Yes, you do. Governance touches all those things and more. Without it, your DAM may bring more chaos than order in the long run. Don’t leave it out or push it to the last minute. A DAM governance structure should be top of mind from the start of your DAM journey.

What is DAM governance?

As you’re already aware — and hopefully didn’t learn the hard way — a DAM doesn’t run itself. It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it system.

In the context of a DAM, governance is the practice of maintaining and evolving standards, policies and best practices. It encompasses the people, processes and technology involved with digital asset management at your company. 

Governance documentation defines the information, guidelines and policies that provide stability and keep your DAM running smoothly for the long term. This framework will prevent your DAM from turning into a junk drawer as your business and the system evolve, and stakeholders and end-users change commitments and flow in and out of your company. 

Documented governance policies support risk management and ensure ongoing alignment with your overall business goals. DAM governance also includes continually collaborating with stakeholders to manage, change and adapt your system to your organization’s needs. It establishes and maintains communication between all relevant stakeholders for sustained DAM success.

Where do I start?

Many of the questions you’re addressing during the set-up and launch of your DAM are the same questions you need to focus on when defining your governance policies. Multi-task! Save yourself from having to revisit those questions later by defining and documenting the answers from the start. 

Your governance documentation will be a living document that needs regular review and updating as your business and its priorities evolve. Like the DAM, it isn’t “set it and forget it.” You’ll thank yourself later if you remember it throughout your DAM journey rather than wait until a problem arises.

Your governance plan should address the following questions:

• What goes in the DAM?
• Who has access to the DAM? Which areas of content can they see with that access? And what are they allowed to do with the content they can see? 
• What are the required naming conventions?
• Who is applying metadata? What standards and requirements do they have to follow?
• How will versioning be handled?
• What are your licensing and regulatory requirements?
• How are expired assets handled? What is the archiving process?
• Who is responsible for providing training?
• Who is responsible for enforcing and updating the DAM standards and requirements?
• How will changes and updates be communicated to your users?
• What is the reporting process when something goes wrong? Who is responsible for resolving which types of issues (technical, legal, content, etc.).

Does this list seem overwhelming right now? Then start with a basic purpose statement and build from there as you go. Why does your DAM exist? Who is it for, and what goals is it expected to achieve?

Dig deeper: A 12-step guide for implementing a digital asset management system

Keeping the peace: Working with DAM stakeholders

Putting your DAM policies and process requirements on paper is the easy part. Generating buy-in and enforcing those policies and requirements is where the hard work comes in. Your governance documentation has no value if its contents aren’t being implemented and enforced. 

Your DAM is likely an enterprise-level system that must meet the needs of varying and, in some cases, competing divisions and departments within your company. Those departments need to have a voice if your DAM will be successful. 

Don’t forget that you also have stakeholders in business areas that aren’t directly handling the assets flowing in and out of your DAM but have a vested interest in the success and proper management of the system. Your IT and legal teams need a voice alongside your marketing and creative teams. Buy-in from all levels of the organizational chart is critical to your DAM’s success — from leadership to end-users. You must look at the DAM user experience from all angles to get the full picture and provide the best experience. The key to making all this work is communication.

Be thorough when defining the roles and responsibilities of all your stakeholders. Make your expectations for their commitment to the DAM’s success clear. You want active and engaged stakeholders, and if someone isn’t living up to the expectations of their role, you should feel empowered to seek a replacement. 

Be sure you’re referring to roles and not specific personnel names or titles in your documentation. People will leave the company or take on new internal commitments, and org charts will change. When new members are onboarded into the DAM team, having well-defined roles for them will ease the transition. 

Likewise, be conscious of always giving everyone an equal voice. When you have a mix of strong personalities on your team of DAM stakeholders, it can be difficult not to give in to the loudest voice in the room or defer to the stakeholder representing the largest group of end-users.

You may consider instituting a voting policy for major decisions involving the DAM as part of your governance plan to give everyone an equal opportunity to help determine the path forward. Everyone needs to feel heard, or engagement will suffer.

Engaging regularly with your stakeholders from day one of your DAM journey will set the project off on the right foot. Begin holding meetings before your DAM is open to any end-users. Regularly review and address user feedback, assess if changes are needed to your processes and policies and evaluate the potential need for technical upgrades. Getting governance to stick in an already active system is exponentially more difficult. Not impossible, but challenging. 

