Another DAM Podcast

Audio about Digital Asset Management

Category Archives: Workflow


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Another DAM Podcast interview with David Barron on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why does a organization focused on sporting goods use Digital Asset Management?
  • What is the big idea behind using master images in a DAM workflow?
  • 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 David Barron. David,
how are you?

David Barron: [0:10] Hey, Henrik. I’m doing great.

Henrik: [0:13] David, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

David: [0:16] I’ve been in production most of my career, since I got out of college
in 1989. I managed a service bureau for about three years in the early ‘90s,
which gave me most of my troubleshooting capabilities. Then I worked in advertising
and marketing throughout the rest of that 20 years, where I worked at
places like CAPS Digital and Leo Burnett. I worked at a HBO startup company.
[0:46] I worked at The Marketing Store, the Integer Group and SM Marketing,
and several other places that I started to do a little consulting with. I was a production
artist who also did photo retouching and design. But always doing tech
support, too. Probably because, as a Macintosh user, the IT departments don’t
always fully support the Macintosh platform. So there was always a lot of technical
stuff that had to go on.
[1:21] I started thinking about Digital Asset Management while I was working
at The Marketing Store and trying to get a system in there that would help
us to manage our digital assets. That’s where I fell in love with Digital Asset
Management, and all the capabilities that you can have with Digital Asset
Management. Although I was a production artist at that time, I had to assume
the role of a Digital Asset Manager and technologist.
[1:55] I started here at Wilson Sporting Goods, two years ago, as a Digital Asset
Management Consultant, for their Xinet system that they put in. I had purchased
the exact same system at The Marketing Store, five years prior. I started to
consult on that system because I had known it really well. After about a year of
being here, they hired me full time, where I administered the asset management
system. I can still consult the designers on best practices as I continue to oversee
things from the front end, all the way to the back end of the system.

Henrik: [2:42] Why does an organization focused on sporting goods use Digital
Asset Management?

David: [2:47] I would argue that every company that creates digital artwork and
videos needs some level of Digital Asset Management. Once you have one file,
you have the need for Digital Asset Management, and you have some level of
managing that. So much is being created digitally. At Wilson Sporting Goods,
they create a dizzying amount of graphics per year. Small, 20 some creative
services, employees crank out work like crazy, every day.

[3:22] We have our own staff photographer who’s been working tirelessly here for 27 years. Just taking product shots. There’s terabytes of data, images and tons of people who need them. So wrangling these assets for internal use alone could be considered valuable.
But there’s offices worldwide, partners and dealers that all want to have an
image of “The Duke”, or whatever product they’re trying to sell for their website,
for their own catalogs.

[4:02] Trying to find these assets and getting them the correct one, the one
that’s retouched and outlined or whatever, is a big challenge. So Digital Asset
Management is key here.

Henrik: [4:17] What is the big idea behind using master images in a
DAM workflow?

David: [4:24] The master image paradigm is one that I’ve been percolating in
my brain for several years now. While working at marketing agencies, the workflow
as always to see each job as a closed loop, a single entity. All the art created
for that one job remained in a links folder, in a job folder. Even if you were
working on several pieces with the same images, you’d often duplicate those
images into the links folder of the new job, in order to keep a collection of files
current for that single entity. [4:58] If a product or image changed at the 11th
hour, which never happens, I understand. You were up late replicating those
changes to all those separate folders and all those separate files, and derivatives.
The thought came, “Couldn’t we just keep an image library to link to,
instead of all this duplication?”

[5:19] It was always work that nobody wanted to do or had time to work on.
Even though, in the end, it would have saved time. So this master image idea
was born out of this frustration in production. The temptation to collect all
the images into a job folder is pretty strong, but when the files are linked to a
master image in the master image library, the benefits are pretty fierce.

[5:44] That image is what I heard called, at Henry Stuart New York this year, “The
single version of the truth.” The high resolution images come in or are shot,
and they’re tagged with metadata. They get outlined, retouched, and they go
into the master image library, nested into several folders of hierarchy. You might
have a football folder and inside of that, NFL footballs and leather footballs.
They get nested into this library, like digital shelves.

