You’ve probably heard the expression “content is king”. Whether it’s support materials for a new marketing campaign, a product catalog, or a simple blog post, content helps drive business in the modern world, every single day. And because of this, your organization likely has a serious amount of photos, videos, graphics, and other marketing assets.

To manage these assets, many organizations use a traditional online document storage system. While this can work for a time, as their content library continues to grow, many find that their file-sharing solutions aren’t quite enough. If you find your organization in a similar situation, it may be time to graduate to a more sophisticated solution. The next step? Investing in a cloud-based digital asset management (DAM) system.

In this post we will cover

• Why Do Businesses Initially Choose File Sharing Solutions?
• Moving From a File Sharing System to a DAM
• When Should Organizations Consider Upgrading?

Why Do Businesses Initially Choose File Sharing Solutions?

Before we get into everything DAM, let’s take a look at what exactly a file-sharing system is and why many businesses choose to use one in the first place.

File-sharing systems manage data files on a singular computer, business network, or cloud platform. They’re primarily aimed at individuals or teams and are limited to storing, managing, and sharing documents and records.

One of the main reasons that companies choose a file-sharing system is for convenience. They have files that everyone needs access to, and the system promises to make it easier for companies to manage all files (documents, spreadsheets, photos, videos, etc.) in a centralized location and collaborate with co-workers and clients across great distances. In addition to convenience, cost is a top consideration for organizations that choose an in-house or online file-sharing service, as many file-sharing solutions, including Box, Dropbox, and others, offer free or low-fee accounts.

What Limitations Come From Using File Sharing Solutions?

There are 4 key limitations that companies face when using file-sharing solutions:

1. User Error: When systems have no defined admin roles or user permissions that are controlled by the organization, the library can quickly become the “wild west” where everyone can access everything. User error is inevitable and simple file sharing systems often don’t have enough safeguards in place to prevent this.
2. Narrow Search Capabilities: Finding media files, such as photos, videos, and audio files, can be challenging in a file-sharing solution. Searchable metadata is often limited to basic details such as name, upload date, etc., making it difficult for users to efficiently find what they’re looking for.
3. Reformatting Issues: When using file-sharing solutions, assets aren’t always stored in the format required. As a result, users need to make requests to the design team, as they’re unable to reformat the asset themselves.
4. Limited Scalability: While many file-sharing solutions start out relatively inexpensive, as the organization grows, the solution becomes significantly more expensive, especially when paying per user.

Moving From a File Sharing System to a DAM

Once organizations feel the limitations associated with file-sharing systems, they tend to begin looking for a better solution, like DAM.

Digital asset management systems (DAMs) are focused on managing media assets, such as photos, videos, animations, graphics, audio files, and more. A DAM enables your entire organization to quickly and easily find, use, render, and share the assets they need — when and where they need them, increasing ROI and improving collaborative work.

How Can a DAM Mitigate Problems Associated with File Sharing Systems?

Here are the top 4 ways that DAM can help organizations address the limitations of file-sharing systems and, ultimately, improve your team’s workflow:

1. Control: A DAM makes providing access to assets significantly more secure by enabling organizations with top-down control of how their digital assets are organized and who can access or use them.
2. Searching: With a DAM, users are able to search all metadata associated with assets, including embedded metadata, attributes, keywords, and categories. A DAM also enables filtering by star rating, asset type, and more.
3. Reformatting: A DAM enables users to choose the format and size of all assets when they download or share them. Users no longer need editing software or the help of their design team to get the assets they need.
4. Cost: A DAM system, like MediaValet, offers robust, enterprise-level software without enterprise-level costs and headaches. It’s quick, easy, and cost-effective to both set up and maintain the DAM over extended periods of time. There are no hardware costs, upgrades, or maintenance costs, and unlimited support is just a phone call away.

Along with addressing the problems associated with file-sharing systems, DAM solutions offer additional features that enhance user experience and boost overall productivity. Learn more about what a DAM has to offer.

When Should Organizations Consider Upgrading?

A lot of companies start the process of implementing a DAM when they get frustrated with the shortcomings of their current file-sharing system. The best way to evaluate if your file-sharing solution is simply not meeting your needs any longer (and if it’s time to look at other options) is to look for some of these indications:

• Fast company growth, which makes user access and permissions hard to manage,
• Ramping up the creation of visual media assets,
• A challenging number of asset requests that affect your team’s workflow, and
• Misuse or loss of assets.

The best course of action is to be one step ahead!

Get Ahead with a DAM

As the need for and creation of digital assets continues to grow, companies that invest in a more sophisticated solution will get ahead of the curve. If you’d like to set your company up for success with a cost-effective, scalable long-term solution, a cloud-based DAM is the way to go. See how your team can manage user permissions, easily search, render, and share assets, and improve workflows by booking a MediaValet demo today.

