Jake Jaroch and Ryan Messier discuss Digital Asset Management
Here are the questions asked:
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Why does an organization focused on motorcycles use a DAM?
What are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital Asset Management?
What advice would like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:00] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Jake Jaroch and
Ryan Messier. How are you? Jake Jaroch: [0:12] Good. How you doing? Henrik: [0:13] Good. How are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Jake: [0:16] I oversee our photography department, art studio, and I oversee
our Digital Asset Management System. The way I’m tied to Digital Asset
Management System is I do more of the long-term planning and the functionality
for the system. Ryan does more of the day-to-day, hands on operations support of the system. Ryan Messier: [0:35] I handle the day-to-day operation for the DAM and support
the system from the admin side. I also handle requests from different
stakeholders, both internally and externally for the company. Any projects that
come across the table from an asset management standpoint is my responsibility
to take care of. Henrik: [0:52] Why does an organization focused on motorcycles use a Digital
Asset Management System? Jake: [0:56] Believe it or not, we have about 170,000 in assets in our system. We
have assets sent to us from other departments within the company, for instance,
our motor clothes which aim with our clothing line, our parts and accessories,
our retail environment group, marketing, communications, our HDM, which has
derived our archival, imagery and video. So we’re actually getting fed a lot
of assets from the company and it allows us to reuse the assets in other areas of
the company, therefore saving us a lot of money. Henrik: [1:36] What are the biggest successes and challenges with Digital Asset
Management? Jake: [1:40] I think some of our bigger challenges is with the DAM system, for
extracting from the system search, our metadata, training our stakeholders how
to use the system. We have such a custom vocabulary here at Harley Davidson.
For instance, we have some of our miles are named Dyna, Touring, Softail, so
these are kind of unique names. For instance, Touring might mean something
else to somebody outside of this company. Therefore our search was very complicated.
It was hard to use a synonym dictionary. Ryan: [2:15] The synonym dictionary that we had to establish, would optimize
our search and it was just difficult to establish that taxonomy because it is so
unique to a company. Jake: [2:24] Then another challenge that we faced was selling our leadership on
actually investing money into the system. It’s very hard for leadership to see the
value in something that they are not getting a return on, or a hard number of
return on. It costs us a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of resources, the implications
of using assets without rights, all these things cost the company money.
[2:49] If we have all that information in the DAM system and we’re able to reuse
the assets, we’re able to save the company money. It was very difficult to sell
that to leadership. Henrik: [2:59] From my understanding, it’s basically a soft cost savings. You’re
not selling things directly from the Digital Asset Management system. Is that
fair to say? Jake: [3:07] Yes. That’s exactly right. Henrik: [3:08] Good. It does save you time likely in search, provided it works
well, to save the amount of time it would take if there wasn’t a system in place to
find those 170 some thousand or however many assets you have til they understand
that point. Jake: [3:21] Right. I’ve run some numbers. I said before that they’re soft numbers,
so it’s really hard to come up with the actual number. We save the company
hundreds of thousands of dollars every year by reusing assets and by
having the rights on all of our assets. [3:35] The successes of the DAM system
are pretty much the same thing. Exactly what I was saying was one of our most
difficult things, selling this, was actually probably one of our most biggest successes.
We were able to sell it to leadership, they bought into it, and they stuck
a lot of money into it. Ryan: [3:50] The system itself is a great success. Our old system that we used
years ago was very difficult to navigate and very difficult to use. Users had a
hard time getting the assets that they actually needed. This new site has vastly
improved the general user-ship, and everybody has received it quite well. [4:09]
That was a huge project that Jake took on over the last three years. I came on
two years ago, and I’ve been running the day-to-day since then. That was a big
success basically, just from a company standpoint. Henrik: [4:19] What advice would you like share with DAM professionals and
people who are aspiring to become DAM professional? Jake: [4:24] I would tell them to run. Henrik: [laughter] [4:27] Jake: [4:28] Run while they can. No. I’m just kidding. It is a very difficult field to
be in though. You’re basically a pioneer. DAM has been around for a while, but
still it’s not perfect. [4:40] It’s a very difficult world to be in, and it feels like you’re
only one. As stupid as that may sound, it’s like nobody speaks your language.
