Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about digital asset management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Rubyliza Gaba. Rubyliza, how are you?
Rubyliza Gaba: [0:11] I’m good, how are you doing?
Henrik: [0:13] Great. Rubyliza, how are you involved with digital asset management?
Rubyliza: [0:17] I am the Digital Asset Archivist at Fossil. Aside from ingesting images and checking out metadata integrity, I also do training and troubleshoot any issues our local and global users encounter.
Henrik: [0:31] How does an American designer and manufacturer of clothing and accessories use digital asset management?
Rubyliza: [0:37] Our DAM is used as a centralized archival repository. It houses all of Fossil’s final product images across multiple brands and product categories. Internally, it’s used by multiple departments, both locally and internationally via our regional offices.
[0:57] Actually, Fossil’s DAM is fairly young, only being launched in early 2014. So Pre‑DAM it was a bit of a challenge to locate images after they were worked on and finalized. Images were housed in multiple locations, including internal file shares and external FTP servers. We also have an archive system where images were actually burnt onto physical CDs and DVDs for archival purposes. Of course, this process was plagued with issues such as media being mislabeled, or maybe being checked out and never returned.
[1:32] Now that the DAM is in place, our users simply search for the images that they need, and they download them in the format that they require.
Henrik: [1:42] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with DAM?
Rubyliza: [1:45] I think the biggest challenge I’ve seen with the DAM system was change management. I can figure out system issues, but trying to introduce a new piece of technology to people, and convincing them that this system will actually help them was a bit tough.
[2:01] I completely understand that change is difficult sometimes. People are set in their own ways. They want to continue doing something that they’ve been doing for a while, because they know it works for them.
[2:13] When we were in the beginning stages of our implementation, we knew that user experience is the key to a successful DAM system. We wanted to make sure that our DAM would be easy for anyone to use, and in turn maybe ease any nervousness that they had for using a new system.
[2:32] What we did, my team and I, we set up meetings with our future users to discuss what they needed to be housed in the DAM, what functionality was required around that content, what pieces of metadata needed to be captured and how and when to capture it, and also the folder structure of the system.
[2:52] The final result is an interface that’s very sleek, and a search function that’s super simple to use. We found that with the proper training, users became more comfortable using our DAM.
[3:06] To us, user adoption is hugely important. We didn’t want to be to set in our own ways. We work with so many brands that are all individually unique. If something doesn’t work for a team, we’re always happy to discuss what needs to be done to provide the experience they expect from us.
[3:28] As for successes, I would have to say it’s knowing that people use our system. We’ve been getting pretty positive responses to it. Also, another success is seeing our user count grow. When we originally rolled out our DAM, it was only to a small group of users in our local offices. Now, our user number is in the thousands and span a global community.
[3:55] It’s really a great feeling to see something you’ve worked on so hard on it, just positively impact other people’s daily work processes. It’s been an amazing experience to be involved from day one, to be a part of the process and to watch our system grow into what it is today. It’s increased productivity across the board, and I really look forward to the future of our DAM.
Henrik: [4:19] Excellent. Rubyliza, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Rubyliza: [4:25] My advice is to network. That was the biggest advice given to me when I was in school. Networking is key, whether you are already a DAM professional or aspiring to be one. It’s always great to talk to others in our field. You can go to conferences, join organizations, and just meet each other face to face. We have a fantastic and supportive community out there, through my experiences.
[4:50] As for aspiring DAM professionals in school, I would get involved in volunteer work or internships. To me, you can have all the education in the world, but it’s that hands‑on training that helps. Also, it’s a good step towards building a network too. Also, work on that LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn, I think, is an amazing tool that not too many people are using, surprisingly.
“Always remember to be flexible.”
[5:15] Finally, remember when you do get the job, don’t get discouraged if you find yourself doing things that maybe aren’t always related to digital asset management. Always remember to be flexible.
Henrik: [5:28] Great advice. Thanks, Rubyliza.
Rubyliza: [5:30] Thank you. It was a pleasure to be a part of your podcast.
Henrik: [5:33] For more on this and other digital asset management topics, log on to anotherdamblog.com. If you have any comments or questions about digital asset management, feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. For 150 other digital asset management podcast episodes, go to anotherdampodcast.com.
Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Kevin Gepford. Kevin, how are you?
Kevin Gepford: [0:10] I’m fine. How are you?
Henrik: [0:12] Great. Kevin, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Kevin: [0:16] I work for Comedy Central at their in‑house Brand Creative department. We create all the advertising, the billboards, the video promos, graphics for digital platforms such as iTunes, Xbox, and Hulu.
