SPECTRUM 2001 CONFERENCE NOTES

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Digital Asset Management: Getting off the Launchpad!

Co-Moderated by:

Joyce Vogt
Technical Sales Consultant
Banta Digital Group

Jean Moxom
Print Media Markets Manger
Imation

(Please note that this session was part of the Spectrum webcast and will be available later on in video format. Many portions of the presentation included videotaped interviews.)

According to Jean and Joyce, Digital Asset Management is a set of tools for organizing, locating, and reusing all digital files on your system, which means its not just for print, or online media, but a much more encompassing corporate level of organization.

You can purchase shrink-wrapped DAM systems, but you'll probably run into many surprises in your implementation. It is recommended that you work with an integrator to formally gather your requirements and then find some choices for you to work with. Larger companies may have the sys-tems and business analysts needed to do this work in house. According to Jeff Bartol, you may want a consultant to help you first start the process, help you do the long term planning, and help deliver a document that provides you with a DAM plan. This plan then becomes the starting point for the inte-grator. The integrator's deliverable is the final, working system, and they may be helpful in providing training. It is recommended that your consultant and/or integrator should not be aligned to a single vendor's product line. The consultant and integrator that you work with should be free to select the right product for your requirements, rather than being stuck trying to figure out how to work your requirements into a "pre-selected" DAM asset.

DAM systems may provide for any combination of the following features:

• Publishing content management
• Business document management
• Audio, Video, and MAM support
• Web content management
• Brand Management
• CAD drawing management
• Logistics and supply chain management
• Customer relationship management
• Rights management
• Knowledge management

Furthermore, users have different perspectives on the role of DAM. For instance, advertising agencies are managing customer's assets on their behalf, which is different than a cataloger whose asset man-agement is tied specifically to the catalogs themselves. A cataloger would want to re-use images, but a magazine may not re-use images. In addition to feature and function, DAM needs vary depending on scope. For instance a single site (corporate) use of DAM, is different in scale than a corporation that is sharing its assets with its business partners, suppliers, ad agencies, distributors, printers, and so forth.

Given the match between user's documented requirements and features, function, and scope, there are a few types of DAM that can be selected by the user, including:

1. Off-the-shelf purchase of DAM software
2. Customized DAM applications environments
3. Outsourced DAM services, often from prepress companies
4. Internet/ASP (Application Service Provider)

Regardless of which approach is taken, the files should reside where they are needed and used in pro-duction or business. The DAM system should only track where those assets are. For instance, Bosch & Lomb selected an ASP model because they have a worldwide network of offices in 31 different com-panies. They have save $400,000 in "hard dollars" in 2001 by implementing DAM. Soft dollars are important to consider as well. For instance, people often get into a habit of using laborious methods of searching around for a file and getting the image they need for a job. In addition to the lost labor hours, production timelines also suffer, but because this "is how it is," the cost of this wasted time is not immediately obvious. Bosch & Lomb reports that they have been able to reduce staffing levels and deal with corporate downsizing because their DAM provided the infrastructure they needed. Unfortu-nately, being an infrastructure development for most companies, it's hard to make the ROI case up front, because the soft dollar savings are large, but hard to prove without a reference DAM implemen-tation. For instance, at Capitol One Financial, their primary DAM goal was to reduce cycle time and short the time to market for their marketing communications.

DAM, once implemented, often opens new avenues for both suppliers and their customers. Some user report that DAM led customer to automate portions of their communications operations. Some clients, reports one agency, look for asset management systems as part of their selection criteria for a new agency. Jane Hunt of Radioshack also picked an ASP model, but they installed their own servers and run the ASP from internal systems. They loaded 10,000 photographs into the system, and deconstructed Quark files to load copy into the database.

The keys to a successful DAM project include:

1. Understand the business motivation behind the project and stay true to it.
2. Know the requirements for the system internal to your company and between your company and your customers and suppliers.
3. Everyone who is going to be involved with the system must have buy-in.
4. Include customer input and buy-in. Client's may articulate needs that you won't think of.
5. Don't expect the system to stand by itself - Training of users is going to be the key to getting users to accept and use the system.
6. Users also emphasize clear communication between all system stakeholders, and periodically re-mind project participants of the goals, objectives, and motivations behind the project.
7. Most importantly, good project management is the key to DAM implementation. Project man-agement must include limiting "requirements creep" (where users continually add on require-ments), articulating timelines and enforcing milestones.

It is recommended that you develop a project team that includes representatives of all of the types of stakeholders that will use the system, and that this group manage the project. This approach will help resolve conflicts, establish and maintain buy-in, and keep the lines of communication open. It's also tempting to design a system that solves all of your DAM problems that may have too long of a time-line. Rather than having a "grand plan" with an 18 month, two year, or longer timeline, consider break-ing up your "grand plan" into stages with smaller deliverables so that you can achieve and deliver successes and benefits along the way: an another important method of maintaining buy-in by stakeholders. When selecting a DAM software vendor, look at the system on the network or platform that you are using, and even consider visiting a current user to see how the software is used.

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