[6:19] So everybody knows where they are. We keep two of them, one for in
progress images and one for published images or files that are ready to go
to the general public. But there’s only one file that is current. So that changes
to that one file, happened on that one file. Any of the work that’s being used,
that’s all they have to do, update the image in that layout.

[6:47] That way, there is no migration at the end of the job, where we take all
those images and then file them accordingly, so that people can see the images
and grab the images from the latest catalog. They’re already there. There’s no
wondering whether or not, “Was it this image, or this one next to it that looks
similar, that was used in this catalog?”

[7:14] Because they’re linked, and the DAM system shows that link. The files are
tagged with the name in that catalog. It’s really been revolutionary when it’s
done properly. The one thing that really makes it work, because a lot of people
have said, “What if I have a Photoshop file that’s got several images composited
in there? I’ve got to make a new file. How do I track what files are being put in
that Photoshop file?”

[7:50] It’s really difficult. You can put it into metadata. I’m really encouraging
people, now with WCS platform, you can do a lot of compositing effects in
InDesign and Illustrator, for that matter. Although I’m sort of against doing any
page layout or major Photoshop compositing in Illustrator. But to do your compositing
within InDesign, it just makes everything so much easier.

[8:28] Because of the transparency effects that you can do, you don’t have to
be afraid of transparency. You just have to work a little bit differently, because
you’re not working with pixels in InDesign, but if you can do your composites in
InDesign, you still maintain that link to the master image. If you need to move
things around, it’s a lot easier to move things around in one program than it is to
have to go back into Photoshop, make those changes, and move it in.

[8:57] Then resizing, if you’re doing a banner for one person and an ad that has
to look the same, your resizes are a lot easier. You don’t have to worry about
making multiple file images. That’s been a challenge to get that through, but
when it’s done, and I’ve seen it done really well, with all kinds of things, like
reflections and drop shadows and set down shadows, color and vignettes, and
everything, all done in InDesign. The time savings alone are worth it. Just in
terms of versatility.

Henrik: [9:33] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

David: [9:39] I would say that if you’re aspiring to be in Digital Asset
Management, some people say that you need to be a student of library sciences.
Sadly, I don’t have that expertise. From my perspective, you really have
to know your users, more than the assets themselves. How they work, and the
needs and the skills of those users who are using the system more than library
sciences.

[10:12] Because you can easily put more than you need to into the
DAM system, or more than what the users need. That’s where your concentration
should be, is do your homework on who’s contributing to the workflow or
to the image library, and who needs to get the stuff out. Then you’ll have all the
answers you need.

Henrik: [10:40] Putting people first. That’s a great idea.

David: [10:41] Thanks.

Henrik: [10:43] Thanks, David.

David: [10:44] Henrik, it’s been a pleasure.

Henrik: [10:46] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
Blubrry, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.