[0:30] Specifically, I work on the print side of things. I’ve got hands‑on involvement with our photo re‑touching. We also do the mechanical production and the final delivery of the files to their destination. I work in a team of brilliant right‑brain creatives, but I’m more of a left‑brain sort of person.
[0:48] I got interested in DAM originally as a self‑defense against the distractions of non‑core tasks. I’m talking about requests like digging up logos for someone, cracking open old archives just to print out an ad from last year, or hunting for a specific image among all the assets that we had that were scattered across the universe of portable hard drives, servers, optical media, and the like.
[1:15] The DAM that emerged from this is something that’s been a resource for the whole company for about 10 years, and it’s grown and evolved. Later, as time went by, it led to my involvement with content management. The volume and scope of our work had expanded tremendously, but our approval process didn’t grow along with it. It had become sheer chaos. It was in dire need of order and coherence, and I decided that this was an opportunity for me to make a bigger difference.
Henrik: [1:46] Why does a television channel, focused on comedy programming, use Digital Asset Management?
Kevin: [1:53] We use asset management to support our promotional efforts here. Just to be clear, I want you to know that this is not a function of our long‑form programming. We are part of Brand Creative, and our primary partner is the Marketing team. Everything that we do is focused on promotion and marketing, and the graphics that go into that production.
[2:17] I want to talk about the two prongs of asset management here at Comedy Central. The first one is DAM. These would be our libraries of static assets used across our advertising and promotional campaigns. The second is content management. We developed a system here to manage our internal work‑in‑progress. This could be the review and the approval of all of our creative output.
Henrik: [2:42] What are the biggest challenges and successes that you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Kevin: [2:45] For the first prong, Digital Asset Management, we started building our asset libraries about 10 year ago, as I said. All of our logos, our images, artwork, and including a PDF archive of all of our print work. That’s been updated over time ‑‑ not only the assets, but the back‑end ‑‑ but it still performs its original mission, for the most part.
[3:07] As far as challenges are concerned, I would say the first challenge was getting it off the ground. We obviously needed corporate resources so we could invest in the system, and then operate it on an ongoing basis.
[3:19] After that, it took a lot of work to prepare the assets. That’s the first step for any system that’s going from nothing to something. You’ve got to organize, you need to upload, and you need to keyword all the assets.
[3:32] After that, we had the ongoing challenge of keeping it up to date. The main issue for us, as I imagine it is for a lot of people, is that we don’t have a dedicated staff, so we do it in our down‑time. Even though we ourselves are dedicated to it, there’s often a lag between when an asset gets created and when it goes up to the library.
[3:51] For instance, if we do an entire ad campaign, the last thing we do before we archive it ‑‑ all the resource files, we make PDFs and put them in our asset library. So there’s a lag, depending on the scope of the campaign and how long it’s taking.
[4:08] After that, I would say probably the biggest challenge is just getting everybody on‑board. This took training, this took patience. People have been used to coming to my team directly, and just asking us for anything. Once we got this up and running, we would remind them to check the asset library first.
[4:27] Sometimes the thing they wanted wasn’t there, or it hadn’t been keyworded, or it just didn’t exist. Part of the training process was that we would fix the problem, upload the asset, and then make them go back and look again.
[4:40] This really went a long way to building good habits. Nowadays, people will come to me and say, “I already searched the library, but I couldn’t find what I was looking for.” And that’s really music to my ears.
[4:53] As far as successes are concerned, there’s a funny little story. A little while back, I was talking to my assistant, and I asked him, “Does anybody even use this system that we’ve put all our work into? I mean, why do we even bother?”
[5:05] He answered my question with a question. He asked me, “When is the last time that anyone came and asked you for a logo? The system is just working.”
“That’s when I knew [DAM] had become an essential resource for Comedy Central.”
[5:13] Almost prophetically, the system went down a few days later. Within about 30 minutes, I’d heard from about a half‑dozen people. That’s when I knew it had become an essential resource for Comedy Central.
[5:27] The second prong of asset management that I wanted to talk about is content management. I really enjoy talking about this, because it really is such an interesting project, and it’s made a profound difference in how we work.
[5:39] I think it really shows a path forward for our field as we imagine our future, and try to be more creative about how to make it dance.
[5:46] Our content management system is kind of like asset management on steroids. It’s active, it’s alive, and this has become a centerpiece where anyone can instantly see everything that we are doing, in real time, by visiting the site.