If you wait to address governance with your users and stakeholders until after the system has launched, most major decisions have been made. Getting everyone involved from the beginning fosters a feeling of ownership for the DAM and encourages ongoing investment in its success. 

As your DAM moves through planning and launch into maintenance, your meeting cadence may become less frequent, but there is never an end. Meetings should continue so that you keep your stakeholders and your users involved. Their value doesn’t decrease once the DAM has rolled out and the governance documentation is written. 

As the DAM evolves and grows, decisions will still need to be made, and they should always remain involved in those decisions. While the existing governance policies will guide future decisions, remember it is a living document. Always have clearly defined channels for stakeholders and end-users to offer feedback and suggestions for changes and improvements to workflows and processes. 

Don’t hide your governance documentation away in a secret location. Make sure it’s easily accessible and open for users to review at any time. Always be open to questions and feedback about the documentation. 

Dig deeper: Here’s why you need a DAM workflow — and how to map it out

I don’t need governance: I have a DAM manager

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that having a dedicated DAM manager role is your governance. Yes, they likely have a degree in library science or DAM management and are certainly well-versed in all the DAM best practices. They talk with users and consider their needs and opinions. So aren’t they ultimately responsible for all the decisions? They know the “right” way to manage a DAM — that’s why you hired them. 

Well, sorry, but no. Having a single system manager unilaterally making all the decisions with no governance policies guiding them isn’t ideal. It’s certainly not the best way to get buy-in and have your users feel a sense of ownership for the system they’re using. And while the DAM manager may know all the best practices, they aren’t using the DAM every day as an end-user from all the different facets of your user base. 

Yes, best practices are best practices for a reason, but they don’t always work for every scenario and situation. You can’t force a best practice if it is not the best solution for your particular users and their business needs. 

The DAM manager will use the governance policies to guide you forward and maintain standards and order, but they’ll also recognize that sometimes you’ll need to be flexible when it comes to best practices. If sometimes being best-practice-adjacent makes the end-users’ lives easier and doesn’t introduce risk or disorder, you have to be willing to give an inch or two. 

Happy DAM users are active DAM users who remain engaged in its long-term success. The success of the DAM depends as much on stakeholder and end-user involvement as it does the DAM Manager’s leadership.

The post How to define your DAM governance structure appeared first on MarTech.

You’ve selected your DAM vendor, now where do you go from here? Do you really need an implementation partner?

You may be fortunate enough to have an in-house IT team qualified and ready to guide you through building your DAM, but it’s more likely that you’ll be looking to hire a third-party vendor to guide you through the process and do the heavy lifting on the technical side.

The vendor is only one layer of a strong foundation, and it needs the reinforcement of an implementation partner before you start framing out the full DAM. A good partner will not only help you with the technical aspects of setting up your DAM but will assist you in developing long-term goals for your DAM and mapping the best course of action to accomplish them.

They’ll be your voice in communicating directly with the vendor, handling issues and support tickets, and advocating in your best interest. In part two of this two-part series on building a DAM foundation, we’ll discuss what to look for in an implementation partner.

What do I really need?

Selecting the right implementation partner can be just as, if not more, important than vendor selection. The primary factor in your selection is ensuring they have direct experience with the DAM platform you’ve chosen. Don’t accept anything less. 

You may be told that developers are Developers and code is code, so a competent developer with coding experience can figure out quickly how to work with your chosen platform. But do you really want them to be figuring it out as they go along and learn a new platform on your dime? Would you let a contractor with no experience learn as they go building your house? 

Do not:

• Be tempted by potential cost savings you might get upfront because you won’t actually save anything in the long term.
• Commit to a partner that does not have direct experience with your platform.
• Discount the value of a partner’s existing relationships with people working at your chosen vendor. (These can be very helpful if you are in the unfortunate position of working through a major vendor support issue.)

Go with the easy solution?

The DAM vendor you’ve selected may likely recommend an implementation partner. Know that you’re not obligated to use that specific partner. Certainly, consider them as one of your options, but speak to other partners for comparison.

The vendor-recommended partner may not be a good fit for you for any number of reasons — budget, working style, etc. — so don’t feel pressured to choose them over other options.

