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!