[6:00] Our content management system is a tool that we use, basically, to manage our work‑in‑progress. It has a longer name that nobody uses ‑‑ we call it the Creative Review and Approval System. It is, from the standpoint of most of our users, a Web based application.
[6:18] It lives in the cloud, and it’s used to coordinate the efforts of all of our design teams. The graphic designers, the Web designers, the animators ‑‑ they upload their work for review and approval. Then they can also get comments and updates from their team members.
[6:37] A great example of our workflow prior to this would be how we made Web banner ads. This is going back maybe four years. The team for building Web banner ads would be ‑‑ a developer on one end, the marketing department on the other, and in between you would have project managers, designers, and one or two or more creative directors.
[6:57] The number of individually posted files of updates and the number of emails about them, just to get one ad approved, was insane. All the comments were buried in enormous email‑chains. There was no way to really visually track an ad’s progress, and when the first ad was finally approved after 20 rounds, we had two dozen more to go. There was almost no way to really compare the ads to ensure consistency.
[7:26] What we built was a content management system to fix the process. Over time, we expanded and re‑built it so it would service not only the Web banner ads, but it would also serve the entire Brand Creative department, and it would be able to handle video clips, Web banner ads, and basically any kind of static asset.
[7:50] Now, all from one place, our users can do a number of common tasks. They can upload files, update it with new versions, they can email their team members, they can view and leave comments. Their managers can review, approve, and reject things. They can create lightboxes they can share with anybody.
[8:07] Then they can take anything that’s in the system and pretty much share with anybody else with just a couple of clicks. For the last piece, you could see the entire campaigns with just a click, it’s an automagic slideshow, for anyone that wants to review the entire campaign, or for any normal user who wants to just take a look and see what other departments are doing. The magic part, though, is when a campaign is archived, it becomes a searchable library of our completed work.
[8:38] So… challenges, you asked.
[8:41] Well, once again, it wasn’t easy to get resources for our initial investment. It took a lot of persuasion that what we envisioned would be a better product than anything we could get on the market. But then we got some seed money, and we were able to show proof of concept, and then grow it from there.
[8:59] A surprising challenge was simply getting the teams to work together and be open to sharing their ideas with each other. They really all liked living in their happy little silos. I got feedback from a couple of people that really were worried that their projects, which were so important to them, would just be sort of lost in all the other projects of other people that were working on the same campaign. From my perspective, that’s kind of the point. No man is an island, anymore. You are playing in a bigger sandbox.
Henrik: [9:31] True.
Kevin: [9:31] The other part of the challenge, for me, was just patience. It took more than a weekend to build this and I would say that it was the fruit of many months of development and testing, and we’re still getting comments and feedback. I got some comments just this week that we intend to work on to improve the functionality of our lightboxes. It’s a work‑in‑progress.
[9:55] Now, as far as successes are concerned, I would say that it’s pretty obvious. Everybody is just collaborating like we never have before. We’re talking to each other, we know who is working on the other projects, and we have quick ways of communicating with them, to get a visual overview of what we and other people are working on. So it really has, just by its design and by its very nature, helped collaboration.
[10:20] User engagement with the system is just phenomenal. My co‑workers and colleagues care enough to give feedback all the time, and it’s not all positive. Sometimes they come in and they just demand better features, or they have a great idea to make an improvement. Their engagement is just wonderful, and I appreciate it so much. Any kind of feedback is a sign that they care, rather than just accepting the status quo. That’s why we started this whole thing to begin with.
[10:52] Another success ‑‑ and this one totally surprised me ‑‑ our most popular feature turned out to be lightboxes. These have just revolutionized the way that we give presentations. There’s no more poking around in the middle of a meeting to find assets on a server somewhere. It just puts everything in a streamlined slideshow that you can navigate with the arrow key on your keyboard.
[11:16] This was a feature, I know and am glad to say, that nobody asked for, and nobody even imagined something like this could be possible. And yet, there it is, and they love it.
[11:29] The last thing, and this always gives me a chuckle. We kept the old system on standby. Just in case, you know? It slowly and gradually fell into disuse, and finally, when the old thing crashed, nobody even noticed for several days.
Henrik: [11:46] [laughs]
Kevin: [11:47] What does that tell you?
Henrik: [11:48] Time to make it extinct.
Kevin: [11:50] Yeah.