This blog post was originally posted in October 2015 and has been updated.

How we preserve history has changed. It no longer means primarily dealing with physical copies that we keep hidden away, boxed up, and covered in dust. Instead, it means truly securing records by converting them to digital formats and investing in digital archives. That’s the future (and if we’re being honest, present) of archiving and preservation.

Industries across the globe are already spending big money on digitizing their archives and preserving their histories. In fact, back in 2016, The Smithsonian museum spent $800 million USD keeping their various locations in operation–and $1.8 million of that was solely spent on digitizing their records. Fast forward to spring of 2021, when The Louvre announced: “For the first time, anyone can access the entire collection of works from a computer or smartphone for free, whether they are on display in the museum, on loan, even long-term, or in storage.” An estimated 482,000 works were digitized—about three-quarters of the museum’s collection.

These many examples make one thing clear — digitization is the future of archiving. In this post, we discuss exactly how the digitization of archives helps to preserve history, and why digital asset management is at the heart of these kinds of projects.

The Power of Digitization

The primary goal of any archive, aside from actual preservation, is to get people using the materials. Even before the pandemic, not everyone could physically make the journeys needed to access certain museums, libraries, or educational institutions and spend hours poring over historical documents. This influenced the big shift from paper documents and physical objects to digital photographs, videos, and documents—allowing people across the globe to access these assets from web-based systems. Archivists work to scan, upload and save physical remnants of the past as digital files, with the goal of creating accessible collections that will maximize their usability. Additionally, digitization ensures the preservation of achieves even if something were to happen to the original copy. This means that historical material can be captured and experienced in the best state possible and remain intact without having to worry about its protection.

“The current momentum for building large electronic archives that are accessible to a broad, international user-base, speaks to a collective desire not just from publishers and institutions, but also from individual librarians to preserve historical material for generations to come.”

De Gruyter

The Business Case for Digital Archiving

You don’t need to be The Smithsonian or The Louvre to invest in digital archives. In fact, recent data is showing that digital archiving reduces companies’ costs by more than 20%. So, there’s a strong business case for investing in the digitization of corporate archives, even for small-to-medium-sized businesses. According to the CEO of EAD Digital, a leading European digital transformation company, archiving impacts company efficiencies in three big ways:

• “Company workflows,
• allocated human resources, and
• costs related to physical archive storage spaces.”

Makes sense.

Digitization has always been important to allow remote access to company archives. Once professional teams became increasingly geo-dispersed and travel was almost non-existent, it became even more important to provide access to these kinds of records for people to be able to do their jobs or research remotely.

The digitization of company archives, with the right systems in place, helps business organizations with archive security, workflow, accessibility, and overhead costs.

Digital Asset Management for Archiving

The shift to digital archiving has made it inevitable—these historic assets need a new, digital home. Searching for the right solution can be challenging when considering the sensitivity and importance of historical archives, but many organizations have found cloud-based digital asset management (DAM) systems to be the perfect solution.

A digital asset management system (DAM) provides one, central location for all digital renditions of historical assets and helps companies to manage, organize, share and distribute their archived content whenever and wherever they need. By providing self-serve access to assets with a DAM, organizations are able to find the assets they need more quickly and efficiently than ever before while maintaining the security of their possessions.

Many organizations choose a DAM to host their historical archives because it offers these 3 critical features:

1. Enhanced search capabilities for better discoverability,
2. Flexible access permissions for a wide range of users, and
3. Advanced security for sensitive historical records.

Let’s dive into each feature in more detail below.

1. Enhanced Search Capabilities

As libraries acquire more and more material for their large digital collections, it becomes more difficult for them to stay organized. A DAM offers sophisticated search capabilities that allow users to search for assets using keywords, dates, and more. Even if there are millions of assets to sift through, finding what you’re looking for is as simple as typing in a keyword and using filters to narrow down the search. These qualities of a DAM not only allow industries to feel confident in the organization of their digital archives, but they also ensure a consistent experience for users searching for what they need.

2. Flexible Access Permissions

The flexible nature of a cloud-based DAM ensures that digital archives can be accessed from anywhere in the world, at any time — but not everyone should have the same permission levels. With a DAM, organizations are able to create an unlimited number of user groups and customize their permissions and access levels, including their ability to access, share and download specific sets of assets. This ensures that the DAM owner has control over who can view or download what while keeping an internal record of when assets were accessed and by whom. Additionally, assets can be securely shared with non-users in an online web gallery or branded portal, allowing those outside the organizations to browse and download the files they need.

