In the world of digital asset management (DAM), the journey of implementation can often feel overwhelming. However, with the right approach and mindset, organizations can navigate this process smoothly. This guide explores key insights on managing expectations during a DAM implementation, drawing parallels to the experience of moving into a new home.

Understanding the Need for a DAM System

Every successful DAM implementation begins with understanding the reasons behind the need for a new system. Organizations often face several pain points, leading them to seek a more efficient solution. Here are some common reasons organizations consider moving to or adopting a new DAM system:

• Centralization of Assets: Staff frequently struggle to find images or videos scattered across various platforms like Dropbox, Google Drive, and email. A DAM system centralizes these assets, making retrieval easier and faster.
• Control Over Asset Usage: Misuse of assets is a significant concern. Organizations often find their images on social media or websites without proper permissions. A DAM system helps establish control over how assets are used.
• Unlocking Hidden Treasures: Many organizations have digitized assets that remain underutilized. A DAM system can help make these assets available for broader use.

Deciding What You Need

Once the reasons for adopting a DAM system are clear, the next step is to define what is needed from the system. Organizations should identify three to five key differentiators or deal breakers when evaluating potential DAM solutions. Here are some considerations:

• Budget: Always a crucial factor, understanding the financial implications will guide your decisions.
• Technical Requirements: Determine whether you need on-premise hosting or prefer a vendor-hosted solution.
• Format Compatibility: Ensure the DAM can handle specific file formats essential for your operations, such as InDesign files.
• Functional Needs: Identify critical functionalities, like full-text search capabilities, that the system must support.

Planning and Scoping Your MVP

Creating a clear plan and defining a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) are essential steps before implementing a DAM system. Unlike moving into a new home, where the process is somewhat familiar, DAM implementation can be murky for many organizations. Here are common pitfalls to avoid:

• Resource Allocation: Organizations often underestimate the internal resources required for implementation, sometimes needing one person to focus full-time on the migration process.
• Major Migration Planning: If moving a large volume of data, thorough planning is critical. Transferring data from multiple systems can be complex and time-consuming.
• Over-Ambition: Organizations sometimes aim to do too much before going live. Focusing on core features that work well is essential to avoid extending timelines unnecessarily.

Maintenance, Enhancements, and Repairs

Just like maintaining a house, a DAM system requires ongoing care. After implementation, it’s essential to ensure that the system remains organized and functional. Here are tips for effective maintenance:

• Daily Maintenance: Regularly check and tidy up the system to ensure it operates efficiently.
• Ownership and Oversight: Assign someone to oversee the DAM, particularly in the initial months after launch, to address any issues promptly.
• Resource Allocation: As the DAM system grows in popularity, be prepared to allocate more resources to maintain its success.

Don’t Go It Alone

Implementing a DAM system is not a solitary journey. Just as you would seek help from a realtor or lawyer when buying a home, organizations should consider enlisting experts in DAM. Here’s how to find the right support:

• Consultants and Specialists: Engage professionals who have experience in DAM implementation to guide your organization through the process.
• Communication Teams: If you aim to promote the DAM widely, consider involving internal communications teams to help socialize and promote the system.
• Expert Organizations: Partner with firms that have expertise in metadata, taxonomy, and asset management best practices to ensure a smoother implementation.

Conclusion

Implementing a DAM system can be a transformative experience for organizations, but it requires careful planning, resource allocation, and ongoing maintenance. By understanding the reasons for adoption, defining needs, and seeking expert help, organizations can navigate the complexities of DAM implementation successfully. Remember, just like moving into a new home, the journey may have its challenges, but the rewards are well worth the effort.

For further insights and resources on DAM implementation, consider exploring specialized DAM consultants and their offerings.

Transcript

Chris Lacinak: 00:00

Hello, welcome to DAM Right.

I’m your host, Chris Lacinak. Today, we’re gonna try something a little different.

We’re gonna do a short episode

that’s about 10 minutes instead of 60 to 90,

and I’d love to know how you feel about it.

Let me know at [email protected].

Today’s episode is an interview with Kara Van Malssen,

who you know if you’re a listener of the show.