Establishing a potential relationship

In your conversations with a potential implementation partner, you want to ensure long-term compatibility. Make sure you’re clearly communicating your needs and wants for the relationship so you’re on the same page. Be sure to cover these points:

• How will you be working? Do you plan to use the agile methodology during your DAM implementation, or does your company use the waterfall approach? Perhaps you’ll actually be using a combination of both agile and waterfall? Does the partner have experience with your chosen approach? Will they be able to work within your framework and timelines?
• Are there specific systems you plan on integrating with your DAM? Is the partner familiar with those systems? Do they have experience with those particular integrations?
• What are you expecting as far as the team roster? In addition to the developer role, who else will be on the implementation team? Do you require a QA resource, or do you plan on doing your own QA (quality assurance) and UAT (user acceptance) testing? Will you need guidance from a metadata and/or taxonomy specialist? What are your expectations for project management? Who will do what, and how many hours a week will they need to be dedicated to your project?
• Do you require assistance from the partner migrating content into the new DAM from existing storage and systems?
• What time zone is the implementation team in? Do you need them to be available for direct contact and meetings during specific hours?

And the most important thing to gauge about a potential implementation partner is how comfortable they are saying “no” to you. Having a partner who happily gives you any and every enhancement you ask for without question is dangerous. 

As I mentioned in the previous article on choosing a DAM vendor, over-customization can be very detrimental to site performance and functionality, and it can prohibit you from completing needed upgrades. Having a partner who will push back and clearly explain risks is invaluable. 

You want a partner who will be honest with you and tell you when a requested enhancement is ill-advised. But in cases where they do tell you no, they should, of course, also be willing to work with you on identifying a different solution that meets the business need without negative effects on your system.

Just like you did when selecting your DAM vendor, you should ask the implementation partner for references, as well as look to locate additional references on your own. Remember, you’re interested in the whole story — the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

Finally, when talking with a potential partner, don’t discount how important it is that you should not only be impressed with their knowledge and skills but also simply feel that you’ll enjoy working with them. You’ll spend long hours with this team and working through tough decisions, so they should also match your team personality-wise. It won’t necessarily make the work easier, but it will make it more enjoyable.

Ready to build

Take your time and be confident in your selections of both vendor and implementation partner. Together, they’ll form the foundation upon which you build your DAM. 

The stronger the foundation, the stronger and more successful the DAM. Starting with the sturdiest foundation you can build with a team of proven builders you trust can only save you time and money down the road.

Dig deeper: A 12-step guide for implementing a digital asset management system

The post Implementation partner: The final brick in your DAM foundation appeared first on MarTech.

But what do you base your decisions on? How can you be confident you’re making the right selections for your business? There are a few key factors to keep in mind as you navigate the decision process. In the first article of this two-part series, we’ll focus on selecting your DAM vendor. 

Show me the money

While we all wish it wasn’t, budget may be the top consideration in choosing which DAM vendor you’ll move forward with. Don’t get discouraged if your preferred vendor is outside your budget and there’s not enough wiggle room to negotiate lower rates. There’s a wealth of DAM vendors on the market today for every budget. You probably know the big players — Adobe, OpenText, Censhare, etc. — but they’re not the only choices. A well-known name and high price tag do not necessarily translate to a higher quality product. 

Much of the success of your DAM will be the result of how you set up your taxonomy, metadata and workflows. The DAM system itself is only the framework for those key elements. And the vendor you start with doesn’t need to be the vendor you stay with forever. You may choose a more basic starter DAM to get the project off the ground and use it as the baseline for demonstrating the value a DAM brings to your organization. 

If and when you outgrow your starter DAM and are in the market to upgrade, you’ll have metrics and happy end users to aid you in negotiating a higher budget. You’ll also have valuable insight into your organization’s must-haves and nice-to-haves as you add to your established foundation.

Dig deeper: A 12-step guide for implementing a digital asset management system

Narrowing down the options

Choosing a vendor with experience working with companies similar to yours may be beneficial, especially during the requirements gathering phase. In preliminary conversations with potential vendors, ask about their existing clients. Are they comparable to your business in terms of size, structure and industry? 

If you read my previous article and followed my advice to collect and analyze your content prior to starting your vendor search, you’re prepared to ask a potential vendor if their existing clients have a similar mix of content in terms of file types and sizes. Do they also have similar regulatory and/or legal requirements around some or all of their content? 