3. Advanced Security

When it comes to your entire company history, the safety and security of the archives is top priority. This means that when archives are digitized and stored in a new digital location, archivists must be certain they are protected with the same level of security (or more) as when they only had a physical location—DAM systems do just that.

In addition to extensive permission capabilities to help ensure that assets are only used by the right people at the right time, a DAM solution provides compliance with common regulations that sensitive industries and environments require. Digital asset management also offers data recovery with triple-redundancy and geo-replication, protecting from both human error and natural disaster. This means both a primary and secondary datacenter will host three copies of your data – so there will always be 6 copies across two separate locations, ensuring that there is always a back-up to your back-up.

Customer Story: How the U.S. Naval Institute uses DAM for Archiving

In 2016, USNI began a project to digitize its archive of 200,000 (and growing) assets. A critical component of the project was finding a tailored DAM solution that would make these assets more secure and discoverable.

With their DAM system, USNI has organized their massive, specialized collection of assets using custom attributes and categories, allowing for easy searchability and access. The flexibility of their DAM has allowed them to set up customized access to a secure, user-friendly asset library.

“With MediaValet, the ability to create custom attributes and categories has been a huge win for us at USNI since our collection is so specialized.”

Emily Hegranes, Digital Archivist at US Naval Institute

Learn more about USNI’s experience with a DAM here.

Preserve Your History with a DAM

We are in the middle of a massive, global digital transformation. The digitization of archives and historical records are a huge part of this evolution. The methods of the past—relying on a combination of physical storage and individual hard drives—are no longer sustainable.

Archivists and organizations are citing a DAM as the ideal solution to manage their massive collections of digitized records, provide high levels of security and compliance, and, very importantly, allow their collections to be easily accessible by the right people—all over the world. Ready to get digital with your archive? Don’t forget to look for these 6 key features in your DAM system.

This blog post was originally posted in October 2016 and has been updated.

MediaValet is a leader in cloud-based digital asset management that helps organizations manage, organize and share their digital assets, improving productivity and increasing ROI.

It is no secret that the happenings over the last two years have caused an accelerated shift from traditional marketing channels to digital. In fact, the 2021 Gartner CIO Agenda showed that 83% of the respondents expect to increase their use of digital channels to reach customers. With this in mind, marketing teams are doubling down on digital technology to facilitate a positive digital experience for their customers.

But, with over 8,000 martech options, it can be challenging to understand what to prioritize and how they all interconnect. To help visualize how these technologies overlap and intersect, Gartner developed the Digital Marketing Transit Map. By connecting related solutions, the map provides a insight into the technology required to meet specific goals and achieve success.

• DAM on Today’s Gartner Transit Map
• Where is DAM Going Next?
• Progress with DAM
  

DAM on Today’s Gartner Transit Map

Digital asset management (DAM) has landed on the radar of marketing leaders across all industries as a necessary platform to enable digital transformation. As a single source of truth that connects brand, content, and operational structure, a DAM helps organizations offer a consistent digital experience across all channels.

We have seen digital asset management placed all over the transit map the last few years. In fact, last time we wrote an update in 2016, DAM was found on the social and marketing management tracks, and prior to that, it was on the commerce track. Today, becoming more relevant than ever, DAM still holds a prominent spot on the social track and is very close to the heart of the customer experience (CX) track. Let’s dive into why we see DAM as a critical solution in these two areas:

DAM on the CX Track

Data continues to show an increased demand for personalized and consistent online customer experiences. This, in turn, is driving an exponential increase in the need for high-value visual content from the marketing and creative team. While a basic file sharing solution has been the platform of choice for many organizations looking to manage its assets, the pivot to visual content has demanded something more advanced. A DAM provides additional features, built with visual content in mind, including:

• Enhanced metadata, such as keywording, AI auto-tagging and custom attributes,
• Advanced sharing options, such as links, online web galleries and branded portals, and
• Additional security measures, such as watermarking, role-based permission options and enterprise compliance.

DAM is now central to the CX track as a critical piece of tech that ensures all visual content is consistent and on-brand. Plus, with integrations into critical tech like creativity, project management, and CMS tools, a DAM is able to feed on-brand assets directly into all systems and touchpoints.

DAM on the Social Track

In social media, governance is key for ensuring a company’s brand is consistent and mitigating the risk of damaging posts. As organizations grow, this becomes more challenging due to the wider net of people representing the brand on social channels. While social media management tools are effective for controlling what is being said through social, a DAM is a useful tool for clarifying what visual content is approved to be shared.

DAMs have become a more prominent technology on the social track due to its direct integrations with social media management systems, like Hootsuite. Through these integrations, employees can pull assets from the DAM within their social media platform, providing seamless access to all approved social media content. Not only does this allow companies to ensure only appropriate and approved visuals are being used at any given time, it also helps them get new campaigns and assets into market faster — making it indispensable on the social track.

