Kyle Hufford discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

• How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
• How do you use the process of digital asset management before having a DAM system in place?
• What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Kyle Hufford.
Kyle, how are you?

Kyle Hufford: [0:09] I’m doing great today.
Henrik: [0:11] Kyle, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Kyle: [0:13] I’ve been working with Quiksilver for a little over seven years now.
We’ve been working out our Digital Asset Management objective. It’s gone
through an interesting phase. I went from being the sole individual person responsible
for Digital Asset Management to actually building bit of a team. [0:30]
We’ve been building our systems. We’ve been through a phase of having a
fully functioning system to paring back and re-evaluating what we have. We’re in
the process of rolling out a new system, at this time, to manage all our product
images, our lifestyle images, and everything that goes around supporting our
business and sales of our products.
Henrik: [0:50] Kyle, how do you use the process of Digital Asset Management
before having a DAM system in place?
Kyle: [0:57] That’s a really good question. Initially, we had purchased an enterprise
level system, and we had rolled it out not understanding what Digital
Asset Management really was. It went along and worked great for about two to
three years. Then we actually pared back and removed the asset management
system from our workflow and identified a proper workflow before reintroducing
our asset management system. [1:26] The biggest challenge I think that
people have is, they think, “I’ll have a Digital Asset Management system. That’s
going to solve all my problems.” That’s not true. If you have a Digital Asset
Management system, you still have to have a proper workflow or process in
place in order to solve your problem.
[1:43] If your process is broken, Digital Asset Management is not going to solve
your process. Our biggest challenge is, we removed Digital Asset Management
from the process and identified where in the process we were having challenges,
and identified where we could actually optimize that process.
[1:59] Once that process was optimized, we then now are reintroducing the
Digital Asset Management system to individual workflows one piece at a time
and identifying that this is the proper workflow, this is where the assets need to
go, and this is how the images or assets need to be distributed.
Henrik: [2:15] If I understand correctly, you started with people. Then you developed
the process of Digital Asset Management, and then you introduced the
technology. Fair?
Kyle: [2:25] Yes, exactly. We learned over time. It wasn’t like that was our first
approach. Our first approach was, “Let’s throw an enterprise Digital Asset
Management system at it.” That didn’t work. We identified that there were challenges
in pieces, in broken processes, in workarounds, and then we pared back.
[2:44] As you said, we started with people and understood what the process was
and identified how we could better that process. Once we identified a proper
process, we could then support that with the proper technologies.
Henrik: [2:56] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Kyle: [3:00] I think the biggest part of being a Digital Asset Manager is it’s a
thankless job. But at the end of the day, when you’re able to go in and search
for something and find something and be able to have a repository where the
images are, that’s the biggest feeling of success. [3:18] I think being a DAM professional
is more than being a Digital Asset Manager. From my perspective, it’s
about the process and the workflow and identifying better ways to do business.
It’s not just knowing how to tag an image or tagging 100 images a day or 1,000
images a day. It’s being able to work in an organization where you can identify
challenges in the process, and you can work with the right individuals to fix that
process so that the assets that you’re producing are better assets and more
accurate assets.
Henrik: [3:50] Couldn’t agree more. Thanks, Kyle. [3:53] For more on Digital
Asset Management, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast
is available on Audioboom, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any
comments or questions, feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com.
Thanks again.

Related Articles

• Another DAM podcast interview with Karuana Gatimu (anotherdampodcast.com)
• Another DAM podcast interview with Romney Whitehead (anotherdampodcast.com)

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