Be sure to ask for references at the beginning of the process so you have ample time to set up discussions with them. If a vendor can’t or won’t provide any references, that’s a definite red flag.

In conversations with the provided references be sure to ask about both positives and negatives. How specifically did the vendor handle the negatives? Not everything is going to go perfectly smoothly with any vendor, but how the issues are handled and what support is provided makes a significant difference throughout the DAM building process. 

Don’t just speak to the references provided by the vendor. Lean on your network to obtain a few references of your own. Utilize your LinkedIn contacts, reach out to colleagues you’ve met at conferences, or speak to former co-workers who have moved on to new companies and new DAMs. The vendor will provide you with references that they’re confident will speak highly of them, but you want the good, bad and the ugly. 

If you have either existing or future systems on your roadmap that will integrate with the DAM, such as websites, product information management (PIM) or workflow management tools, ask the vendor about how easily their DAM integrates with those specific or similar systems. It’s also helpful to ask any references you consult about their experiences setting up and maintaining integrations with the DAM.

Meet and greet

Once you’ve got your short list of potential vendors, it’s time to schedule demos. This is where the fun begins and you get to see some DAMs in action. Before you bring a vendor on-site, you’ll need to put together a list of use cases you want them to cover in their demo.

When gathering your use cases, include all of your stakeholders and make sure you’re getting the perspective of all categories of end users, from uploaders to downloaders and everyone in between. And don’t forget about your IT and Legal department representatives. They’ll have specific requirements and concerns outside of those of the typical day-to-day end users. 

This is not the time to hold back and carefully curate your wish list. You really want to see all that the DAM can do. In the interest of time though, separate your use cases into the must-haves and nice-to-haves to make sure you get through all the must-haves. What are the deal breakers in terms of requirements your DAM must meet? 

Make sure your use cases cover the entire asset workflow from upload to download, including metadata, approvals, versioning, searching and archiving.

• What type of asset security and permissioning do you need?
• Are you interested in AI capabilities or other automation?
• Does your DAM need to accommodate files and metadata in multiple languages and support users who speak languages other than English?
• How about your integration needs?

While you’re putting together use cases, gather a set of your company’s assets and request that the vendor use those for their demo. Make sure you have a variety of file types and sizes. Not only do you want to make sure their DAM accommodates all of your required file types and sizes, but it gives you a better idea of the final product to see your own assets flowing through the DAM.

Think of it in the same way as buying a house and picturing your belongings in the space during the showing. You also want to see how the vendor handles assets that are new to the system and not part of their standard polished and rehearsed demo. If an error occurs during the demo with one of your files, how do they handle it? 

Dig deeper: The case for digital asset management

Too good to be true or the perfect fit?

Beware of too many yeses as you ask questions during the demo. Make sure the vendor is clear about which features and functions are out of the box and which are custom. The vendor may be telling you over and over that they can customize the system to give you anything you want, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. Not only can that quickly drive up costs and prolong your project timeline, but over-customization can lead to performance and stability issues. In some cases, it can also prohibit future enhancements and upgrades. 

If you’re told that specific features you’re requesting aren’t available now but are on the roadmap for a future release, get a sense of the timeline. If there’s no specific release date or at least a projected time range, be wary. You could be waiting years if you see the new features at all without having to go the custom route.

Ready to build

Take your time and be confident in your vendor selection. Don’t rush through the process and don’t be afraid to keep asking questions if something isn’t clear or seems too good to be true. The sturdier the foundation, the stronger and more successful your DAM will ultimately be. 

The post How to build your DAM foundation appeared first on MarTech.

Where are my assets?

Before you can decide on an appropriate DAM system and the amount of storage you’ll need, you need a complete picture of what you’re working with regarding the number of assets and file sizes. If your company produces a large volume of high-resolution video assets that will be stored in the DAM, that can take up a significant amount of storage space. It’s never too soon to start unearthing and gathering your company’s assets.

To get the most value out of your DAM, it needs to be the single source of truth for all of your assets. Leave no stone unturned. Account for all file types, including images, videos, documents and source files. Don’t assume that all of your assets are on the company shared drives. Shared drives are an excellent place to start, but make sure you’re also looking at Sharepoint sites, putting out a call for any external storage devices, and finding out if your users have a habit of storing things on their hard drives. Does your company work with agencies? Ensure they’ve supplied you with all the files they’re contractually obligated to provide.