Where is DAM Going Next?

Over the next few years, in addition to staying on the social and CX tracks, we expect to see DAM make its way back onto the Commerce track. High-quality visual content is now table stakes to performing well and staying competitive in the online commerce space – content that needs a secure home. This, along with the increasing number of integrations between DAM and product information management solutions (PIM) is enabling DAM to become a more valuable part of effective commerce strategies.

Progress with DAM

As DAM continues to act as the foundation for marketing teams’ entire martech stacks, we anticipate we’ll see it play a more primary role on the Gartner transit map in the near future. If your organization is looking to provide a consistent digital experience across all channels, now is the time to invest in a DAM.

MediaValet was named a Representative Vendor in the December 2020 Gartner Market Guide for Digital Asset Management. Click here for complimentary access to the research.

As a DAM administrator, you have probably tailored the platform, its categories, user groups, and overall organization to best support your internal team’s workflow, however, it is important not to forget about your external teams and their workflows. By finding a way to enable external users, you can mature with your DAM and maximize its investment; further setting up your organization for success.

Here we will highlight some great features you can use and steps you can take to get your external teams up and running, enhance their productivity and maximize your DAM investment. T

Let’s dive into each topic in more detail.

Types of External Users

When you think of external users, it’s more than just labeling them as someone outside of your organization. Depending on the roles of these external teams, (whether they are resellers, agency partners, or end-clients) their workflows and how they interact with the DAM should be considered, and their level of access should be tailored accordingly.

With that said, a good way to group your external teams is into two buckets:

1. Those who need direct access to the DAM: Users that require some access to the DAM could include resellers, partners, contract designers, photographers, etc.
2. Those who do not need direct access to the DAM: Users that may only need one-off access for specific campaigns or events include agency clients, third-party event coordinators/ event attendees, student alumni, etc.

Once you establish the type of external user you are working with, the next step is to determine how they will interact with your DAM and what access they’ll require.

Questions to Consider

Before providing your external users with access, it is important to consider the following three questions:

1. What level of access is required by the external user?
2. What functionality will this user need from the DAM?
3. How will your team collaborate with the user?

Let’s take a closer look at each of these considerations.

1. What level of access is required?

Most teams don’t need to provide all members with the same level of access to files, as providing too much access could lead to a number of problems: asset misuse, duplicates, unorganized content, etc.

Additionally, if a team member has access to too many assets that aren’t directly affiliated with their work, it makes it difficult to find what it is that they’re looking for and therefore creates a more time-consuming and frustrating process. This is why it is important to consider what level of access is required and avoid any issues with accessibility.

2. What functionality will your external team need from DAM?

Consider what type of functionality your external teams will need from the DAM and whether they only need to view/ download assets or if they will need to upload and work on assets as well. It’s important to understand what each group is trying to achieve, what their day-to-day workflow looks like, and what DAM functionality is required in order for them to complete their tasks and stay productive.

It is crucial to recognize what kind of functionalities your external team will need from the DAM as providing too many or too little permissions could make or break the process of extending DAM to them.

3. How will you be collaborating with your external users?

This is an important consideration for external users who might not be as involved with collaboration or may not be as self-sufficient and will alternatively need assets shared with them. Some use cases could include:

• Event attendees (post tradeshow), in which you might have a collection of event photos you want to share with them,
• Clients who need access to time-based assets, i.e. social ads for a month-long campaign,
• Or simply sharing media kits with collections of logos and other brand assets with partners to use across various channels.

It is very important to consider how you will collaborate with your external users to ensure their highest level of involvement (regardless of what that looks like to them) and be able to provide any or all necessary accommodation.

DAM Features to Help

As it is evident that understanding the type of external user you are working with as well as what kind of accommodations they will require is of extreme importance when enabling external partners with DAM, let us now discuss what kind of features DAM has to easily guide you through this process.

1. Utilizing a Customizable Category Structure

By utilizing various permission levels and providing your external teams with access to only select categories, it makes it easier for them to find relevant assets for their initiatives while providing an element of security for other assets in the DAM. By setting up a customizable category structure for your external teams, they will only be able to see the assets and categories you’ve given them access to, making their category tree less cluttered from other teams’ work.

Additionally, with a watermarking feature, you can easily apply watermarks to a single or collection of assets in specific categories that your end users’ access. This is valuable if you’re providing access to external users, as it ensures they can’t use asset originals without approval and provides clarity as to what assets can be distributed with other teams. Basically, at the end of the day, it helps ensure that your original assets are always protected and preserved for their intended use.

