Bjorn Pave discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

• How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
• How does an organization focused on cosmetics use Digital Asset Management?
• What are the biggest challenges and successes the organization has with DAM?
• 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 Bjorn Pave. Bjorn,
how are you?
Bjorn Pave: [0:11] I’m good. How are you, Henrik?
Henrik: [0:12] Good. Bjorn, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Bjorn: [0:16] For us and for me, it began as a solution to a business problem.
We were looking how to distribute our assets globally. From there, it’s turned
into more of an interest for me, specifically, and some building of proficiency
in that area. It’s common for IT to be involved in Digital Asset Management and at Benefit,
our IT department plays a pretty close partnering role with the
business, so for us it was just to drive this project but also to fit this project in
with our business. [0:48] As for the basics, we are allied with our third phase of
this project. I’ve been less of a project manager these days. It’s become more
operational. I’ve become more of a strategic kind of partner with this project in
helping to progress and develop it and bring it to the next level.
Henrik: [1:05] How does an organization focused on cosmetics use Digital Asset
Management?
Bjorn: [1:10] Pretty much every company needs to be using some kind of DAM.
I mean, especially the ones that operate globally. Digital assets are everywhere.
Really, I don’t see much difference from a car company needing to distribute
assets than us, a cosmetics firm. [1:25] It’s about efficiency, when it comes down
to it. That said, we need to get our marketing materials out quickly to our marketing
teams around the world. We’re constantly under deadlines to do that.
We’re launching products and going to market quickly with products.
[1:42] To allow us to stay agile and efficient, we need some kind of thorough
system like that not as many companies would. Also, it goes without saying
that allowing those markets to find an easy way to search for those assets. Not
only the new ones to be able to find efficient the old material that they need to
find quickly.
[2:03] I’ll give you a quick example one of the big issues that we ran into for that
was just how to get these assets to the markets when they couldn’t find them
locally. They would send an email to San Francisco or go to our headquarters
and we would get the email from Taiwan, let’s say, the next day.
[2:22] We would reply to that email. Then, the next day after that, they would
have a blank or some method of gathering that asset. We’ve lost valuable time
there. Efficiency is just really important for us, in that sense, as well as most
companies.
Henrik: [2:38] What are the biggest challenges and successes the organization
has had with DAM?
Bjorn: [2:43] Which challenges that we’ve encountered? I’ll give you three main
ones that we came across. A big one was corporate buy in. I’ve seen their company
concerns. We’re owned by a larger firm that had a number of concerns.
Once we got it in place, it was managing expectations. Everybody wanted it.
People are clamoring to get to it. I’ll go back into those real briefly. [3:11] For the
corporate buy in, it was a challenge to get them to agree on spending money
outside of a budget cycle. We had a solution and we had problem to fix, but it
was nothing that we had planned far ahead. It came up that our current solution
wasn’t working, and we had a mandate from our CEO to go fix it.
[3:31] Getting the corporate buy in and getting that done and that leads into the
senior company concerns. We had to convince them that this was the right solution.
We were also faced with some other solutions that some of the other firms
in our group were using. That became quite a big sell project for our group.
[3:50] Managing the scope of it was key. We had a small pilot group that we
could roll out to. Now it’s turned into a much larger group. Now a lot of departments
are seeing an use for it. Managing those expectations is a challenge.
[4:06] As for our successes, I’m really pleased with the steering committee
packet we put together and the materials that they have at their disposal
through this project. Leveraging our vendor expertise was key. We partnered
with a great vendor. Cantor had professional services local to us, so it became
very easy for us to draw on those resources. They were a very close partner.
Their professional services team really helped us get to the next level with this.
[4:31] Finally for our successes, it was about celebrating the successes. We had
occasions to do so. The project came up during a global general managers’
meeting. All our global general managers were in San Francisco and complaining
about the lack of efficiency they were getting from our current solution,
which at the time was SharePoint. They wanted some other way of gathering
assets. That was the time that our CEO came to us.
[4:59] A year later we used that occasion to display what the solution was and
what we came up with. It was a great occasion to do so. Since then, we’ve had
other opportunities to tout our successes in that.
Henrik: [5:12] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Bjorn: [5:16] For me this goes back to a bit of what I talked about at
Createasphere this year and what I hoped to get across there was no road
map for how to get into this. What were some key areas that really helped bring
me up to speed and bring us up to speed? Well, there was the LinkedIn group
that’s out there. There is that Digital Asset Managers group on LinkedIn, which
I found was a great location for talent and resources. [5:40] Other ways would
be engaging in DAM communities, podcasts and blogs like yours, Henrik, and
conferences. Those are great ways to find expertise. Why not learn from the
best? Why not take the people who are best in the field and draw on their intelligence?
That’s what we did there.
[5:57] Like I was saying before, leveraging the vendor was really helpful. If you’re
in a position where you can get vendor referrals who you can go out and speak
to, DAM managers at other firms that are similar to yours maybe not exactly,
but similar that’s really a big help. That was a help for us.
[6:13] As for becoming a professional, learn the software. Learn what’s out there
as far as the software offerings. Taking some time and digging deep into those
offerings is helpful. Learning taxonomy and metadata. They all have the core
commonalities, each of the software packages. To learn those essentials is really
important to being a DAM manager.
Henrik: [6:38] Thanks, Bjorn. For more on this on other Digital Asset
Management topics, 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, please feel free to email me at
AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

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