How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does an organization focused automobile advertising use Digital Asset Management?
What are the biggest challenges and successes you have seen 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 Michelle Lowe.
[0:09] Michelle, how are you? Michelle Lowe: [0:10] Hi, Henrik, good. How are you? Henrik: [0:11] Good. Michelle, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Michelle: [0:15] I am the Digital Asset Manager in an automotive agency, and I
was introduced to the Digital Asset Management more than a decade ago when
we started producing digital assets and that created a need of storage for all
the photography, illustration, videos. Now, in the recent years, we started the
apps, too, the applications. At the beginning, we created a rudimentary digital
storage. We didn’t have anything. We called it a jukebox. That was based on the
[0:37] hard drives, DVDs and servers, which didn’t work very well with us.
But later on, we were able to acquire a Digital Asset Management system, and
our lives completely changed, became a lot easier.
[1:01] A couple of years ago, I moved to another agency that didn’t have any
type of storage system. They were in big need of a DAM. With my previous experience,
I was able to put in place a Digital Asset Management system, making
sure all the assets are easy to be accessed, the metadata is correct, the rights
and expiration dates are up to date. For legal matters, this is very important in
the advertising world.
[1:30] I am responsible for adjusting and processing all the agency’s assets and,
also, for delivering them to our clients’ central DAM system. They have one, too,
because they have many agencies they work with. They use all the assets such
as digital assets, from every other agency.
[1:51] Our agency’s digital asset system is a central repository where every art
director, or designer, or buyer, competitor even, account executives can access
the assets and use them for their project.
[2:05] DAM is a very flexible storage system, we have all kinds of files, APS, has
JPEG s in designs. We have them in all kinds, audio and video files, too. That
helps a lot. Henrik: [2:21] How does an organization focused on automobile advertising use
Digital Asset Management? Michelle: [2:26] Because our client operates globally, we must be efficient.
When it comes to digital assets, advertising now is a very fast paced environment
and projects have a quick turn around and having DAM systems helps immensely.
[2:41] We’re introducing a very large number of assets with our projects
but at the same time, for budget purposes, we have to share the assets with
other agencies that work for the same clients. To meet these needs, we deliver
to our client everything we create along with the metadata and they add them
to their central DAM system where the other agencies, around the world, have
access to. Henrik: [3:07] What are the biggest challenges and success that you’ve seen
with Digital Asset Management? Michelle: [3:11] Usually, adoption would be one challenge, and getting people
to know about Digital Asset Management system and accepting it and finally
using it. But since I have the system, I had to train and many times, I go one-onone
team members and it’s challenging. [3:30] Another challenge is the metadata
which is a very important part of any DAM system and everyone needs to
be involved in it, in the input of it. Not only for the legal aspect of it but also
because the quality of the metadata we applied to the assets can affect the
chances of them being found and subsequently used. Every word becomes
of keyword.
[3:55] Eventually, if you research that, DAM has a great future. I would like to be
better at it that and advertising. It’s a challenge, at this point, too. That’s the
best thing when we have our colleagues and team members learning something
about it and working with it and finding that it’s making their lives a lot easier
that is the best thing. Henrik: [4:23] What advice would you like to share with other DAM professionals
and people aspiring to be DAM professionals? Michelle: [4:27] A Digital Asset Manager needs to have great organizational
skills, be focused, and try to stay consistent. I think a bit OCD, if I can say that
would actually work because a perfectionist is an ideal candidate for the DAM.
[4:46] Another advice would be understand the user’s rights and copyright law
and really understand the work flow process of your organization that you are
involved with that is very, very important.
[5:00] I’ve been doing this for a while and I think working on DAM is just perfect
because it gives you challenges and gives you joy. Every day, I can tell you,
it’s the best. Henrik: [5:13] Thank you, Michelle. Michelle: [5:14] You’re welcome. It was a great pleasure. Henrik: [5:17] For more on Digital Asset Management topics, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom and iTunes. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Jennifer Neumann discusses Digital Asset Management
Here are the questions asked:
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
What are the biggest challenges and successes you have seen with DAM?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management.