Example

A manufacturing company with several re-sell partners will need access to the DAM to download spec sheets, product videos, and other assets for new product launches. When considering the level of access each reseller needs to have, the marketing team needs to ensure that each reseller will only have access to the final and approved marketing material for the product launch. To do this, the admin creates specific categories corresponding with the new product launches and provides resellers with access to only these categories. From here, the re-seller partners can go into the DAM and only see the categories they have access to, allowing them to quickly find the assets they need for that specific product launch.

2. User Permissions

Tailor your user permissions for specific roles or different user types depending on individual requirements, as previously mentioned. By creating custom user groups, you’re able to determine if a user can download, upload, or only view assets in specific renditions. So, depending on your use case, and who requires access, it’s really up to you.

Example

An organization in the tourism industry relies on various contract photographers. Using custom user groups, they created a new custom user group specifically for their photographers which allows them to upload assets to only specific categories in the DAM. This is very helpful for this organization, as their photographers do not need to download or edit assets. It has not only saved their DAM admins significant time from receiving and uploading assets on the photographer’s behalf, but has also kept their other assets secure and only accessible by internal teams.

3. Take Advantage of Sharing Features

Branded Portals

If you aren’t familiar, Branded Portals are basically customizable microsites in which you can add and distribute collections of assets while staying on brand. This feature allows you to add various asset types while customizing the portal with your logos, brand colors, background image, etc.

Branded Portals are used to share event photos, media kits, campaign collateral, etc., and are a great way to distribute assets to users who do not need direct access to the DAM. Using a URL, users can quickly access the portal to preview and download the assets they need. Your Branded Portals can also be password protected, to provide an additional level of security for confidential or not-yet approved assets.

Example

Agencies sharing assets for review with their client’s marketing team are able to ensure that only the finalized assets are included. They can also organize assets into sections representing various channels of the campaign, such as webpage images, social media posts, banner ads, etc. This makes it easier for various users on the client’s side to view all the assets for the campaign. And, if you want to add an extra level of security, if your assets are still a work in progress, you are able to ensure that no assets in the branded portal can be downloaded.

Collections

As a great way to distribute assets with those who have access to the DAM, with Collections you can create a collection of assets and save them into specific project-based folders. These folders can then be shared in a variety of formats with other users who have access to the DAM and will also be saved in the Collections tab for easy reference and access. This is a great way to share specific campaign assets, such as select photos from a photoshoot that have been approved and edited for print, or specific video clips that could be used in a new video ad campaign.

Example

A higher ed customer utilizes collections as storage containers for each of their student recruitment initiatives which allows them to save time from searching for assets and share those assets with teams in a variety of formats.

Additional Tips on Enabling Your External Users

Now that we’ve covered the different types of external DAM users and some features that can help you easily distribute assets to them, let’s dive into a couple of additional tips and best practices for onboarding these external teams.

Prioritize the most important topics

As you’ve probably experienced, being exposed to large amounts of information at once can be incredibly overwhelming to the point where it’s hard to take things in. So, if you are trying to get your external users up to speed with DAM, try to identify a few key components/features they will need to be trained on and get them comfortable with those key things, instead of giving them a full overview of the platform. This will get them up and running faster and help them stay focused on the task at hand.

Tailor training materials for each user group

If you’re putting together training resources, such as how-to documents or a walk-through video, make sure to tailor it so it aligns with their workflow and use case. For example, if you’ll be sharing assets with a client through Branded Portals on an ongoing basis, perhaps create a quick walk-through video specifically on Branded Portals where you can highlight the feature’s functionalities and make sure they know how to navigate the portal, ensuring they are comfortable using them going forward.

Establish a governance plan

As you’ll have people outside of your organization access the DAM or specific collections of assets, it’s important to have some structure and safeguards in place to keep everything running smoothly and providing a positive experience for everyone. For example, if you have external photographers uploading assets to your DAM, here are some questions you could address or include as part of your governance plan:

• What categories will they upload to?
• Who will approve these assets?
• What attributes will be required?
• Are there any keywords that must be used?

Essentially, make sure to capture all the details of your external team’s workflow and how they should use the DAM. And next steps here, once you have created your governance plan it’s always recommended to take your external and internal teams through it and provide as much detail as possible on this workflow, so that there are clear expectations and steps to follow going forward, regardless of if new members join the team, you start new projects, etc.

What’s Next?

Now that you have a better understanding of how to enable external partners with DAM, you may be wondering “How else can I maximize my DAM investment?” If you’re looking for more tips on how to get the most out of your DAM, check out our educational resources section here!

The number of channels a marketing team is expected to manage is at an all-time high. In fact, for social media alone, Buffer lists 21 social media sites that brands should consider using to reach their ideal audience. Then, take into consideration the other digital and traditional methods of outreach, and you’ll quickly realize that most marketing teams are operating across a sizeable number of platforms and channels.