It’s very difficult to find a friend in the DAM world, if you will. Henrik: [4:53] I’ve heard that many times, honestly. Jake: [4:56] You really need to be organized. You have to have thick skin to be
in this profession. I don’t want to turn anybody off by going down this path,
because it is very rewarding, but it is difficult. In a sense, it is kind of fun being a
pioneer and going down this path that most wouldn’t dare travel. Henrik: [5:18] It’s definitely exciting, one way or another. Ryan: [5:22] Playing off of that pioneer analogy, most people, when you tell
them that you’re a DAM Asset Manager or something along those lines, they
don’t know what you’re talking about. Even, for instance, my family really don’t
have an idea of what I do. But knowing that you accomplish such a grand accomplishment
for the company or whoever you work for.
Jake: [5:44] It is the truth. I wouldn’t change what I do in the DAM world. But
looking back at the last six years that I’ve been involved with the DAM here at
the company, it has been very challenging to break down those walls and those
barriers of bringing the DAM system to the company. Henrik: [6:01] You’re implementing change management across the organization
of how they’re managing their people, processes, technology, and information.
I totally value your candor and honesty on those points. Thanks, guys. Ryan: [6:11] Thank you. Jake: [6:12] Thank you. Henrik: [6:13] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log
onto 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.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does the world’s largest glass museum 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: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Megan McGovern.
Megan, how are you? Megan McGovern: [0:09] I am very well, and yourself? Henrik: [0:10] Good. Megan, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Megan: [0:14] At the museum where I work, I am the system administrator for
our Digital Asset Management system. I set up templates and make all of the
configurations, and I was also involved in the purchasing, just not as a final
decision maker, but someone whose input was regarded. [0:29] I am also the
vendor liaison with our Digital Asset Management system. Past that, I am responsible
for assisting making policies regarding Digital Asset Management
practices what images are added to our system, what images might be weeded
out, retention schedules, things of that nature. I train all of the users on using
our system.
[0:49] Outside of my day-to-day work, I am the co-chair of the special interest
group for Digital Asset Management at MCN, which is the Museum Computer
Network. I’ve also spoken on panels in the MCN Conference, as well as the
AAM, which is the American Association of Museums Conference. Henrik: [1:07] How does the world’s largest glass museum use Digital Asset
Management? Megan: [1:11] We use Digital Asset Management all the time. It’s a very image
and video-centric world now, and we really saw the need, earlier in the 2000s,
to have a centralized location for our digital images. Silos are inefficient, so we
used Digital Asset Management as kind of our image library where, at a central
location, people, if they have a project, a lecture, a publication, an exhibition, or
just for reference, they can go to our system, search, and bring up the images
they need for their particular use. [1:40] We also have a direct feed between our
Digital Asset Management system and our website. Pictures that we store in our
system based on certain criteria, if they meet certain metadata values, they get
pushed out to the website and display to the whole world. It’s really a backbone
of our website along with our information and our various content management
systems with their databases.
[2:01] It’s really an important part of what we do, and we’re unique among museums
in that our asset management system doesn’t just have pictures of glass
objects as a glass museum, but we also have an extensive library, different
libraries on materials, design drawings, batch notebooks for recipes for making
glass, things like that.
[2:19] Then we also use our Digital Asset Management system for programs and
events photography. The VIPs visit, some millions visit our portraits of staff or
other people who come to lecture here, so we use it quite extensively. Henrik: [2:33] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Megan: [2:37] Probably the biggest thing I’ve learned working with Digital
Asset Management is, the field is really as much about people management and
change management as it is about asset management. Working with people to
set up preferences for the system and customizations. [2:53] Working change
managements, if you’re actually installing a new Digital Asset Management
system or one hasn’t existed before, getting input, having people trained and
feeling comfortable and feeling like they have a voice in how the system is
run, so that they’ll actually use it and the project will be a success. I think that’s
almost as important as knowing about metadata and download and technical
specifications for images.