Related Articles

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Philip Guiliano on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How do you use Digital Asset Management when it comes to Brand Change and Brand 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 Philip Guiliano.
Philip [0:10] , how are you?
Philip Guiliano: [0:12] I’m very good, thank you.
Henrik: [0:14] Philip, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Philip: [0:16] BrandActive is a brand implementation and management company.
This means that we get involved in large scale mergers, acquisitions, large
scale rebranding programs, and managements of brands that currently exist in
the market. [0:31] Our role is to be involved in the transition and management
of every single asset that a company has, from signage to vehicles to branded
environments, retail locations, documents, forms, uniforms, IT systems anything
that you can think of that is a physical or digital asset that carries the name,
logo, colors, any identity element of a brand.
[0:52] Our role is not to create the brand strategy or design. We don’t do any
of that creative development work. Our role is truly the implementation and
management.
[1:01] What that means is, through our process of scoping out the brand change,
through doing a detailed inventory of what are all of these assets around the
globe that the company controls. How do they manage that transition? What
are they going to do with each individual asset? What’s the project organization
look like, and how do you manage that process?
[1:22] Through that process, we gather tons of pictures, tons of examples, tons
of video, all of their current assets, as they exist today templates, files, all of
that. We gather a lot of robust data around the inventory, the cost elements, all
of that stuff that is related to those assets how they’re produced, how they’re
designed, how they’re procured.
[1:46] We put that into database systems. We then work with our clients to create
the workflows, drive those workflows through implementation and on through
brand management.
[1:59] As an organization, when it comes down to the system side, we use systems
internally, for ourselves. We also use systems that are client facing. We do
what we call a “brand implementation and brand management platform” that
drives the implementation of the brand across all these assets.
[2:19] So that’s location rollouts, things of that nature, all of their template refinements
around the globe empowering their employees with templates and processes
that they can use to rebrand their assets as well, or manage their brand
assets as they exist. We get involved in the creation of platforms like that.
[2:38] We also offer a Software as a Service Digital Asset Management platform,
built on the ADAM platform for small-scale and medium-scale clients that want
to get experience and exposure with how Digital Asset Management works,
what it’s capable of, what’s the value in it. We do a pilot test.
[2:55] That platform’s also available for large clients. Some of our larger clients
that are more global will use that platform to do a pilot program for a certain division
within the company or a certain department within the company. From a
systems basis, we do the brand implementation platforms and we do Softwareas-
a-Service DAM.
[3:17] We also do vendor agnostic consulting services, where we will go into a
company and define their requirements, look for a business case for systemization,
lead vendor selection programs, and project manage their implementation.
That’s how BrandActive’s involved.
Henrik: [3:35] How you use Digital Asset Management when it comes to brand
change and brand management.
Philip: [3:40] The way in which we use it is to empower our clients and empower
their employees with managing the very complex assortment of digital
and physical assets that they have. [3:55] I’ll use an example. When we’re going
through a brand implementation with a client that, say, has 60 manufacturing
facilities, 1,000 retail locations, and corporate offices and sales facilities around
the globe, there are lot of different assets that have to be transitioned. There
are all the locations, all the signage, all the vinyl graphics, all the millwork, all of
the documents, forms, everything.
[4:21] What we will do is collect all of this information, we will put it into a system,
and then we will create the workflows for those clients that will drive the transition
of those assets through to completion, so that they actually hit their target
dates. They have full cost visibility and full cost control, vendor management
control, again, across physical and digital asset creation.
[4:43] Their employees have the tools and the templates that they need to take
what is a final created asset and localize that, customize that, change language,
anything that they need to do. From a multilingual, from an asset integration,
from a data integration, across multiple systems anything they need to do in
that area to manage the creation of their digital and their physical assets.
Henrik: [5:10] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Philip: [5:13] Take your time. [laughs] That’s probably the best [indecipherable
05:16] . Honestly, I see so many programs and so many clients and prospects
that we’re dealing with that understand that they need a DAM solution or a
MRM solution, a MAM solution. [5:31] They understand what they’re doing
currently without tracking, without reporting, without metrics, without visibility
into how they can get operational improvement, without visibility into how
they’re spending their money, and how they could potentially save that money
by systemization.
[5:50] They understand that they need to change that, and they look into a
solution without truly defining their requirements. By that I mean, “What are the
business drivers? What problems are they trying to solve? What are the political
and cultural issues that are going to impede the program acceptance? What
solutions are really going to address their needs?”
[6:10] There are a lot of people that I’ve seen that have evaluated DAM and
MRM based on what seems like excellent functionality, and it is. It’s fantastic
functionality for companies that need that functionality. But the truth of the
matter is that that functionality would never get implemented at their company.
[6:26] They end up picking a vendor that is not actually going to live up to what
they really need. They may be a client that needs amazing customization across
their user interface and across their workflows. They need workflow automation
or they’re not going to live their business case. They end up picking the solution
that doesn’t allow them to be as flexible as they need to be in that area.
[6:47] Taking time to really define a business case for change, really understanding
the business drivers, the metrics, how you’re going to measure success in
the end program, and what you can measure currently to illustrate that success.
Really define your requirements that’s business, technical, functional, every
requirement that you can nail down so that you know what it is you’re evaluating
a vendor based off of, and that you are actually evaluating them based on
your needs.
[7:14] Engaging internal resources is a big one, throughout the process. As
we take people through business case development, and as we take people
through requirements development, we’re engaging resources across every area
of the organization.
[7:28] I definitely recommend doing that because these are the users of your
platform. These are the people that are really going to drive the success of the
platform. The earlier you engage them, the better the program’s going to be.
[7:38] I guess that brings up considering the cultural dynamics, as well. It’s very
similar for us and our brand implementation program. Really understanding the
culture dynamics, knowing what a solution is going to mean to the various users
within the organization, and what is going to stop them from using it.
[7:59] Having a solution alone definitely does not mean that people are going to
use it. Having the solution that isn’t built around the way people work within the
organization is absolutely going to assure they won’t use it.
[8:08] The engagement, training, and customization to the way people work,
understanding the workflows, and how you want to automate them. Definitely
including tracking and reporting, that’s going to be very key not only for acceptance
of the system at a user level but also executive level acceptance, and your
ability to continue to grow the program within the organization, beyond your
initial deployment.
Henrik: [8:33] Great. Thanks, Philip.
Philip: [8:34] Thank you very much. I appreciate the call and definitely appreciate
the time.
Henrik: [8:39] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
Blubrry, iTunes, and the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.