With an increasing need for versatile platform presence, the work to create asset variations has increased substantially. Teams are often spending a significant amount of time creating different sizes of the same assets, increasing their workload and slowing down their time to market.

With MediaValet’s new cropping templates, cropping an asset becomes significantly easier and more time-efficient. In this post, we highlight the feature and share how you can use cropping templates today.

What are Cropping Templates?

With MediaValet’s cropping templates, users are able to accelerate their content creation by creating custom-sized templates for their most-used platforms and channels.

While there are many third-party design software solutions that offer cropping, it adds yet another solution that you need to budget, manage, and train for. Programs like Photoshop, while very powerful, require a deep level of understanding to operate, which may not be practical depending on a user’s job function and responsibilities. Often it makes more sense to pass the task onto designers, continually interrupting their workflow throughout the day.

With MediaValet, users do not need to jump between software or learn how to navigate a complex software solution to simply crop an image. They can instantly create and save custom templates of any size for their most-used platforms and channels without having to leave the DAM. With auto-scaling capabilities – users can quickly select a template and adapt it for any image of their choice, without having to compromise on quality. These templates can also be easily accessible to other users directly within the DAM.

Common Use Cases

Our customers have used cropping templates to support a variety of use cases, including website management, social media, and email marketing.

Website Management

Customers use the feature to create and save custom templates to crop their assets to common website asset sizes, such as header images, blog post images, and much more. No matter which web platform your team uses, a template can be created to instantly crop images for your various web pages.

Social Media

For customers promoting content across various social media platforms, adjusting an image to meet the dimensions of each platform is an undertaking. It can also be a challenge to memorize or track the changing dimensions across each platform. With cropping templates, your team can create custom social media asset templates for organic social media posts, advertisements, profile banner images, and more. Not only that, but they can also easily update a template’s dimensions as they continue to change for various platforms.

Email Templates

Another use case we hear is the need to quickly crop an asset to fit within an email template. With cropping templates, you can easily create custom templates to enable users to crop your assets to fit into email newsletters, event invitations, email promotions, and more without having to involve your design team.

To learn more about MediaValet’s cropping tool and to see it in action, check out our recent webinar: How to Boost Productivity with the NEW Cropping Tool.

The world has unquestionably changed, and so have the short and long-term priorities for most organizations. They’re now focused on digital-first, remote-first and work-from-anywhere operations, and leaning into this shift as quickly as possible. This has cast a very bright light on the efficacy of our marketing strategies and, more specifically, the need to progress our digital capabilities in order to fully support organizational priorities over the long haul.

Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey found that chief marketing officers (CMOs) are quickly shifting to prioritize pure-play digital channels, allocating the majority of their total marketing budget to this area. As expected, this is resulting an increased spend in strategic marketing technology. One piece of technology that’s top of mind for CMOs is digital asset management (DAM).

While implementing new technology is often a necessity, it’s no secret that it can be an overwhelming task. The exercise of pursuing a modern tech stack takes a lot of time and effort, and even after implementing new technologies, some solutions might never get used properly. Another report from Gartner even found that on average, only 58% of an organization’s tech stack is used to its full potential.

Taking a Phased Approach

The most successful technology implementation plan is a phased one – and DAM is no exception. Taking on too much at once for a new tech implementation — expecting to build out your exact vision from the immediate implementation — can often cause frustration, along with the feeling of being overwhelmed. This kind of unrealistic benchmarking can make it feel like little to no progress is being made, and also makes it challenging to prove ROI for stakeholders.

A phased approach starts with identifying low-hanging fruit, then expanding from there. By taking a crawl, walk, run approach that’s tailored to your specific goals, you can improve company-wide adoption rates and better showcase ROI on tech implementations.

The Digital Asset Management Maturity Model

As much as organizations would love to ramp up overnight, it’s not often realistic or possible. This is why we built the DAM Maturity Model.

The model helps organizations identify their current state and creates a blueprint for meaningful steps they can take at appropriate times to progress toward their ideal state. It helps organizations:

• Get quick wins that prove immediate value to stakeholders,
• Keep their DAM implementation manageable, and
• Ensure high adoption of their DAM.

Let’s take a look at each stage in detail.

Stage 1: Chaotic

The first stage is chaotic. Typically, organizations in this stage see individuals using a mix of their own file storing systems and shared storage solutions, like Box, Dropbox or Google Drive. ​While storing files on the cloud is a good first step, it’s really the “wild west” in the sense that everyone on your team either has access to everything or no access at all. Additionally, there’s usually a lack of file naming standards and category structure which makes it challenging to find exactly what you need.​

This creates a lack of control. Some team members have access to files they shouldn’t, while others find themselves without access to what they need. There’s no clarity on what’s finalized or approved, often resulting in files being used for projects even though they may be outdated or simply not yet approved for use.​

​The majority of organizations begin looking for digital asset management solutions at this stage – and it’s not just smaller businesses – there are many global businesses that are facing these challenges as well.