I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Jennifer Neumann. Jennifer,
how are you? Jennifer Neumann: [0:09] I’m doing fine. Thank you for inviting me to come on
your show, Henrik. Henrik: [0:13] Jennifer, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Jennifer: [0:16] That’s actually a story that goes a long time back, to the early
‘90s, when the company I cofounded initially produced scanning software. It
was just after about half a year of selling scanning software, which helped a lot
of people create digital images. I was swamped with requests for building a
system that would then allow them to manage and access these thousands of
images created, in an efficient way. [0:44] Basically, I took that opportunity and
Digital Asset Management back then was actually just called an image database.
It’s had its incarnations since then, as you probably know, first being called
media asset management and then, ultimately, Digital Asset Management, It
evolved quite quickly, and we had a lot of customer demand. The solutions, ours
and competitors’ solutions, grew in very different directions at the same time,
supporting, of course, much more than images. The thing that I really like there
is that, from the beginning, it showed there is tremendous need for DAM, even
though it might not always be obvious how it should be best addressed. Henrik: [1:24] What are the biggest challenges and successes you have seen
with Digital Asset Management? Jennifer: [1:28] To follow up on what I just said, to put some figures out to
describe what I call success there. Over the years that we sold Digital Asset
Management, my company alone sold over 10,000 server solutions. We can only
estimate, but we bundled with many, if not most, of the biggest software vendors
out there. We probably reached about a million customers on the single
user side. It just endorses that Digital Asset Management has a clear demand
from the market. It might still struggle though fulfilling that demand and meeting
customer demand with clear cut offerings. [2:12] The challenges side are
actually both. They can be frustrating, definitely, for the customer. They can also
be frustrating for the vendor. What I think is important to look at is the topdown
view on the whole Digital Asset Management market. The one thing that I
recognized for a long time and still recognize is that Digital Asset Management
is still not as established as many other server solutions.
[2:37] Take, for example, the fact that every solution today is a web based
solution almost. Everybody would understand immediately. Everybody would
understand immediately and intuitively what a web server is. If you just mentioned
to a customer that has web based solutions, well, you should also install
a DAM server, you, more than often, still have to explain a lot in detail what the
DAM server would exactly do and what not to and how it would tie in with the
other servers.
[3:04] I think a situation that would help the success of DAM solutions would be
that there is more clarity on what it exactly addresses and what actually also
would be required to build an integrated solution and therefore, basically, any
effort like the efforts that you’re undertaking with your blog and your podcast,
extremely valuable. Henrik: [3:25] Thank you. DAM is not the end all, be all. It is just one component
of many integral things that an organization may need. Jennifer: [3:32] Yeah, well, just to reiterate, and I think it’s very important to get
this point across is this, it would be great if we would have the whole industry
of Digital Asset Management. If we had a sentence that would be, a one line
sentence, that would get across what DAM does. Another way to describe it, for
instance, and it’s something that also should actually finally happen, and I know
from reading your blog that you have also pushed in that direction, is there
is no clear-cut job descriptions out there for the people that work with DAM.
My experiences that, more than often, DAM is something that just comes up.
[4:08] I just had a case myself. An old friend of mine from San Francisco asked
me if I could recommend a DAM system for real estate company that needs to
take photographs of all the houses in a certain region. The typical approach
is, of course, not that they take this as a serious project from the beginning,
the customer, of course. It’s easy to understand we’ll try to get something
easy to install, little money, and is definitely not project manager from the beginning
assigned or even a product owner to call it that, but all these things
should happen.
[4:39] It should be clear on how a DAM project gets executed. While there’s
nothing wrong with starting a project small and grow the solution with integration
into other systems over time, it still should be clear from the beginning,
what the alternative routes would be that this DAM solution could be taken. Henrik: [4:58] It is a phased approach, at least how it should be taken because
it often grows and often they pick a solution now that’s the cheapest possible
upfront. Then they outgrow it and then they have to do it all over again for a
medium sized solution. As the organization grows, they may even need a larger
solution. Of course, the price point changes and the features and integration
points change as well. Jennifer: [5:23] One implementation that was I involved with personally and
I think it’s a really good example of how these things sometimes can be very
pinpointed. Another friend of mine who runs Germany’s largest independent
Apple dealership chain had the same need. Came up to me and said, “Jennifer,
can you help us? We are implementing a new eshop.” [5:47] Here’s another
one of those clearly defined. Or actually, people perceive it as clearly defined
solutions, right? You know you sell online. There’s an eshop that needs to be
implemented. It happened to be that that open source solution that they were
taking and extending manually was. And lots of programming had no strong capabilities
for managing images plus it’s not just managing the image. It’s a very
simple yet it is a workflow effect that they draw their products from all kinds of
vendors and then the metadata is not much, but it has to be entered in a standard
way for each of the products so that they know which vendor provides the
product to the dealer chain.