Related Articles

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic, Spotify, TuneIn, and wherever you find podcasts.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with William Bitunjac on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why does a national chain of merchandise stores use Digital Asset Management?
  • What advice would you 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 William Bitunjac.
William, how are you?
William Bitunjac: [0:09] Very good.
Henrik: [0:10] William, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
William: [0:12] At my company, I’m the Program Manager for all content management
tools for a large ecommerce program currently. I actually built the
Digital Asset Management content management strategy for our print marketing
lines prior to this, so converging on an enterprise view of content management
and Digital Asset Management. Picking apart the individual pieces, both
print and online individually, but now with an opportunity to look at converging
into single enterprise vision for it. Really, more heavily on the business side, in
terms of driving out strategy and then some of the delivery team responsibilities
as well.
Henrik: [0:52] Why does a national chain of merchandise stores use Digital
Asset Management?
William: [0:57] There’s a lot of numbers of reasons. Some of them are very similar.
It’s money savings. You only need to shoot a photo once, and you can reuse
it a lot of times. A lot of the reasons that have always been in the business case
for Digital Asset Management, not reshooting assets, photography that you’ve
lost, not spending time looking for things, some tighter control of brands, so
you’re only working on approved assets, approved content. [1:31] As I’ve looked
at it, beyond the initial benefits of creating libraries, centralization of knowledge,
and sharing, I’ve found incredible opportunity throughout automation. Tying
it with other content so some of the manual production work of getting assets
into layouts or to websites, managing workflows, managing approvals, the act
of centralizing assets and metadata has been an incredible benefit to further
automation.
[2:04] Getting the centralized library offers money savings on the business case
is giving tens of millions of dollars to the organization through asset reuse,
speed to market, and delivery of marketing materials. Instead of spending all of
your time trying to find the things that you need, creating new experiences has
become almost turnkey. The level of effort goes into creating incredible experiences,
not finding the materials that you need.
Henrik: [2:32] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
William: [2:37] My advice really comes from how I came to the position, into the
industry. I didn’t come as a career technologist. It really wasn’t my vision and my
dream to spend my entire life creating content management platforms. I was an
end user. I was a creative director. I was a photographer. I had a lot of passion
around knowledge management, but I was initially in a position to be one of the
beneficiaries of a system like these. [3:13] Staying close to your users, monitoring
what they’re using, keeping track of the strategic direction of the organization.
Again, the big benefit that I’ve seen has been turnkey generation of incredible
new experiences. If you know, strategy wise, where the business is going,
where the assets are coming from, you can actually turn your asset management
system into an innovation engine.
[3:38] In order to do that, you almost have to be less interested in the technology
and more interested in the business and the business users. The technology
becomes a tool to drive out people’s dreams. For me, my teams come from the
business, I spend my time with the business, and I have really, really, really, good
delivery partners who take care of the technology bits for me.
[4:01] Playing with the technology and learning about as many platforms as
possible is the second piece of advice. There are a lot of different ways to get
things done. The framework in most of the enterprise applications allows you a
lot of different ways to do things. If you know what’s in the toolbox, you can put
together just about any toy you want.
Henrik: [4:23] Thanks, William.
William: [4:25] Sure.
Henrik: [4:25] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks, again.

Related Articles

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic, Spotify, TuneIn, and wherever you find podcasts.