When to Mature From This Stage

There are a number of factors to consider when evaluating if it’s time to mature from this stage.

The first consideration is time management. In particular, if your team members are able to find what they need and if there are members that are relied on to share the same files over and over again. Relying on a single person to be responsible for individual files can waste hours of time in key departments like marketing and design.

The other consideration is how well your brand and digital assets are protected and managed. Two of the biggest challenges we see with organizations at this chaotic phase are brand mismanagement (such as the wrong logo or an unapproved graphic being used) and asset loss – where they need to spend time replicating brand assets that they can’t find anymore.

Specific questions to ask:

• Can people find what they need quickly?​
• Are people constantly sharing assets?​
• How do you control asset use?​
• Can you still access assets if someone is out of the office?​
• Do you have recovery processes if assets are deleted?

How to Make the Move

When moving on from the chaotic stage, the goal is to get your assets out of chaos and into a form of structure within a single solution – namely, a DAM. We recommend starting within one or two departments and a smaller, core set of assets (such as logos, headshots, marketing graphics, etc.). This enables you to have a shorter time-to-value and iron out any wrinkles before scaling to the rest of your organization.

Steps to Get Started

1. Find a digital asset management solution that meets your goals in the short and long term.
2. Identify which users or departments to include in the initial roll-out.
3. Start consolidating assets from various desktops, hard drives, file management solutions, etc.
4. Work with your customer success manager to develop and implement a scalable metadata strategy.

Customer Story: Community Associations Institute

Community Associations Institute (CAI) was in the chaotic stage when they first started looking for a DAM. They would save assets to their desktop, as well as to a server that everyone could freely access and manage. Not only did this make it incredibly difficult to find the assets they needed, it also generated a number of duplicates and exposed them to a significant risk of asset misuse. Now that they’ve implemented a DAM, they have the metadata and governance structure they need to enable their headquarters, as well as 64 global locations to seamlessly find the assets they need without trouble. Read the Community Associations Institute Story.

Stage 2: Compartmentalized

The second stage of the model is compartmentalized. In this stage, a single department may have migrated to a DAM, however, they’re most likely still experiencing siloes. For example, you might have two marketing teams in different geographic regions using their own solutions (such as a DAM for one and Dropbox for the other). This results in potential additional costs – both from having redundant solutions and recreating files that existed in another solution. At this stage, organizations typically have a basic level of user access or usage policies in place, meaning they’re still spending time fulfilling asset requests for other teams or departments.​

While not considered the “ideal state” for many organizations, the compartmentalized stage is a great first step for DAM beginners to strive for. Simply getting out of that chaotic phase and finding something for your department that works (and works well) is a huge win. Once you’re comfortable at this stage, you can start looking at how to address those additional siloes that other teams are experiencing.​

When to Mature From This Stage

One of the biggest considerations when evaluating if it’s time to mature from this stage is if your branding and messaging is consistent across teams and campaigns.​ As organizations grow and rely on more people to represent the brand, it’s common to see inconsistencies that result in brand dilution.

Secondary to that is evaluating if there are unnecessary duplicate efforts being made – either needing to upload files to multiple storage solutions, sending multiple emails to different teams or even recreating similar content because you didn’t know it existed in another storage solution.​

The last consideration is if there are bottlenecks that could be streamlined by integrating a single solution, like a DAM, with other cross-team technologies.​ While not every department needs direct access to the DAM, additional value can be derived from enabling others to access the assets they need from within the platforms they already use.

Specific questions to ask:

• Is there campaign misalignment across teams?​
• Have you experienced duplicate work or purchases?​
• Are projects or simple tasks taking longer than they should?
• Are there bottlenecks that could be removed?​
• Could workflows be improved?​

How to Make the Move

Moving on from the compartmentalized phase is about eliminating additional siloes to remove work duplication and ensure true alignment. The goal is to consolidate all adjacent departments (including other geographic regions) into a single DAM solution, as well as identify any workflows that could be improved by tailoring the DAM for additional use cases or integrating with other MarTech solutions. Some steps to get started include:

Steps to Get Started

1. Analyze where there are project gaps and miscommunication that could be improved with better alignment.
2. Prioritize which departments would benefit most from aligning to a single solution.
3. Map out your various martech solutions and identify opportunities to set up an integration with the DAM.
4. Start building customized user groups to facilitate the addition of additional departments and integrations.