[6:32] The only thing that needed to really happen in regard to managing the
images themselves was that something in the middle that he thought was a
DAM system should automatically generate the five different resolutions for
best and best performing display of the products on the eshop and on the
website. That’s the whole workflow, but it means that you have to tie together,
first of all, in the graphics department somebody works with Adobe Photoshop
naturally and then there’s this thing in the middle and magically all these images
appear at the eshop.
[7:05] I don’t want to give the solution even away, what technology we used
in the middle of the year but this is, for me, the most important point. From
the beginning there’s clarity on what the workflow will be like and then you
have a high chance for success. Again, it’s not really relevant what we used
in the middle for converting images and forwarding metadata to the eshop,
but it was extremely important that we had an agreed upon plan on what was
going to be done and buy in even from the graphic designer, which starts the
whole process. Henrik: [7:40] I agree. There’s a lot of components in the middle. There’s a perceived
end result. That should be very clear, as well as the workflow. But often
the end result is forgotten as the process goes along, which is a challenge with
many organizations I’ve seen. Jennifer: [7:56] I still have a feeling that there is not enough clarity, also, on
what it takes to be a DAM system integration person. From experience, I can
tell that many of the people that put Digital Asset Management service in have
basically system integration staff with the company themselves. [8:17] But even
with the biggest ones, and I hope you’ll forgive me for not mentioning names,
but even they sometimes struggle to have enough qualified staff in the different
regions. I think that is definitely a field that still needs to be improved on to have
not just at least one capable person but considering that many of these solutions
are based on very different platforms, bet it .NET or Java or even different
operating systems.
[8:45] We need to find a way that there’s more talent in the market that understands
what they’re doing and maybe the analogy there, again, is if you talk
about Microsoft business then it is very clear cut. There’s someone that installed
your SharePoint server. If authentication isn’t working then it’s automatically
clear. You turn around and call the active directory guy. This is the kind of job
description that I’m talking about. Henrik: [9:09] Those are missing from the industry because it’s all scattered
right now and there has not been a lot of consolidation even though there are
standardization bodies out there, I have not seen that coming out of them yet,
even though I have pushed for it. [9:22] I watch the job market every single day,
as far as seeing how organizations are advertising the needs for Digital Asset
Management so I understand their needs. But the standardization of the job
descriptions are not there and often they don’t know what they’re looking for. Jennifer: [9:38] Yeah. I totally agree. Henrik: [9:40] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to be DAM professionals? Jennifer: [9:45] I think that it’s just important to recognize that the same basic
skills are absolutely valuable, and they have been even before the digital age.
What I think of as…I just talked about that woman in the graphics department
for that German Apple dealer chain, she’s a very reliable, consistently working,
very detailed oriented person. I still, even though people might have different
viewpoints on what accountants do and what librarians do. But their qualities
that they have to do reliable work is just, those are basic skills that are very
important and help a lot to build a successful DAM installation. [10:32] But of
course, too, there is quite some learning involved. The systems are quite different
in how they’re used. It would be great if there was also, I mean, maybe, what
I would call soft standards. But what I see is that it’s basically down to people
accepting a job in the DAM area and then they will learn the system that is in
place with the company.
[10:56] Unfortunately, there is no standardized education at this point, but again,
through the help of your blog and other sites that I’ve seen, the DAM Foundation,
also, is a movement that I think is great. Everything in that direction that
helps, basically, detailed use skills will be helpful.
[11:14] It’s always, I mean, if there’s nothing there yet that tells you exactly what
to do, and I think this is also something you’ve mentioned before me and
others, too. I think the biggest right now is there should be more user groups
out there and there should be more events where people can talk to each other,
definitely. This is why I like user groups over conventions. Not everybody has the
chance to travel to New York for a show or Vegas or whatever. If there’s a way to
found more user groups around the DAM space, that I think will be helping the
end users a lot.