[3:16] I also found that my library and information science background was very
helpful, knowing about the history of cataloging and the whys and wherefores,
how libraries set up information management in the era before computers. It
helps to see how information might be structured even for things that might
generally be considered unstructured information, like candid photos of children
making glass, things of that nature.
[3:39] That being said, I’ve also found that some IT knowledge is very useful,
especially, just a small background. Even a basic knowledge of SQL is sometimes
very useful in understanding how the back end of the Digital Asset
Management system, the database, works and operates.
[3:53] Past that, I would just say flexibility is key. The Digital Asset Management
system market, it seems to be always in flux and technology, as we all know, is
ever progressing and evolving. Being able to be flexible and change as times
change and the environment changes seems to be the key to success, at least in
my experience. Henrik: [4:13] Great advice. Thanks, Megan. Megan: [4:15] You’re very welcome. Henrik: [4:17] 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 do open source Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions stack up today?
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 Joe Bachana. Joe,
how are you? Joe Bachana: [0:11] Great. Hi. Henrik: [0:12] Joe, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Joe: [0:16] Personally, I’ve been implementing Digital Asset Management since
about 1997. My first project with DAM was when I was working with a company
called Image, Inc. I was implementing a product called Phrasea, which was a
French-based solution. I had way back then experienced implementing products
like MediaBank. North Plains TeleScope I had implemented at a number
of locations around that time, as well. [0:42] I founded DPCI, which is a technology
company that implements content solutions. I founded that in ‘99. We’ve
been doing Digital Asset Management projects ever since with a wide variety of
Digital Asset Management products for a whole variety of use cases, as well. Henrik: [0:58] How do open source Digital Asset Management or DAM solutions
stack up today? Joe: [1:04] We have to look at them in a few different ways. The first is the
business of open source DAM. The second, you would have to look at the legal
underpinnings of those solutions. The third would be the technology. Some
people say, “Let’s take a look at the technology real quickly first,” but I think
that’s a mistake. [1:22] One of the reasons why we look at the business is that
the open source DAM projects are very different from the open source Web content management solutions out there. The CMSs such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, or Plone are principally anywhere between a very large collection of
contributors globally to those projects to maybe a little more modest contributor
base.
[1:48] Generally, it’s anywhere between a few hundred people and thousands
and thousands of people contributing to the innovations of these open source
projects, so they’ve taken firm foothold into the rubric or fabric of not only
our country but globally, the way Web content management innovations are
happening.
[2:06] In the case of Digital Asset Management, not as much. You do have solutions
that have been created out of Europe, out of the UK, and here in the
United States that there are a couple of folks that are working on it that are
friends or colleagues, or you’ll have companies that are behind the products
with their own resources. The solutions themselves haven’t necessarily taken
root as global initiatives.
[2:35] That doesn’t mean it’s not going that way. You’re starting to see more of
what happened 10 to 12 years ago in the CMS world starting to happen in the
DAM world. The reason why it’s not going to happen as rapidly is, to me, Digital
Asset Management is a little bit like the plumbing in your and my walls. It’s nice
when it’s working, but it’s not the sexiest thing in the world.
[2:57] The thing that everybody cares about is how nice does your house look.
It’s like the CMS. The CMS is the presentation of your content as well as the
ways in which you develop your content the workflows and so forth. Obviously,
no CMS is created equal. Joe: [3:13] With respect to DAM, companies principally use Digital Asset
Management systems for archive and retrieval of their assets. That’s a simplified
notion of what DAM should do. Both you and I both know there’s a
huge number of reasons people implement DAM, ranging from selling content
through storefronts to integrating DAMs with CMSs, CRMs, or ERPs
and so forth.
[3:38] In the case of media companies where they’re selling their content,
whether it’s through rich media like video or live streaming, these things obviously
are the core of their business. It’s not just about archival. It’s about real
work in progress and delivering that content across multiple channels.
[3:57] The pace of innovation in the open source world from a business standpoint
is certainly not as rapid yet. It’s not as sexy.