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Alex Wolff on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does a global beauty company use Digital Asset Management?
  • How has Digital Asset Management been able to save you time and money?
  • 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 Alex Wolff. Alex,
how are you?
Alex Wolff: [0:10] I’m doing excellent. How about yourself?
Henrik: [0:12] Great. Alex, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Alex: [0:17] I’m the Manager of Sales Technology for Coty Beauty. That’s actually
in the sales side, not on the technology side. I was tasked with finding a
solution for delivering images from our New York office to our field sales, which
are spread throughout the US, and also to customers, and occasionally to third
party vendors. [0:43] I had to go through the whole process of selecting a DAM
vendor and implementing that solution here, finding the right parties internally
to eventually own it, and in terms of moving the images from place to place
and distributing to the field. It was an exercise in replacing the manual effort of
burning disks, shipping them everyplace, and tracking those requests. It was a
lot of work being done here, a lot of manual stuff.
Henrik: [1:21] Sounds like it. How does a global beauty company use Digital
Asset Management?
Alex: [1:25] We use it a couple of different ways. There are various tools. The
very basis, everything starts with the idea for a graphic or an image. From the
time that image is developed and then eventually either shot, if it’s photography,
or created in Photoshop, or illustrated, the whole request and concept
needs to be tracked from person to person and approved as it goes from creative
to marketing to sales back to creative. [2:01] The Digital Asset Management
system helps keep the notifications moving. The next person in line in the workflow
has to be notified because the prior person approved it. That’s the basics.
Then it’s got to track where the images are stored in the file system so that
when a request comes in, it could be shipped out.
[2:24] The next piece is a library function, storing all of the images internally.
Then we needed a tool that was going to help us identify the images that were
ready, what we call our final, retouched images which is a small portion of the
thousands of images that we create. We make them available to the sales team
so they can provide them to customers for advertising or doing presentations at
sales meetings.
Henrik: [2:53] Excellent. Alex, how has Digital Asset Management been able to
save you time and money?
Alex: [2:59] My role is to find efficiencies for the sales team. Sales team had a
two to three, sometimes four, week wait for images, even if they were already
shot because we didn’t have a way of finding them and delivering them quickly.
I had to find a solution, and from there I back off except for procedurally and
user type administration. [3:22] It’s amazing, we’re using a company called
Widen as Software as a Service. Our people, now, go in, find all the images
that they’re looking for, provided they’ve been shot, and get them back in their
hands in 10 to 15 minutes no matter where they are in the world.
[3:40] One consultant estimated that it cut out about a half a million dollars in
waste in terms of efficiency because of how much time we spent tracking. A lot
of people forget that most of the time surrounding all this, it doesn’t take long
to burn a disk. It doesn’t take long to ship a disk. But you could take two or
three hours’ worth of phone calls tracking over the life cycle of a request.
[4:03] First, it’s cut out the time to market which is it used to take us two to three,
maybe even four, weeks to get images out to our sales team from New York.
That cost would be 60 people overnight shipment. You’d have $15 for an overnight
shipment times 60 people. So each set of requests might save us $900.
[4:29] Additionally, there the time that’s spent burning disks, the time wrapping
them and shipping them. The efficiencies that we’ve received by going to an
outside vendor really paid off.
Henrik: [4:41] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to be DAM professionals?
Alex: [4:47] I would start off with having a good foundation in library sciences.
They need to be somewhat technical, be familiar with Windows or the Mac
Operating Systems and the file systems. [5:04] The key to success is being able
to not store an image, it’s to be able to find an image. Categorization and
hierarchies are all things that people that are involved in DAM need to be able
to do very well to recognize what’s going to be effective or more to the point,
what’s not going to be effective.
[5:25] That will allow the end user who is not a librarian, to be able to quickly get
the assets in a timely fashion and delivered very quickly to the final destination.
Henrik: [5:42] Great. Thanks Alex.
Alex: [5:45] You’re so welcome.
Henrik: [5:47] For more on Digital Asset Management log on to
AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is now available on Audioboo,
Blubrry, iTunes, and the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.

Related Articles

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic, Spotify, TuneIn, and wherever you find podcasts.

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

Another DAM Consultancy can help. Schedule a call today