[11:46] Typically, people focus, of course, on the users and I can throw it back in
the mix, the technical folks there, too. I mean, DAM solutions do not normally
get instigated or started by the CIO or by the CTO. It isn’t normally, or in most
cases, there’s a pragmatic need for it, but I think it would be good, also, to find
a way to have more organized education towards the DAM technical folks.
[12:17] The last point, the last group that often gets forgotten from me is the
vendors. I think, there, too, I could basically criticize myself, you all, so, having
been involved in this industry for a long time, I think the vendors all should get
together more constructively and to try to build, maybe, standards, even, or
help build the perception of the whole market.
[12:42] Maybe a silly example or analogy there would be, if you look at how the
car manufacturers do it, I mean, they actually, I know this for a fact, they, at the
top level, but even at the engineering level, they meet at forums and groups
and discuss things and trends in the industry. That way, I think they’re helping
themselves to build a more consistent picture of what their market is about.
[13:05] If the vendors, and here’s another example of what’s already happening
even though it might not even be successful, is, even Microsoft, which is one of
the elephants, and the elephants normally are not the first to move, but agreed
to integrate a new standard called OASIS CMIS. CMIS stands for content management
interoperability services. Terrible acronym, of course. It simply means
that there should be a way through web services, in this case, how two systems
can synchronize data between them. Which is a great problem for DAM systems,
right? Because not all metadata necessarily has to live or will live in the
DAM server. If there is a content management system in the server mixed and
there will be some metadata, too. Maybe even the taxonomy is on the content
management server.
[13:56] If the DAM vendors work stronger and more successfully towards defining
how these interfaces work, I think then, they would also have less work to do,.
Because I know for a fact that it takes a vendor a lot of work, one by one, all of
them, to integrate with all the usual suspects, to start with Adobe products and
whatever else. Henrik: [14:16] Great points. Great advice for the DAM vendors out there, and
solution providers. Jennifer: [14:21] Yeah, just an encouragement. I mentioned your blog before.
I really think what you’re doing is absolutely great. Keep this going, it’s very
important. Henrik: [14:32] Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Jennifer: [14:33] You’re welcome. Henrik: [14:35] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log
onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom
and iTunes. [14:43] If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to
email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does an organization focused on athletic clothing use Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Kezia Everson. So
how are you? Kezia Everson: [laughs] [0:10] I’m good, thank you. Henrik: [0:11] Kezia, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Kezia: [0:14] I work in the global marketing team at SKINS in the headquarters
in Switzerland. SKINS designs and manufactures technical compression sportswear.
It’s scientifically proven to help athletes achieve their goals. We currently
have several offices globally. We’ve got subsidiary offices in Australia, the USA,
UK, France, Germany, and China. [0:38] We also have global distributors, so in
Japan, India, South Korea, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and
throughout Europe. A couple of years ago, we realized that we needed to find
a solution that would allow all of our regions to get access to all of the data files
that they needed, instantly and regardless of time zones. We needed to find a
web based Digital Asset Management system that could house multiple types
of file that was available 24 hours a day.
[1:13] After researching several options, we chose Picture Park to be our structured
administration and management system, for our media assets. Essentially,
my role at SKINS now is managing our Digital Asset Management system.
Ensuring that people across the globe have access to it and all of the key files
are updated to the system and correctly tagged within the portal. Henrik: [1:42] How does an organization focused on athletic clothing used
Digital Asset Management? Kezia: [1:46] We currently sell around about 160 different compression products,
including specific ranges for different sports, like cycling, triathlon, golf
and snow sports. As well as our general, multipurpose active and recovery
ranges. Because we have such a wide range of products, we also have a lot
of logos and guidelines for each range. And also, there’s associated athlete
photography with various athletes wearing our products. [2:18] Also, product
renders of the products themselves, 3D render files for use online and things.
We’ve also got things like size chart files, packaging artwork files, lots of POS ,
Point of Sale, templates, website graphics, press releases, etc. All of this information
needs to be stored in one place. Also, due to the nature of the data
we have a lot of different file formats, TIFFs, JPEGs, InDesign files, Adobe
Photoshop files, audio files, movie files, as well as standard Microsoft Word
and Office files. Our Digital Asset Management system needed to be flexible
enough to house all of the different file types we have.