[4:06] There’s one project that we’re involved with for a media company. They’re
headquartered here in New York City. They had been veterans of a couple of
different proprietary platforms. They had spent millions on a couple of different
solutions. They made a determination that they were going to try an open
source implementation. They are doing a good amount of work to having us do
some cool customizations for them to add on top of the open source solution.
[4:34] The question always is…What we like to do in open source is, we like to
contribute back to the community, however small or big it is. Hence, we oftentimes
will go to that customer and say, “As a precursor to our signing on,
do you have any objections to us contributing these solutions out in an open
source way?”
[4:53] That gets to the business aspect of it. The other part of the business
aspect of it is operationalizing DAM. For companies that have had experience
with proprietary vendors, some of the vendors have 24/7 support. Some of
them, not so much.
The DAM vendors can be smaller companies in some cases, so they don’t necessarily
have the resources. When you have a president of a company answering
the phone at 11: [5:07] 00 at night to support you, that’s generally not a good
sign, although some of the presidents of these DAM companies are absolute
geniuses. It’s always a pleasure to talk to some of them. But it isn’t a scalable
model. Operationalizing maintenance and support, it’s something that some
of the proprietary vendors don’t do that well. But if you look at it in the CMS
world, when you think about the kind of services you can get out of an Acquia
and Drupal, which is commercial support.
[5:44] There are other alternatives on that side, as well. Those types of things
aren’t necessarily fully hammered out yet in the open source world. Because
businesses behind the open source DAM projects are sometimes not matured
yet. They may be smaller groups. So that’s going to change over time. The
second point was this notion of the legalistic implications of open source. Not all
open source is created equal or licensed equally.
[6:11] You’ve got different licensing schemes out there. A very common one is
the GNU GPL. You hear about that one a lot in the web CMS world. In DAM,
quite a number of them take advantage of the lesser GPL, LGPL, which has
some limitations. These things people have to really reflect on, when they’re getting involved.
Do they want to do an open source implementation where there may be some restrictions.
Joe: [6:37] I also look at these products… Does the company who is creating
it, are they paying lip service to open source? But then you start to think, “Do
they have all their documentation out there online? Can you readily download
and install that product?” If you’re really open source, you’ve got to behave like
open source, which to me means freely downloadable and installing, and freely
available documentation.
[7:01] Then it’s your prerogative to decide whether you want to purchase services
from a company or whichever individual. The legalistic application of it
is quite important when people are reflecting on open source. Now we get to
the technical. This is the one everybody really concentrates on first. People ask
me, “Don’t even look at the products if you can’t first look and see what the
business and the legal implications are of the solution you’re about to go forward
with.”
[7:29] The open source DAMs are approaching, in general, the work group functionalities
of products out there, in the marketplace. If you look at solutions like
Resource Space or Enter Media, Rezuna as well. There are a couple more, I’m
not trying to plug these products, simply giving it as examples that these solutions
are starting to meet the needs of work group, Digital Asset Management,
which would be considered, for me, the ability to import, either individually or
batch, a whole variety of digital asset types.
[8:08] And on ingestion, to be able to automate the creation of thumbnails and
previews and even evoke certain recipes for conversion of the assets. If you,
upload a PSD or any PS file, then you can set up recipes for conversion to JPEG s
at certain widths and depths. The ability to also capture metadata information.
Things aren’t all created equally, but the ability to capture XMP metadata, for
example, is something that is available in several of these products.
[8:38] In one case, we actually did some customizations where we have some
preprocessing of assets within Adobe Bridge for a customer. Then the assets
are going into their open source DAM. It’s a phenomenal thing, because they’re batch modifying with some extended XMP metadata, with their own panel within their Adobe Creative Suite products. And then that information is getting
ingested into those open source DAMs.
