities and benefits of the integration.

To learn more about how to choose a vendor capable of helping you with integrations like these, click here to read our vendor evaluation guide.