Another DAM Podcast

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Karuana Gatimu on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why does a footwear company use Digital Asset Management?
  • Is it about the technology or strategy when it comes to Digital Asset Management?
  • What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Karuana Gatimu.
Karuana, how are you?
Karuana Gatimu: [0:11] I’m excellent. Thank you for inviting me.
Henrik: [0:14] Karuana, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Karuana: [0:17] Digital Asset Management came into my life actually as an offshoot
of Enterprise Content Management. I’m an Enterprise Content Certified
Practitioner. I spent about 20 years in the business doing different sorts of
custom apps and helping organizations find their information. As I moved into
the video world and live events and doing web production and print, Digital
Asset Management was a logical offshoot of all of my history.
Henrik: [0:44] Excellent. Why does a footwear company use Digital Asset
Management?
Karuana: [0:49] Skechers USA, which is a global footwear company, needs
Digital Asset Management because we produce literally thousands of product
images. We have commercials. We have archive clips of conferences and events.
[1:02] A lot of content that we used to tell the story of our company, at different
times during the year. Being able to locate that information, put it together to
be able to create new content, and keep people getting to the information efficiently,
is really important to us.
Henrik: [1:19] Sounds like it. Karuana, is it about the technology or the strategy,
when it comes to Digital Asset Management?
Karuana: [1:24] You know that’s my favorite subject.
Henrik: [1:26] Of course.
Karuana: [1:27] I know that’s why you asked me that question. I really feel it is
about the strategy. Every day, I get about 50 vendor voice mails on my line at
work. They’re all telling me about how they can increase my revenue or give
me this wonderful piece of technology that I desperately need for my customer
experience. [1:48] At the end of the day, I’m in charge of knowing what the business
needs actually are. I think that for anybody in the DAM community, it’s very
important for us to be able to separate what are true services and features that
we need to deliver to the enterprise, and what is the fluff.
[2:05] Nobody can define that. A vendor can’t define that for you. A consultant
can help you. A research agency can help you but the vendors themselves, have
their own agenda. It’s very important that you plug those very worthwhile vendors
into your over reaching strategy.
[2:22] For a company like Skechers, for instance, because we don’t have a monetization
model, we’re not a broadcast network. Consequently, the information
and the services I’m trying to deliver are different than if I was A&E or HBO or
somebody like that.
[2:36] I think it’s really important that we have to know our own business. Devise
our strategy based on the needs of business and the evolution of our business
and partner with people out there in the partner ecosystem, that understand
those needs as we articulate them.
[2:53] I think in that, it really gives us a good foundation in which to continue to
build because it’s never done. The work is never done. There’s always more to
do. There’s always more services I can deliver, and the technology is evolving. If
you take a look at what’s happened recently over the last few years with social,
and how that’s changed marketing operations and the needs for assets and
what have you, we can anticipate that more of that is coming.
[3:17] So knowing our strategy is a really good thing.
Henrik: [3:20] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Karuana: [3:26] If you are an existing DAM professional, keep the faith. We’re
moving. Don’t lose your enthusiasm. This is an iterative process, and we just
have to keep moving forward. Because as more user generated content, corporate
generated content, and social generated content comes to us, it’s going to
become very important for us to build really well thought out systems. [3:50] So
if you’re already here, then stay. Because the people who are coming are going
to need our experience, strength and hope, as we move forward. I think that if
you’re interested into getting into Digital Asset Management, you have to think
about what you are really passionate about.
[4:07] Is it the technology side, in terms of for instance, database architecture or
technological implementations? Is it the strategy side, in terms of how Digital
[4:16] Asset Management affects business and can be used by business? Or is
it the marketing and creative side, or licensing in the sense of the monetization
and reuse and repurpose of creative content?
[4:28] I think it’s really important to know where you fall within the different layers
of DAM, and then develop your expertise as you move forward. It’s a great segment
to be in. It’s growing by leaps and bounds. There’s a tremendous amount
of exciting content, and vendors out there are doing unique things. It’s a real
great time to be involved in DAM.
Henrik: [4:49] Great. Thank you so much.
Karuana: [4:52] I appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me, and we will see
you later.
Henrik: [4:55] Great. For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is also 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.

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

Another DAM Consultancy can help. Schedule a call today


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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?

Another DAM Consultancy can help. Schedule a call today


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Why Do I Need Metadata?

Based on the blog post from Another DAM blog:

Written and read by Henrik de Gyor

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


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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