[9:06] These kinds of basic functionalities are available. It’s really exciting, because
they’re there. We’ve actually implemented quite a number of these kinds
of projects. They’re working. For a year or two years, they’re in business, in
use. The other thing that I find really exciting is that the whole promise of open source, to me, is you don’t have to say, “Mother, may I?” The whole idea of innovate and ingenuity in software, the open source software world is the ability to just step up and say, “I want to create something of value that’s available or
that I need for the context I need it.” Joe: [9:45] Without saying, “Hey, may I please do that?” And then somebody saying, “Yeah sure. But pay $20,000 for an SDK and sign this agreement that you won’t do this or that.” With open source, you can do it. A couple of the
open source products have robust web services and published APIs that, essentially,
allow you to do anything you want, ranging from connecting the DAM
to a produce like Drupal or WordPress, or connecting it to your CRM, if that’s
what you needed, and so on. That, to me, is the most exciting aspect. In one
case, we did a project down in Atlanta for a company where they had this huge
infrastructure. They needed to just automate the production of real estate guide books. Joe: [10:31] So we have this integration of, in that case it was a product called EnterMedia, with believe it or not, a whole Microsoft infrastructure. Integrated
with Adobe Live Cycle, integrated with Data Plan Journal Designer. And integrated,
I’ll add, with the InDesign server. So the whole infrastructure is automating
the pagination of these real estate books, straight from sales folks just
entering the data on the individual homes that are going to be offered.
[11:02] This content is being used to create both the web listings, as well as the
print catalog books or guide books that are being done in multiple states. It’s saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in their production processes. The DAM is an underlying technology within the architecture. It works flawlessly and it’s
open source. They save themselves… If you think about the amount of money
they spent on the other infrastructure. [laughs]
[11:28] They spent a fraction of their budget on the actual DAM implementation.
There’s a lot you can do with open source DAM solutions as underlying architectural
decisions for larger projects. And for very modest use cases around
archival and retrieval of assets you absolutely can use those types of solutions in
your business. Henrik: [11:54] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Joe: [11:59] That’s a great question and I appreciate it, Henrik. A lot of folks
come into this industry… I should add, I’ve been doing this type of thing for
26 years now. I’m not going to count my tech jobs while I was in college,
which principally were around content technologies. But 26 years ago, content
technologies were a whole different animal. To me, there’s a lot of folks that
enter the market and they want to be DAM professionals and they want to get
jobs doing this. [12:28] My concern has been folks coming out there and never
having laid their hands on a single product, without having done a single implementation.
There’s a lot of information that goes on and a lot of folks that are…
There’s no certification for becoming a DAM professional or a DAM analyst or
consultant. Yet people go out there and help folks with RPs and so forth, and
they’ve never done a DAM project.
[12:54] To me, if you’re right out of college, first of all, there’s some colleges which actually have some programs, like RIT, the print management school.
They have a course in Digital Asset Management. It is modest. But they give
people a chance to understand how to configure. What are the important use
cases trying to be solved in DAM? Getting hands-on experience with DAM is
really important. Even if you never will touch the technology in your career and
you want to be a pundit or someone who’s just a thought leader, you’ve got to
be able to touch them and understand what these types of products, this class
of products, do.
[13:33] What problems do they solve? That’s just me. Other people would probably
emphatically disagree. But I don’t think, going back to the plumber motif
that I said earlier or concept, you can speak with authority about plumbing
if you’ve never laid in the pipes an understand what the heck goes on there.
I certainly don’t understand what’s happening behind the walls. That’s one
thing. The second is, the best, to me, really exciting folks out there are the folks
who’ve gone to library science school.
[14:05] They really fundamentally understand what information science or information
architecture is. How do you define a taxonomy? What is an ontology?
How do you create controlled vocabularies? What’s that process? Sometimes
folks that were in data modeling are very good at that, as well. They’re very
thoughtful. A lot of times we go in as professionals and over engineer the
model, the information architecture of a platform.
[14:35] That becomes onerous for the folks who are trying to capture that metadata
and track it. There has to be a reasonableness that goes on, which again,
goes back to point number one. Which is, try to become a practitioner. But,
understanding that these are human systems, that’s the third thing. Again, we
talk about first laying your hands on these types of things, second is understand
how taxonomy is laid out. If you have money to go to library science school or, if
not, pick up some books on it.