If not, I’ll say quickly that Kara is a Partner

and Managing Director at AVP,

a thought leader in the DAMosphere,

and an all-around wonderful person.

The interviewer is former AVP Senior Consultant,

Kerri Willette.

Since doing this interview, Kerri has moved on

and is now doing awesome work, no doubt, at Dropbox.

Kerri is a super talent and pure delight of a human being.

Since we’re keeping this short,

I’ll just quickly say that I really love

how Kara makes the analogy between DAM implementation

and moving into a new home.

She grounds the topic of DAM implementation,

making it both fun and relatable.

I know you’ll enjoy it.

Speaking of which, please go like, follow, or subscribe

on your platform of choice.

And remember, DAM right,

because it’s too important to get wrong.

Kerri Willette: 01:07

We’re here today, we’re gonna talk about

some things that were inspired by the article that you wrote for Henry Stewart’s publication

in the Journal of Digital Media Management,

I think it was volume seven.

That article subsequently evolved into a blog post

that I know you wrote after relocating.

And the blog post is called “Manage Your DAM Expectations.

Or How Getting a DAM is Like Buying and Owning a Home.”

All right, so tip one,

there’s usually a good reason for doing it.

Kara Van Malssen: 01:39

Yeah, so we had an opportunity in another city,

my husband got a job offer. So within five months, we had sold a house,

moved, bought a house, and moved again.

It was quite a lot.

Kerri Willette: 01:52

So what are some of the good reasons

that you’ve heard from organizations who are looking to move to or switch

or get a new DAM system for the first time?

Kara Van Malssen: 02:02

Yeah, so it usually falls into a few different buckets.

Like a lot of times it’s around pain points that they’re having.

So it might be things like,

staff’s trying to find images or videos

and they’re rummaging through Dropbox and Google Drive

and email and hard drives and who knows where,

trying to find what they’re looking for.

And it takes forever and they don’t find it.

So centralizing the assets is one good reason.

Another one we see a lot is maybe misuse of assets

where you’ve got people putting images on social media

that they shouldn’t be using or on the website

that they don’t have permission to use for that purpose.

And so trying to kind of get some control

around the usage of the assets

is another reason we see a lot.

And then another reason might just be

to kind of open up like a new treasure trove of assets

that was previously sort of hidden.

Like maybe you digitized a whole bunch of stuff

and you wanna make that available.

So that’s another good reason.

Kerri Willette: 03:06

So the next tip in your post,

you have to decide what you will need. How do you feel like organizations can answer the question

of what they need in a DAM system?

Kara Van Malssen: 03:16

You’ve gotta figure out what those three to five

or four to six like key differentiator things are or the real deal breakers.

And one of those is always gonna be the budget,

but the other things are unique to you.

Maybe it’s technical things

like you need to host this on-premise

or you need to host it in your own

Amazon Web Services account

or maybe you want the vendor to host it for you.

So those might be some of those considerations

or maybe they’re things like format requirements.

Like you want specific support for InDesign files,

for instance.

Or maybe it’s functional things

like you really need full-text search of documents.

Like that’s critical.

So you don’t wanna look at systems that don’t have that.

It’s like that’s one of your deal breakers,

things like that.

So you’ve gotta kind of figure out what are those top fives

that you really need to have in the DAM

and you can use that to sort of narrow down

the candidate solutions.

And then when you start to evaluate those,

you can really look for the kind of nuance differences

between them and how they actually help you achieve

the goals that you have in mind.

Kerri Willette: 04:28

Yeah, that makes sense.

So tip three in your blog post talks about making a plan and clearly scoping what you call a minimum viable product

or MVP version of what you need.

And you would do that before implementing a DAMS.

We all know that moving requires a lot of planning,

but what are some areas you’ve seen organizations

that you’ve worked with most often not plan well

for implementing a DAM?

Kara Van Malssen: 04:57

There’s a big difference here between moving a house

and moving into a DAM. You kind of know what’s involved

in the moving house situation.

You know, it’s gonna be like a lot of packing

and organizing and then unpacking and organizing.

But with a DAM, a lot of people

haven’t really done this before.

So it’s a little murky,

like what are the things you need to do?

So what we see is, I think, three things that people,

where they might go wrong here.