Customer Story: Experian

Experian had gone through a major brand refresh back in 2016, and as part of that, wanted to mature from the compartmentalized stage. Specifically, they wanted to address the inconsistency of their brand across regions. There were dozens of different marketing teams and while they were running smoothly as individual departments, the brand had a different look and feel across regions. They wanted to ensure that all branches operated as a single brand, and to do this, they needed to consolidate into a single solution that would enable them to work collaboratively. Ultimately, they ended up choosing MediaValet as their sole solution and now everything, even down to tiny website icons, is stored in the DAM.​ Read the Experian Story.

Stage 3: Collaborative

The third stage of the model is collaborative. Organizations in this stage will have multiple teams using the DAM — common examples include marketing, design and sales teams. As more departments adopt and actively use the DAM, additional security measures are needed to keep assets protected. This is where custom user groups come into play, allowing each group of users to access specific categories, only perform various functions (downloading, uploading, etc.). These custom access and usage policies ensure that specific assets are only accessible to users based on their job function and permissions.

At this stage, the DAM may also be integrated into other martech solutions, such as project management software, like monday.com or social media platforms, like Hootsuite. Departments are able to access their assets from directly within these platforms, improving workflows and reducing bottlenecks.

The collaborative stage is the ideal state for a lot of organizations — especially those with a marketing-heavy DAM use case — and its where many will spend most of their DAM journey.

When to Mature From This Stage

While many organizations will stay in this stage, keeping their DAM within the marketing department, there are some factors to consider when evaluating if it’s time to move to the next stage.

First is if there are other departments that are working with large amounts of media-rich content or large format files. It’s normal to extend the DAM to complementary departments, like social media or events, but there are other departments that can get value out of accessing the DAM or adding their own assets. Some examples of this include:

• Training documents and forms from the HR department
• 3D models from the engineering department
• Sketch files from the development department

Second to this is if it’s possible to scale the DAM to your entire organization, to ensure easy access to the organization’s core brand assets, such as logos, templates, leadership photos and more.

Specific questions to ask:

• What other departments could benefit from direct access to the DAM?​
• How can the DAM be adapted to address more use cases across your organization?​
• Can adoption be improved with additional integrations?

How to Make the Move

Moving from the collaboration stage is about adapting and tailoring your DAM to maximize value and ROI. It’s possible to extend the DAM to the entire organization and even address additional use cases by simply tailoring the permissions, category structure and workflows. Some steps to get started include:

Steps to Get Started

1. Work with your customer success manager to assess how to extend the DAM to other departments without compromising on security.
2. If your organization has SSO in place, work with your IT team to take the necessary steps for integration.
3. Evaluate if integrating into organization-wide tools, such as Microsoft 365, would help improve adoption or workflows.

Customer Story: ACAMS

ACAMS took an excellent phased approach during their DAM onboarding. They planned to extend the DAM to their entire organization, but first, they wanted to focus on getting their core assets in the hands of the marketing and creative departments. They used this phased approach as an opportunity to ensure everything was clean and useable, before extending it to other departments. Now, they’re just about to open the DAM out to the rest of their organization. Custom permissions are critical to them, as they expect 90% of their workforce to have tailored use and visibility.​ Read the ACAMS story.

Stage 4: Connected

At the last stage of the DAM Maturity Model, your assets are fully connected with your entire organization. Your DAM becomes the foundational layer to manage all high-value media assets; not just marketing assets, but every media asset created across the organization — source assets, work-in-progress, final creative assets and content. Everything is stored in a single location, making it easier to drive collaboration and efficiency across different departments, agencies, third-party vendors and partners.

While everyone is using the DAM, many don’t log directly into the DAM. Instead, integrations enable employees to access the DAM from within the tools they already use, like Microsoft 365. When organizations take this approach, an identity management integration is often critical, as it enables them to easily manage thousands of users.

Customer Story: The University of Wollongong

The University of Wollongong’s goal was to implement their DAM as an organization-wide tool. They wanted to provide more transparency to the assets being created and surface them for others on campus. With over 3000 users, Single Sign-On enabled them to easily scale across multiple campuses, locations and access levels. It also enabled staff administrators to manage users without needing to know the ins and outs of the DAM. If anyone left the university, SSO ensures their DAM account is instantly made inactive. Read the University of Wollongong story.

Move Forward with the Right Partner

The DAM Maturity Model is a handy tool that enables organizations to identify quick wins and plan for the long haul – when working with the right partner. At MediaValet, we help customers evaluate their use case and find the path out of their current phase – for example, from chaos to compartmentalization. When they’re ready, we then help them navigate through the next phases of the model. This, along with our unlimited users, support, and training, has helped our customers make the most of their DAM and maximize success within their company.

Ready to get started? Let’s talk!