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!

The past years have seen an unprecedented demand for video content. A study from HubSpot even found that 54% of consumers want to see more videos from the brands they follow. With more consumers wanting – and expecting – video content, there’s been a rise in the number of businesses investing heavily in video. Creating video content is one thing, but managing it afterwards has been known to bring a set of challenges, specifically around sharing and ensuring discoverability.

It’s crucial that businesses tackle this challenge today in order to continue to scale and achieve their campaign goals – while keeping their videos organized and accessible to their users. In this post, we’ll cover the benefits of using digital asset management to help manage their videos, and highlight some best practices and considerations for managing your own videos within a DAM. ​

Benefits of Managing Video Content in a DAM

Instant Previews
Users can play videos in full-screen to easily check if it’s the video they need before downloading or even just refer to the information without needing to download it. Each video also has a thumbnail preview, similar to your images and PDFs, for quick reference.

Easy Searching​
Categories, auto-tags and other metadata can be easily added to your videos to increase their discoverability. This means that your users can find the videos they need just as quickly as an image or document using the search bar or Advanced Search.

Quick Renditions
With DAM, there are more sharing and distribution options in comparison to other platforms. Users can share videos in web galleries, zipped files, lightboxes and more. And if needed, the user can share the video file in a different format – for example, an MP4 can be shared as a MOV, FLV, AVI or MPEG. Similarly, they can also share and download the video in customized dimensions – all in-app and without any extra work.

Best Practices and Considerations

Make use of custom attributes and ​embedded metadata
Users can search against any values in your custom attributes and embedded metadata to find the file they’re looking for. With that being said, it’s important to create custom attributes that hold searchable information that’s relevant to your users, so they’re able to quickly and efficiently find the files they’re looking for. ​

Your custom attributes also act as a filtering system within Advanced Search. If you create a number of custom attributes your users can select and deselect, it can help them narrow down the batch of videos they need and, ultimately, enhance discoverability.

Be descriptive with ​your video tags
Unlike image assets, videos are complex and can include multiple elements – like products, people, themes, and objects – so it’s best to include this information somewhere in your metadata to help your users understand the file better.​

Whether you include these tags in your system attributes, custom attributes or keywords is up to you and what works best for your DAM set-up, but it’s valuable to put it somewhere your users know to look to gather context about files.

Have a specific file​ naming convention ​for video assets
A proper file naming convention can help users understand the file, enable organization, and enhance consistency amongst the user experience. ​The elements you include in your file names or file titles should be specific to your organization, but popular elements include the project name, whether it’s meant for internal or external use and a general descriptor of what the video is about.

Only upload the highest resolution file
Your users will be able to download and share video renditions in multiple formats and sizes. With this in mind, only the most high-resolution version of a video needs to be uploaded to the DAM. ​This not only saves a significant amount of storage space, it also saves uploaders time, as they only need to upload the video once.

MediaValet’s advanced video management capabilities help leading organizations make the most of their high-value videos. Learn more about how you can scale your video content strategy with DAM.

Training is a driving force of DAM system adoption – it gives users the confidence, tools, and comfort they need to integrate digital asset management into their daily workflow. Building training materials and making them available to users is important – but the most integral piece to successful training is building a solid strategy. By building out an action plan that specifies what training resources you’ll provide to users, when you’ll make them available, how you’ll deliver the training, and more, you can ensure your users can maximize the benefits they gain from the DAM.

Here are four best practices to follow when building and executing your training strategy:

1. Tailor Materials to Each User Group

Training resources – whether it be a live demo session, how-to document, or video – should be tailored to each specific user group’s permissions. This ensures that you’re only providing content on functions and features they’ll actually use in the DAM. For example, non-admin groups don’t need training for creating categories, as that’s not something they have permission to do.

Training sessions and materials should also be tailored to the group’s overall skill set, technical level, and learning abilities. Certain users and groups with extensive software experience may need less training overall, whereas a group who’s never interacted with a DAM may need more.