So one is they’re not allocating enough resources internally

to the implementation and the migration.

And, you know, it’s probably gonna be like

one person’s full-time job for a while.

So just something to keep in mind.

Another is just not really planning

around major migrations.

If you’ve got a lot of data to move

from one system to another,

or from maybe ten systems

or ten different data stores to another,

it’s just, that’s a lot of work.

It takes time and planning.

And then the last one is kind of getting overly ambitious,

maybe not realizing that you’re doing it,

but, you know, trying to kind of do everything

before you go live.

And maybe that’s including like custom integrations,

maybe custom development on top of the

kind of out of the box features of the system.

It’s like if you got a contractor

and you decided to gut renovate the house

before you moved in,

you better expect that’s gonna take you some time.

So you’re not getting in that house really anytime soon.

But this is an organization,

there’s politics, there’s budget,

there’s like, you know, expectations.

And if the thing drags on for too long

before it gets launched,

that can really damage the reputation of this program.

It can kind of lose political will.

So it’s important to kind of scope something

that’s realistic to just get it off the ground

and get those core features working really well.

So things like just making the search work,

the browse work,

making sure the assets are well organized,

making sure they’re well described and tagged,

that people can easily access them when they should

and they can’t access them when they shouldn’t.

So roll out those key features,

get it in the hands of people

who are gonna give you really good feedback

and gonna start with it.

And then you can get those additional things over time.

Kerri Willette: 07:18

Great.

Tip four, maintenance, enhancement and repairs come with the territory.

So Kara, I happen to know

that you recently discovered a gas leak in your new house.

And luckily you were able to get it repaired really quickly,

but it definitely, I think, brings home your point

about allocating resources for future maintenance

and how that relates to home buying for sure.

So how does that relate to your experiences

helping organizations deploy their DAM systems?

Kara Van Malssen: 07:49

Yeah, it’s like with the house,

you’ve kind of got a gamut of kind of home maintenance and repair and improvement that you’re doing.

Like you’re gonna be cleaning every day,

tidying it up, cleaning the kitchen.

You’re gonna be kind of repairing those things that break

and then you’re gonna be making improvements over time.

It’s really the same thing with a DAM.

You’ve gotta have kind of somebody in there

who’s just making sure everything’s tidy and neat

so that the thing continues to work well for the users.

You’d have to make sure that there’s some ownership

and oversight of the DAM from the very beginning,

especially in those critical,

like first few months after launch.

And then over time,

you might find you even need more resources there

than you thought you would

because maybe it becomes really successful and that’s great,

but you’re probably gonna need to throw a bit more manpower

at it to make sure it continues to succeed.

Kerri Willette: 08:43

All right.

Don’t go it alone. What kind of experts, when it comes to DAM systems,

what kind of expert help might be useful?

Kara Van Malssen: 08:53

Yeah, so it’s like, if you’re getting a house,

you know, you’re probably gonna get a realtor, you’re gonna need a lawyer to help with the closing.

You’re gonna probably have a home inspector

come and check it out before you buy it.

Some of those things you might take on yourself,

but sometimes you’re gonna work with others.

And it’s sort of the same thing with a DAM.

A lot of people, I think,

just figure like, I can do this, let’s do this.

But if you’ve never had any experience implementing a DAM

and you kind of don’t know what that path forward looks like

or what the expectations might be

or where you might run into problems,

it can be really hard.

And if you are doing things like in a custom integration

with other applications,

you might need people like developers.

You know, if you’re really gonna be promoting this widely,

if you have a lot of users, you’re trying to get to adopt it

you might need like communications folks

maybe within your organization

to kind of help socialize it and promote it.

And also, you know, organizations like ours, AVP.

So we are experienced in this.

We have a lot of expertise in things like metadata,

taxonomy, search and navigation,

asset organization, management, best practices

and things like that.

So we’ve been down this road before.

So we can also help you kind of manage your expectations

a little bit and try to get to as much

of a painless launch as possible.

Kerri Willette: 10:14

Well, thanks, Kara.

This was really great. It was nice talking to you.

Kara Van Malssen: 10:18

Yeah, thanks, Kerri.

Appreciate it. (upbeat music)