[15:04] There’s some great resources out there for that. The third thing is understanding the use cases or the workflows. Because the DAM systems don’t necessary do workflow really well. But every single person or any company that’s
creating, managing, enriching and delivering assets has implicit workflows.
Some that are simple. Some that are very complex. Until you really understand
what those are, you’re going to be hampered. Joe: [15:34] I’m talking about not just people starting out in their career, but folks
that are 10, 15, 20 years in, that are delivering Digital Asset Management implementations.
A lot of times they don’t pay attention to the ways people interact
with assets through the life cycle. Different asset or content types have different workflows.
The way you’re creating an interactive object is going to be different
from some sort of an image file or video file and so forth.
[16:02] Those have different ways of being manipulated through a whole class of
employee types or user types. So understanding those is really important. Once
you get those you’re going to be more sensitive to the way people work. The
fourth thing is, understand how to listen and understand how people currently
work, meeting them halfway. Just coming in and implementing a DAM and
saying, “This is the way it works,” isn’t good enough.
[16:32] To be able to understand how an organization needs to work is important.
To hopefully deliver a DAM solution that supports that work and bolsters
and improves it, as opposed to makes people change the way they work, which
invariably, as you and I both know, doesn’t work. People rebel. You get into all
kinds of change management issues where folks just fight the DAM implementation.
I want to just end on this note, that a good way to inform your career
in DAM is that everybody high fives themselves when the DAM installation is
completed.
[17:09] But the way you test the success of a DAM solution is two to three years
out. How many people are using it? How many assets are there? Is it supporting
the business? Has duplication of assets been minimized or eliminated? Are there
issues with finding assets that were thrown in two years before, that are important?
That’s the way you test. You always have to think forward in this business.
Think about the results you’re going to be creating, two to three years in. Henrik: [17:38] Thanks, Joe. Joe: [17:40] Cool. Henrik: [17:41] 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 do you figure out the business value of Digital Asset Management for your organization?
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 John Dougherty.
John, how are you? John Dougherty: [0:09] Hi, Henrik. Nice to be with you today. Henrik: [0:11] You, too. John, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? John: [0:15] I’ve been involved for a number of years. I was part of the original
committee that our CEO convened to do a top bottom assessment of our technology.
Helped by an outside company, DPCI, we did that. We decided that
one of the things that we needed to do is to acquire an enterprise-wide DAM.
[0:33] Then I was put in charge of the workgroup task with choosing the DAM
technology. We ended up choosing North Plains TeleScope, which we then piloted
in 2006, and went ahead and implemented in 2007. I was in charge of the
implementation in change management teams, and finally in charge of ongoing
operations. This was also part of my responsibility for Content Management
Systems in general. Henrik: [0:55] How do you figure out the business value of Digital Asset
Management for your organization? John: [1:00] Henrik, I’m so glad that you put that in terms of business value and
not ROI , because I think a lot of organizations rush to the ROI , stepping over
qualitative advantages. In my opinion, you start with the qualitative advantages,
and then you conclude with the quantitative advantages. [1:17] You figure out
how a DAM can improve the organization. How it can strengthen it. How it can
add core competency. Eventually, what you end up with is lots of different avenues
for savings. But, I think if you lead with that, it makes a mistake, because
then the focus is, “How many jobs are we going to save?”
[1:36] The translation to the people you’re trying to implement DAM with is,
“How many people can we get rid of?” I think that’s not where you want to be
when you’re assessing the value of a DAM.
[1:45] In terms of discovering value, I’m a very big proponent of leading with use
cases. I think that working out with each business unit, and each part of each
business unit. A set of use cases, a story, if you want, on how this DAM is going
to be used.
[2:02] How are you, exactly, going to achieve something that that group wants
to achieve, whether it’s authentication opportunity, or greater flexibility in their
workflow. Whatever their goal is, how are you going to actually use the DAM
to do that?
[2:17] I think by leading with use cases, it really keeps you grounded in reality. It
keeps you focused on service to the people that you’re talking with. The beauty
of it is that half your implementation and half your change management is done
before you’ve even purchased the system.