2. Prioritize the Most Important Training

Exposing users to large amounts of information at once may confuse them or seem overwhelming to tackle. Identify a few key pieces of materials that will be necessary for users to rely on to get started and release those first.

If you’re having a hard time narrowing down which resources to provide them, think about the 1-3 main purposes the user group will be using the DAM for (for example, to upload assets, share assets with external users, or download assets for themselves). Build your resource suite to serve those specific use cases.

3. Deliver Training in Bites

It can also be valuable to ensure that each resource speaks to just one or two topics, at most. For example, a resource that focuses solely on how to upload or one that explains the different sharing methods. Creating resources with a specific focus makes it easier for users to identify which piece of material to use when they have a question or want to learn more about a specific system feature.

Also, if you upload the resources to the DAM if a user simply searches “Share” or “Upload”, the particular file with the feature or function they need help with will be easier to find.

4. Update Material Periodically

Remember that building your resources suite is an iterative process, just like your category structure or metadata strategy. Whether it’s quarterly, semi-annually, or annually, schedule time to review what’s in your training materials and make any necessary updates.

There are a few reasons your material may need an update, including new workflows or features, new user types, or a change in a user group’s permissions. When these kinds of changes occur, the set of training you previously offered a user group may not be relevant anymore.

Ready to take your DAM knowledge up a notch? Check out our Educational Webinars page for best practices, new features, and more.

Digital asset management (DAM) has become a critical part of the marketing technology stack for leading organizations around the world. The IDC even says that organizations that use a DAM can experience a 24% average increase in revenue and 23% reduction in risk of asset misuse. But not all DAM implementations are the same, and, often, the ones that get the most value are those that scale to the entire organization.

On a recent webinar, we shared the benefits of scaling your DAM and steps to take so your organization can scale easily and efficiently. In this post, we’ll summarize the webinar and share its actionable steps.

Benefits of Scaling your DAM

Scaling your DAM is easier than you think—it requires three main steps that this post will cover. But before we look at how to scale your DAM, let’s touch on what the benefits of scaling a DAM look like:

• Creates a secure single source of truth
• Eliminates content silos
• Maximizes asset ROI

Creates a Secure Single Source of Truth

Creating a single source helps teams know with confidence that they can access up-to-date, approved brand assets from the DAM. It allows organizations to provide a one-stop shop to find everything they need, reducing the need to request assets from other teams.

Eliminates Content Silos

The DAM is collaborative by nature and brings all digital assets together under one roof. For example, rather than a North American marketing team using and creating separate files than the corporate marketing team, the DAM enables them to collaborate and use the same tools and assets. This ultimately increases productivity, as well as the ROI of the assets themselves.

Maximizes Asset ROI

Regardless of the organization’s size or industry, everyone can benefit from scaling their DAM. With MediaValet, organizations can add an unlimited number of users to the DAM without any extra cost, so if they want to scale to a new team or group, it’s free to do so. On top of that, scaling helps prevent duplicate work, because all versions and renditions are saved to the DAM.

Steps to Scale Your DAM Today

There are a number of steps you’ll need to take to scale your DAM to your entire organization and your Customer Success or Onboarding Manager will support you through the entire process. Specifically, they’ll help to customize and modify any of the following steps to better suit your business case, and better suit your organization timeline, as well.

• Migrate your assets
• Give new users access
• Distribute your assets

Step 1: Migrate Your Assets

The first step is to migrate any new assets into your DAM.

Before migration though, it’s recommended to complete an asset audit – meaning you need to identify and consolidate the set of files you want to move into the DAM. For example, your assets might currently be sitting across network drives, another file management system, and on team members’ local machines. You’ll need to compile those assets together and get them ready to move into the DAM as a batch.