[3:06] It’s used predominantly as a sales and marketing platform. So those teams
around the globe can access the files they need when they want them. But it’s
also used by our legal general counsel. He has access to a portion of the system
that houses our legal documents securely. So we use it in a variety of different
ways, throughout the business. For us, our Digital Asset Management system is
not a general upload/download tool.
[3:34] We use YouSendIt for general file transfers and work in progress documents.
That means that our DAM system is a quality controlled environment.
But we also want SKINS to be a sharing community. So being able to upload
artwork files and templates ensures brand consistency across the globe and also
enables better sharing between the regions. This helps use save duplication of
work, because if one region has created an artwork file for a brochure or a flier,
they can upload that artwork to our DAM system.
[4:13] Another region who might want to create something very similar can see it
and download it and adapt it to their region as needed. It’s, for us, a platform to
promote and share the best content and the best ideas. As such, we’ve created
different access levels for different members, within the organization. As well as
some external partners, like design agencies, advertising agencies, etc. Within
our subs, the marketing teams also have upload access accounts.
[4:44] So they can share files through DAMs. And we have a media standard
guideline document that we share with all of our agencies, to ensure that whatever
files or final pieces of work they produce, the formats they produce them in
are compatible with our DAM system. Again, part of my role is to provide training
to new members of staff when they join the company, about the benefits of
our systems and also to new distributors.
[5:14] Telling them how to search for files and how to download them and email
them quickly to other people who might need access to them external to our
organization. And also, I train them on uploading files and tagging them, so
they can be easily accessed and found by other people. Henrik: [5:32] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people assuring to become DAM professionals? Kezia: [5:37] I don’t really have any advice. I would just say that our picture park
system has really revolutionized the way we operate here at SKINS. Previously,
marketing and sales materials were housed on our servers. So that not only took
up precious space, but it was also not apparent exactly where certain files were
saved. Not all of our suboffices and distributors had access to our in-house servers.
[6:04] So we were inundated with requests for materials. Sending out files
to people is almost a full-time job. Having the picture park system, over the last
year and a half, has really revolutionized our lives here. And the daily management
of our assets has really been improved. I would definitely recommend to
people who don’t have a system like this in place that it really does make a huge
difference, in many different ways. Henrik: [6:36] Thanks, Kezia. For more on this and other Digital Asset
Management topics, log onto 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.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does an organization involved with mixed martial arts use Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to share with 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’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Christy King. Christy,
how are you? Christy: [0:10] Very good. Henrik: [0:12] Christy, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Christy: [0:14] I am the newly appointed Vice President of technology research
and development for Zuffa, which is the parent company of the Ultimate
Fighting Championships and several other MMA brands, mixed martial arts
brands. We started down the Digital Asset Management path by trying to
organize a method to distribute video to nontraditional resources. We have a
very young audience, tends to be males, 18 to 34. [0:46] Very much closer to the
18 range. These guys all have every gadget, new fancy, cool thing that hits the
market sooner than almost everybody else, so we really tried hard, very early on,
to be able to distribute to all of those devices, and many of those outlets did
not have traditional ways to take in video content, meaning take…
[1:08] In order for us to create a file-based workflow that made any sense, and
deliver the accompanying metadata, which means images, and text descriptions,
and price points, and policy rules about where things could be shown and
what country, we had to come up with a distribution methodology, and a way to
create all those materials, and distribute them, and keep track of them all over
the world and all of these technologies. Henrik: [1:33] Christy, how does an organization involved with mixed martial
arts use Digital Asset Management? Christy: [1:39] What we do, since we started out trying to distribute in all these
places and all these different ways, what you discover very, very quickly, when
you start with a relatively contained, single goal, which is, we wanted to deliver
video, which you find very, very quickly no matter where you start an organization
with asset management, is that it sort of snowballs into a really big
effort. [2:07] All of a sudden, you learn a whole bunch about all these different
technologies and all these different vendors that can solve all sorts of problems,
and gosh, people in the company get a load of the first problem you solve and
their eyes lit up, and they get super creative and excited, and go, “Gosh, if we
can do that, then we can do this, and we can do this other thing, and we can do
this other thing.”