[2:34] I think leading with use cases really help to uncover business value, to document
that well, and to make sure that you, in fact, are able to realize it. Henrik: [2:43] Once you have those business cases, is there some kind of way of
measuring that value? John: [2:48] Certainly. There’s a lot of different ways to measure value. One
way you can certainly do it is in terms of greater efficiency that you’ve achieved.
Operations that may have taken a long time, you’re able to quantify that you’re
post DAM or even in the middle of a pilot, that you’re able to achieve certain
savings in terms of efficiency. [3:11] I would argue also for getting the people
with whom you develop the use cases to assign a value, both quantitative and
qualitative, to the achievement of the use cases. How well you achieve the use
case then starts to have a monetary value and a quantitative value.
[3:29] Independently of that, I think you also need to have the active participation
of the finance team in having models that will satisfy them that are otherwise
being achieved. That may cut across the use cases in the sense that it
provides a reality check on the model that you use going into it. I think that for
each organization, how you do that independent analysis is going to be somewhat
different, but it’s going to be based certainly on measurable outputs. Henrik: [4:04] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? John: [4:09] First of all, if you’re part of the team that’s choosing a DAM, I would
say one thing is focus on key features. Don’t just create a huge long laundry
list of 752 features that you think are going to be in there. Because you quickly
get lost among the forest even if you do a careful job of vetting those features,
weighing them, and giving them importance. Too large a list will just muddy
the waters in my opinion and certainly, in the use cases I talked about. [4:44]
I think for choosing, a really good thing to do is when you’ve concluded on a
system and you’ve worked out a deal with a vendor, possibly an implementation
partner and possibly others that will be involved in the process, draft a simple
statement. Have the team draft a simple statement that says, “This is what we
think we are buying. This is what the DAM that we are purchasing includes in
plain language.” Because that’s a reality check that the vendor can use and
everyone involved can use to basically say, “Is our understanding the correct
understanding?”
[5:27] What I’ve found is when you do that, what sometimes pops out of there
is that there are misunderstandings. Things that are optional that you’re assuming
that are not, and things that have not been accounted for in the plan that
people assume have been accounted for.
[5:41] Other advice I’d say, be honest with yourself. It’s very easy to delude
yourself with wishful thinking if you’re trying to sell something, if you’re trying to
make a case for something. If you’re relentlessly honest with yourself and let the
evidence lead.
[5:59] So if you have a hunch, if you think you know something, try to find the
best available source, either qualitative or quantitative. That may be people
that really know that subject matter or a body of information that you can get
at that, will substantiate your hunch. Just don’t give into wishful thinking. Don’t
delude yourself.
[6:19] I’d say respect the expertise of others. Often, DAM projects are led by
information technology, and properly so. But there’s going to be a lot of people
whose expertise is needed who may not know the right terms or the right
frameworks or think about it in the most sophisticated way. But you have to respect
their expertise because not only will their expertise be needed, but you’ll
miss things if you don’t make sure that you encompass that expertise.
[6:49] Something I wish I had done more in the implementation that I did is look
for bright spots. There’s going to be groups that just take to it really well, that
they’re off and running. You can really leverage those bright spots.
[7:04] When you get a bright spot, figure out why it’s a bright spot. Why does
that work? What is it particularly that is successful about that? Then use that to
bring up the success rate in the rest of the tasks that you’ve got.
[7:21] I think focusing steadily on what improves your colleagues’ lives, aesthetics
and convenience matter. You wouldn’t want to condemn someone to live in a
terrible apartment. The DAM that you’re putting in is going to be part of their
lives, and it needs to be a welcomed part of their lives. I think a steady focus on
what improves your colleagues’ lives is a great thing.
[7:49] Then, lastly, I would say be prepared to do a two-year overhaul. Almost
all DAMs have significant problems in their first implementation. Be ready to do
a top-down review. Then attack those faults and build that into your plan that
you’re going to need an overhaul in two years. Henrik: [8:10] Thanks, John. John: [8:11] All right, Henrik. Thank you. Henrik: [8:13] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
Another DAM Podcast 