The asset audit is also an opportunity for you and your team to identify which specific assets you want in the DAM. This means going through your files and making sure you’re not migrating any “junk” (duplicate and low-res files). Alternatively, if you don’t have time to do a thorough audit, they can be cleaned up afterward.

If the assets that the new group need are already in the DAM, however, the migration process isn’t necessary – all you have to do is add in the new users. An example of this would be if the marketing team is already using the DAM, and want to scale to sales. Marketing is already creating and sorting all the collateral that sales needs, so all you’d need to do is add them as new users.

Step 2: Give New Users Access

The second step is to create the new users, as well as a custom user group if needed.

When you’re creating a new custom user group, your Success Manager can walk you through the process and help provide insights into the permissions you should consider. The reason we often create custom groups rather than using the default user groups is that it provides us with more flexibility for action permissions, such as if they can download, share, upload, etc.

Once your custom user groups are set up, you add in your users. If you have Azure Active Directory or SAML, the process is very simple and fast. We’ll coordinate with your IT or support team and get the groups mapped over and synced. If you don’t have Active Directory we can add users manually, which is also a simple process. For a small number of users, you can easily add them within the platform. Otherwise, you can send your Customer Success Manager a list of the users you want to be added and they’ll add them in bulk.

Step 3: Distribute Your Assets

Now that the assets are in the DAM and your users are added, we do a few final touches to make sure the files the new users’ needs are front-and-center. Two features of the DAM that are very handy here are Pinned Searches and Branded Portals.

Pinned Searches
Pinned searches allow you to save a simple or highly complex search and then pin it to your category structure. This can be done for yourself, a group, many groups or your entire organization. Pins are great for supporting daily tasks and workflows or doing something as simple as surfacing assets for specific users. Think of pins as dynamic categories that can be created and customized at will, whereas your existing categories in your taxonomy are static.

Branded Portals
Branded Portals act as dynamic micro-sites that you can customize and use to distribute materials to your internal or external stakeholders. We have clients using branded portals to address a variety of unique use cases —for example, to share branding guidelines and logos, or to share up-to-date product images to a reseller.

Use Cases by Industry

Scaling can bring benefits to an organization, regardless of its size or industry. Here are 3 use cases that we’ve seen across various industries.

Higher Education

A university’s marketing department already has a DAM in place but wants to scale it to other departments, such as student services, student union, and enrolment. These departments require files that the marketing team creates, such as brochures, logos, and photos and videos used for social media, and would benefit from direct access to the DAM. Their workflow is currently to email the marketing team to ask for an approved social media image and someone in marketing locates it and emails it back. With direct DAM access, these departments can self-serve instead, which saves both them and the marketing team time.

Manufacturing

A manufacturing organization wants to scale its DAM to its licensed external re-sellers. Currently, if the re-seller wants to see files, someone has to gather them up and share them as a web gallery from the DAM. With the custom permission settings in MediaValet, the organization can ensure the re-seller group is only given access to specific, relevant categories. By giving the re-sellers direct access instead, the organization can cut out the manual work and give the re-sellers access to browse the products and SKUs as they need them.

Healthcare

A leading healthcare organization wants to open their DAM to contracted photographers who help capture professional photos and videos for awareness campaigns and their website. With a user account, they can upload straight to the DAM rather than email the files to someone who then has to upload them on their behalf. With MediaValet’s permission settings, the organization can limit the photographers’ access to upload only – not download or share – and they can only see the specific category they’re uploading to.

Seamless Transition

The steps of scaling your DAM are simple, but of course, your Customer Success team at MediaValet is always available to help. There are so many different options when it comes to scaling your DAM and getting users well-acquainted. Through the basic steps of migrating your assets, giving new users access and distributing your assets, you’re sure to achieve a smooth, efficient scaling process.

The Customer Success team at MediaValet is here to support you, 24/7, and help transition new teams and departments into your DAM. This support includes:

• Live training sessions.
• Support training collateral.
• In-app training for new users.
• In-app help, feature guides and step-by-step walk-throughs.