Henrik: [11:52] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Kevin: [11:57] I am kind of a contrarian by nature, but I really think that formal education, maybe formal training, is not necessary to enter this field. It’s wide open for anybody who wants to make a difference. I really bet that if you took a survey of influential people in the field, very few have actually gone to school for it. What you need is a desire to make a difference ‑‑ a passion for it. It also helps if you get a lucky break and you have the right contacts.
[12:26] Lastly, I think anyone wanting to become a DAM professional needs determination and patience for the long journey.
Henrik: [12:34] Great points. Thanks, Kevin.
Kevin: [12:36] It’s a pleasure.
Henrik: [12:38] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does an organization focused on sports equipment use Digital Asset Management?
What are the biggest challenges and successes with 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’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Douglas Mullin.
Douglas, how are you? Douglas Mullin: [0:09] I’m doing well, thanks. How are you, Henrik? Henrik: [0:10] Great. How are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Douglas: [0:13] I’m the digital asset librarian for Oakley Incorporated in
Southern California. I work for the design graphics department, which is one
of several silos of content producers. [0:25] I manage primarily final and master
mechanicals for the signage. I would see, let’s say, if you went to Sunglass Hut or
something, you saw the signage of the windows.
[0:34] I have master files, different regions, localities to download, to print their
own files. We also have product photography and video. We have several different
departments working with that.
[0:44] With my executive sponsor, I have a project to try to create a real enterprise
DAM program to bridge a lot of our content production silos. Those are
my two main functions of both working for one silo, currently and trying to build
more of a proper enterprise DAM program to bridge a lot of our content production
silos. Those are my two main functions of both working for one silo,
currently and trying to build more of a proper enterprise DAM system. Henrik: [1:00] How does an organization focused on sports equipment use
Digital Asset Management? Douglas: [1:05] As I mentioned, we have a point of purchase signage. Lots of
athlete photos get used. We have the signs that go up in stores that are selling
our products, road signs, billboards, bus wraps, and other things like that. [1:19]
We have, of course, a website, which has a lot of content. Content marketing is a
very big thing at a company like Oakley.
[1:25] We have an in-house photo studio. We have a team of photographers who
go on-site who shoot athletes at sporting events or for sponsored athletes for
events that have we have set up.
[1:37] We have a video team, as much the same thing and produce a lot of content.
Content marketing is a very big thing here. It’s pretty much what DAM is
about from our point of view. Henrik: [1:48] What are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital Asset
Management? Douglas: [1:51] For us, the biggest challenge really is user interface issues and
process issues. Currently running Artesia 6.8, which is a very powerful product,
but it is a bit of an older product. [2:04] The user interface is not up to current
standards. A lot of consumerization of the enterprise, people’s tolerance for
learning challenging systems has gone down a lot over the years. Certainly, at Oakley, that’s an even bigger challenge.
[2:20] A really strong user interface is something that we need. As we look forward,
Artesia is going to go away, at some point, and we will get another product,
either from that vendor or from somebody else. It’s still undecided.
[2:35] User interface challenges are a big thing for us. After that is process. What
photos should be shared? What photos should not be shared? Which videos
should or shouldn’t be shared? There are lots of different factors that go into
that calculation. Is a product a current product? Is it a past product, is it a prototype
product?
[2:55] I would see the legal contract that we have with the athletes. These kinds
of issues be very complex. So, it’s an athlete, let’s say, a whimsy contest wearing
our board shorts, which are not yet publicly released, should we use that
photo? Or should that photo not be used because the product is not actually
publicly released yet, even though the athlete winning a major contest is a major
coup for us? Henrik: [3:20] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Douglas: [3:24] I think it’s very important to understand that this is very varied
profession, in which it is people, process, content and technology. It’s not possible
just to focus on any one of those. [3:34] Some people imagine that a digital
asset person is a bookish person hidden away in a corner just attaching metadata
to files. But in reality, it is much more difficult than that. You must be able
to interact with your end users to understand what their needs are. You often
have to be assertive about getting your content people are busy and you often
have to reach out to people, work with them to get content.
[3:58] The process issues are huge. Being able to understand the business in
order to help people solve those problems and come to an agreement about
them. Then, of course, at the technology side, you have to know how to talk
the language of the IT people in order to have credible conversations to be an
advocate for your own DAM health, so to speak. That is very important.
[4:20] There’s sort of a trend going on in the world today of…”marketing technologist”
is a phrase that I’ve heard a lot about. But people who come from the
business side of the company but who understand technology, and I think that
being a DAM librarian kind of fits in with that in certain ways.