Early indicators

Once you’ve made progress with gathering all your assets, look at what you’ve collected and see if you can start identifying some broad preliminary requirements:

1. What range of file types and sizes does your DAM need to accommodate?
2. Given the volume, depth, and history of assets you’re seeing, should everything go into the DAM from day one? Or does it make more sense to select a key date and upload every asset created from that day forward into the DAM while maintaining archival assets in another location? Remember that if you maintain archival assets in a separate location, they should be quickly and easily accessible by designated users. You’ll typically find that some legacy assets still approved for current use will fall outside the scope of what you’ve loaded into the DAM for its launch. These assets will need to be uploaded into the DAM as users request them.
3. Do you typically generate multiple renditions for single assets? For example, do you have not only the original version but also a thumbnail, small, medium, and large versions?
4. Will you need to account for versioning? When you upload a new version of an asset into your DAM, do you need to retain all previous versions for archival purposes and have them associated with the current version? Do the specific changes across versions need to be tracked?
5. Are there specific legal or regulatory requirements around some or all of your assets?

Seeing double. Or triple.

Another asset-related task you’ll want to address sooner rather than later is duplicates. With assets scattered across multiple locations, duplicate copies of the same assets are bound to be in multiple locations. They may all have the same file name, allowing them to be easily identified, or they may not. Often it can take the trained eye of your creative team or content experts to identify duplicate assets with differing file names.

The sooner you start identifying and weeding out duplicates while you’re gathering assets, the better. You’re likely already familiar with the “garbage in, garbage out” principle, and you should remember it when prepping assets for upload into your DAM. Sure, you could throw everything in there and clean it up later, but will you? And in the meantime, how much confusion is it causing for your end-users, some of whom are being exposed to a DAM for the first time? You need to find time and resources to address the duplicates sometime, so make it a priority to do it before you’re ready for that bulk upload of assets into your shiny new DAM. You could be saving yourself time in not duplicating work by putting metadata on assets that will likely be deleted shortly after uploading to the DAM.

Who’s driving this DAM train? And who’s along for the ride?

Seriously consider bringing in a DAM librarian. The sooner, the better. You may be hesitant about spending part of your DAM budget on a full-time librarian, and yes, I may be a bit biased about this point, but it will be worth every penny. Having a librarian dedicated to the project from the beginning is especially crucial if this is your company’s first DAM. And to get the most out of your investment, find someone with the trifecta of DAM experience: selecting, setting up, AND maintaining a DAM. Bring them in as soon as possible. It will save you time and money in the long run because they can save you from making decisions early on that you’ll have to devote resources to fixing later.

As a librarian who has helped three companies launch DAMs, I know very well what not to do, and I can guide you away from making decisions you’ll regret later. Waiting to bring someone in until you realize you’re in over your head and have made some not-so-optimal decisions means your librarian could potentially spend months, if not years after they’ve arrived in “fix-it” mode while doing damage control and trying to convince users they can trust the system that did not make the best first impression.

If your DAM Librarian is the driver of your train, your stakeholders are your first-class, VIP passengers. Identifying them and getting their commitment to the project should happen as early as possible. This allows time for them to get any necessary approvals from their leaders and prep their schedules for the time commitment. When identifying stakeholders, make sure you include people from each separate division of your company that will engage directly with the DAM. Any group or department that will include regular end users of the DAM should be represented. And don’t forget that the IT and Legal departments need to be included.

While you want to ensure you have a voice from each relevant area of the company, be careful about establishing too large of a stakeholder group, which could make discussions unwieldy and lead to issues coming to a consensus. Part of the stakeholder’s role is to represent their respective division and be a single voice for them in meetings, so only one stakeholder per area is required. Clearly define for your stakeholders the parameters of the role and your expectations. Be sure that they know the time commitment that will be involved, and get their commitment that they’re willing and able to remain fully engaged for the duration of the work. The participation of your stakeholders can significantly help or hurt the progress and timeline of your project, so set clear expectations right from the start.

While your DAM journey will ultimately be rewarding, there will be ups and downs along the way. Taking these few specific first steps will start your journey off on the right track and set you up for future success.

The post We’re implementing DAM! Where do I start? appeared first on MarTech.