Ron Richardson discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

• How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
• How does an energy company use a DAM?
• What were the drivers for your organization to get a DAM?
• What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Ron Richardson.
Ron, how are you?
Ron Richardson: [0:10] Doing great. It’s nice and warm here in the Bay Area.
Henrik: [0:14] Excellent. Ron, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Ron: [0:18] I’m a Digital Asset Management Analyst for the Chevron
Corporation, and I have a specific focus on the metadata used in the application
we have.
Henrik: [0:28] Great. How does an energy company use Digital Asset
Management?
Ron: [0:32] Well, we have over 60,000 employees and as you can imagine there
are a lot of images out there, everything from oil rigs to stock images of offices,
and then we’ve got a lot of design pieces and a lot of presentations. So there is
a great need throughout the corporation for images to be used in this collateral
in presentations, and then also there’s a need from specific groups to store it,
manage it, and keep track of it within the application.
Henrik: [1:07] Great. What were the drivers for your organization to get a DAM?
Ron: [1:12] Of course, there’s the attempt to get a good return on their investment
on images that were taken by vendors for Chevron and then also for the
stock images that we were licensing. But a larger image is really around compliance.
[1:29] The obvious is retention, but also risk management. We were trying
to educate people on using images properly, not taking images from the web,
not cannibalizing old presentations where they don’t know the rights.
[1:45] Within our application, we can manage the rights. We have a pretty sophisticated
metadata set up where we can specify the type of rights that each
image has and put in approvals for images, if there are conditions related to
them. Really, trying to mitigate risk and liability so that people aren’t violating
copyright by using images improperly.
Henrik: [2:11] Excellent. What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals
and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Ron: [2:20] I can tell you what worked for us in implementing the application for
our company. That’s really to start with core groups within your own company
and build a case. We started with five groups that had an interest in Digital
Asset Management and really built on the success there and then opened it up
to the rest of the company. It’s really scaled well that way. [2:48] Findability is
always an issue for us, for anyone I think, because people expect you to have
Google installed or a Google-like return for results, and that’s just not the way it
is with images. So we have to look at who is tagging, and how they are tagging.
You expect SMEs …
Henrik: [3:12] SMEs, you mean subject matter experts?
Ron: [3:14] Exactly. To really be able to tag images properly, so that they’re
findable, but you don’t always find that is the case. So providing them with
tools so that they can put the right tags, put the right keywords to make things
findable, If that doesn’t work then to have an elite A-Team of librarians there
that can properly tag images and put the descriptions in, and make them really
findable for you. [3:42] Then finally metrics is something that is always going to
be important. We want people to just see the logic of having a good Digital
Asset Management application within a company, but we know that’s not the
way business works.
[3:59] You have to have good metrics, so that the business people, the finance
people, understand what you are trying to accomplish here and how successful
you’re being. So numbers around imagery use, downloads, adoption, the
amount of uploads, they’re going into the application.
[4:17] We’ve estimated that we’ve saved the company on reuse of images alone
about $2 million. So we consider that to be very successful for an application
that’s been around for just over three years. So we’re pretty happy about that.
[4:38] Finally the key is just getting the application in front of the users that need
it most. For us, we are looking at obviously training groups, admins, who might
put together presentations, and then design teams within the company who
would have a use for images and other collateral that we could provide to them.
[5:03] So I think that’s a good way to make it useful.
Henrik: [5:08] Excellent. Well, thank you, Ron.
Ron: [5:11] Thank you.
Henrik: [5:12] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
anotherdamblog.com. Thanks again.

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