[4:36] I very much come from the business side. I understand the people and the
content and process issues, primarily. But I’m also able to speak the language of
the IT department to be an advocate for my stakeholders for their requirements.
[4:49] In addition to that, there’s a lot of training opportunities out there in the
world today. DAM is growing a lot. There are a lot of people trying to learn
about it. There’s free webinars stuff that one can certainly see other opps. That’s
vendor sponsored and so it tends to be very solution focused and not always as
focused on the people, process, content, although people do talk about that,
of course.
[5:11] Then, there’s just great conferences at Henry Stewart and Createasphere.
I’m a member of SLA, which keeps me connected to the library world, the Special Libraries Association. And then the DAM Foundation. It’s also, I think, a
great resource to learn a lot more about the profession. Henrik: [5:27] Well, thanks Doug. Douglas: [5:29] Well, thank you, Henrik. Henrik: [5:31] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log
on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom
and iTunes.
[5:39] If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again
Karl Lord, Lovisa Idemyr and Tom De Ridder discuss Digital Asset Management
Here are the questions asked:
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does a global organization focused on furniture and housewares use Digital Asset Management?
What are the biggest challenges and successes you have seen with Digital Asset Management?
What advice would like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Karl Lord, Lovisa
Idemyr and Tom De Ridder. How are you? Lovisa Idemyr: [0:11] We’re good, thanks. Tom De Ridder: [0:12] Good, thank you. Karl Lord: [0:13] We’re very well, thank you. Henrik: [0:14] How are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Lovisa: [0:17] Karl and I, we’re working for Inter IKEA Systems, which is the franchise
store of IKEA so for us it’s really important to safeguard all the intellectual
property and the media assets. For me for instance, I’m involved because I was
a project leader for the first Digital Assets Management and rotation with it.
Since then I’ve been working with additional projects related to them and also
the questions that start to pop up once you go into this DAM business. Karl: [0:44] I work on the IT side so I’m responsible for operations and securing
that the services within the company are working as they should so that the
business has the right availability for the DAM solution. Tom: [0:56] I am the CTO of a company called Stylelabs and we’re based in
Brussels. We had startups, we started out as a WCMS company but we gradually
moved to the dark side. The back office for marketing solutions and then
DAM is our main thing right now. Henrik: [1:15] How does a global organization focused on furniture and housewares
use Digital Asset Management? Lovisa: [1:20] We use it for a lot, and we even have multiple DAMS with them
because we are so many different IKE A companies. We as a franchise to work
we need to protect the brand and also secure intellectual property. We are
making sure that the officially approved assets are available in our DAM so
that we can make additional usage of the assets, so that we can use it for local
marketing, etc. [1:46] We are using it both for the global marketing which is more
about the IKE A catalog, and so on. Then we’re also enabling local marketing activities
because the retailers can click the assets and make additional assets for,
let’s say additional artwork productions based upon that. So we kind of provide
the original assets that have the furniture design, everything is “hunky dory”
and good. Then they can further utilize the assets. Karl: [2:15] We also use them in addition for the marketing purposes, we use a
lower resolution version for 3D for internal requirements for commercial planning
and store design. We build in 3D complete stores before they’re actually
in the world. The 3D products which we have in the assets as in the DAM will
be used, placing within a 3D model of the store. It’s for the building and design
of the stores and for the retailers. [2:41] So when we go out and deploy a new
store, we’ve already gone through and seen exactly what the flows are. The
passenger, the traffic requirements and so forth, and where the products and
volumes are necessary. Put that all in. Henrik: [2:52] Excellent. What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve
seen with Digital Asset Management? Lovisa: [2:58] Well I would say that when we started this that we were kind of
a bit naive in terms of what DAM meant so it was kind of happily naive [laughs],
because we didn’t really understand what it would take from the business.
Everything from business to IT to infrastructure, and so on. We started off with
this great idea of having [laughs] the possibility to manage all the assets in a
nice way and being able to store and distribute that. [3:23] Then of course we
started a bit small having images, now 3D and product information. During this
roadmap basically getting to learn more about what is DAM all about, what are
the opportunities? A big help there has also been getting good support from
Stylelabs in terms of advising how can we use this technology in a way that fits
us. I would say that having good advisers, that has really helped us in that work. Henrik: [3:51] Excellent. Tom: [3:52] Generally speaking for Stylelabs, we’ve done other implementations
also. I can say that next to the technical challenges, the biggest challenge is
user adoption but it’s also the biggest reward. So if your community likes it then
the solution grows and you get back response which is great. So that’s the best
reward and the biggest challenge at the same time. Lovisa: [4:14] For us for instance, we come from a quite scattered landscape,
having assets available at a dozen number of suppliers. So instead of people
having to find the right person at the right agency or production company, now
we actually know that we have at least one copy in our DAM, and we have a
good support organization for that. [4:38] It’s also a security from a corporate
point of view that all the assets are safeguarded, and it’s not so dependent on
only one person knowing who to call and so on. So that has been quite a reward
I would say because it’s actually working. People are more happy with getting
access to the assets and now it’s getting more popular also to talk about DAM
and intellectual property.