[2:28] Pretty soon, you have yourself a huge variety of problems you can solve,
and every time you solve one problem, then there are three more, because no
piece of information in the company lives in isolation. One of the things you find
is, you’ll discover that if you start to distribute something and you’re going to
change somebody’s work flow, let’s say, in marketing. Now, instead of emailing
a picture to the advertising agency, you’re now going to upload it somewhere.
[2:56] Right? Seems simple enough. You change that, you’re done. What will
happen is, within a couple days, you’ll have four other people that come out
of the network that say, “Hey, I copy and paste that out of the website.” Or,
“I download that image and send it over here in order to do the poster or
the podcast.” Or whatever it is. All of these people had just figured out a way
to adapt and survive, with the information wherever it lived. Somewhere in
the company.
[3:23] What you discover is, when you start down the Digital Asset Management
path, work flow becomes a really interesting challenge to solve and get communication
and effort out of everybody, so that you don’t create five more problems
by solving the first problem. So mixed martial arts is no different than any
other company, in that you’ve got to figure out a way to make sure everybody
has the resources they need to get their job done. Henrik: [3:47] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Christy: [3:52] We work with several vendors. There isn’t any one particular
vendor that solves all of our problems. One of the interesting changes that I’ve
seen in the way that I use technology is that, it used to be that if you needed to
have somebody edit video, you bought an edit system. If you needed to deliver
something, you used a shipping company. All of these kinds of solutions
were separate, disparate and had nothing to do with each other. [4:22] When
you get into Digital Asset Management, everybody’s stuff lays on top of everybody
else’s stuff. I would like to see an awful lot more vendors do what my
vendors have been really willing to do, which is work with each other. We have
a company called Levels Beyond that deals with our video solution, with their
reach engine. But we’ve asked them to work very closely with the folks at Denim
Group, who have designed and built our CMS backend for our website.
[4:53] I’ve asked them to tie in very tightly with the company that produces much
of our fight statistics. All of these folks need to work together and understand
each of their technologies, not necessarily even at a surface level, but at a pretty
deep level, so that they can understand how to use the best of what each company
has to offer. Really, it’s that interesting ability in people to think in a more
open source and shared kind of way.
[5:22] Not necessarily to give their trade secrets away, but just live in the world of
understanding that whatever they’re doing is going to be needed to be shared
by several other people, besides the company they’re selling their product to.
That’s probably the biggest piece of advice I would give.
[5:43] Be a little bit more willing to be open and work directly with other vendors.
I started my process very much in the production department. It has
blossomed to being an asset management solution that we’re applying, with
lots of people, across our entire organization. Really, I have one big Digital Asset
Management system, but I’m calling each departments little asset management
system a little bit different name, as we implement this stuff. So as not to scare
people to death. [laughs] Henrik: [6:11] Good idea. Christy: [6:13] You’re asking people to do a huge amount of change and work
flow and culture shift, in order to think about, create… Now, everything they do,
they have to at least put a little bit of their mind towards the fact that whatever
they’re doing, they’re communicating that to everyone else in the organization
and other people outside of the organization, at the moment they create it in
a shareable form. [6:39] Communication becomes even more important than it
might have been to an organization before. You just don’t upload an image. You
need to upload an image and call it something that makes sense, in the bigger,
organizational sense, that’s related to search terms, dates and maybe days that
the things that invoice should be issued so that someone gets paid when this
thing gets uploaded. You’re talking about marketing, accounting, financial analysis,
and invoicing process.
[7:14] Maybe rights are communicated that’s related to your legal department.
[laughs] This is a pretty demanding, big kind of concept to introduce to a company.
Vendors and people thinking about doing Digital Asset Management, in
general, really need to make sure they take it slow and explain to people a lot,
all along the way, the purpose of doing each of these extra tasks, in order to
make the overall company run more efficiently.
[7:47] Especially if you’re a worldwide company or you have organizations spread
across several states or across the world. Really getting taxonomy right and
communication paths tight in a Digital Asset Management system can make a
huge difference in a company that’s spread out like that, geographically. Henrik: [8:07] Thanks, Christy. For more on Digital Asset Management, log
onto 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 send me an email at anotherdamblog@gmail.com.
Thanks again.
Another DAM Podcast 