[5:04] Everyone is quite happy that the basics are in place because that’s the
biggest hurdle I would say, getting commitment, getting buy in, getting investments
and so on. Henrik: [5:12] Of course. Tom: [5:13] Doing it one step at a time is actually the way to overcome this. Take
it easy, the maturity of the client or the customer plays a big role in how much
we, as an integrator, allow in a first phase. We always try to say, take it easy because
big bang solutions are ready to fail. You shouldn’t try too much at once. Henrik: [5:34] Makes sense. Baby steps. Karl: [5:36] Yes. Lovisa: [5:37] It is a lot to cope with in Germany, within IT, within business. So
many things that are popping up. So basically when you’re doing those kind
of questions, you have to drive additional question marks within the company
that no one has addressed so far. So you’re getting into taxonomy, archiving,
lifecycle management, you name it, search tags. [6:01] All the kind of things that
make sense to put together in a nice harmonized way but no one has really had
the chance to do that in the past. So I would say stepping into DAM that’s also
stepping into all those open, let’s say small silos. [laughs] Getting that into one
big you know [laughs] . Henrik: [6:20] And what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals
and people aspiring to become DAM professionals. Lovisa: [6:24] I would say, I went to one of the global DAM events four years
ago as a kind of “DAM for dummies” for me. It was totally new to me. That I
found really good because I got quite a broad input because you had the business
track, you had the technology track, and so on. Also being able to speak to
the people behind the project. Both the successful ones and also the failures. Henrik: [6:49] Exactly. Lovisa: [laughs] [6:50] Which was even more interesting. Basically getting to
know people, also being able to listen to, what were the pitfalls. Can we avoid
doing the same mistakes? Are there people there that can help us with certain,
let’s say parts that we cannot manage within our organization? So I think a kind
of mixture of trying to understand what you want to do. [7:13] Having good advisers
on board and having a good network of people that you can call and say,
“How do we manage this? How do you do that?” Henrik: [7:21] Excellent. Karl: [7:22] Yes, having that advisory board and being able to get that feedback
about the good and the bad. What’s good about being here now this time
around is that we’re now able to present our success and our discoveries back
and contribute now to the other people working with DAM. Having had the
access to the information now being able to contribute information back is a
good thing. Henrik: [7:44] Excellent. Tom: [7:45] I think what’s interesting also in this DAM space is that it’s almost in
between marketing and IT. An impossible bridge to make most of the time but
that’s the beauty of it that you open up your eyes and you hear the stories from
both sides which I think is a rich experience for anybody to have. Henrik: [8:08] Excellent. Karl: [8:09] If you’re going into practical requirements, for example, I would say
preparation, preparation, and preparation to go into a project. Really know exactly
what exactly it is that you want to accomplish, and what the requirements
from the users are. Don’t just build a DAM because it’s cool to have DAM. If
there’s a need, use case, take that, establish and use that as your grounds for
going forward. Henrik: [8:30] Great points. Lovisa: [8:31] I think also, in terms of a rise or looking into what we can gain
from it. I think not only calculating what does it cost or what do we gain, but
also say that it’s not really a choice, it’s really necessary. There isn’t really a, “No
we can’t do this.” So it’s more about saying, “What can we gain over time?”
[8:53] So there’s a basic implementation first, and then you can do anything to
gain leverage based upon that so the more you add, of course, the more return
on your investment you will get. It’s really nice to have the foundation in place
and now everything we add to that will just be beneficial to the business. Henrik: [9:11] Excellent. Tom: [9:12] I could add something about technology if you want. So technology-wise
I would advise to be open for anything and pick the best in breed of specific
use cases. Don’t try to go just with one silo big thing. Just open your eyes,
talk to a mixologist, and he or she will help you get your solution together. Henrik: [9:37] Thank you. Lovisa: [9:38] Thanks. Karl: [9:38] Thank you. Henrik: [9:39] For more on this and other 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.
Another DAM Podcast 