When it comes to digital asset management (DAM) systems, it’s interesting to see how every media library is truly different. DAM categorization and taxonomy create a media library that is tailored to its users, where everyone speaks the same language. Its categories enable organizations to easily organize a library to meet their unique business needs, making assets easily discoverable with advanced search functions and stopping the growth of costly duplicates. In addition to these benefits, DAM categories help increase ROI on the assets that took companies valuable time and money to create. But that’s not all—MediaValet has a lot more to offer when it comes to categories.

In this post, we’ll cover these three highly beneficial features of our categories:

1. They’re unlimited,
2. They’re customizable, and
3. They automatically turn into keywords.

If you’re curious to learn more about MediaValet categories and what exactly they add to the value of our DAM, let’s take a closer look at these features below.

1. Unlimited Categories

Included in a MediaValet subscription, there is no limit on the number of categories that you can create when organizing your media library.

Every library needs structure in order for its users to properly understand how to use it. Unlimited categories allow you to structure your library in a way that makes sense for your organization, so everyone can seamlessly enter and exit with the assets they need and are approved to use. This feature allows you to:

• Increase organization,
• Streamline productivity, and
• Improve scalability.

With unlimited categories, your library becomes thoroughly organized, and tagging for specific assets becomes much easier.

2. Customizable Categories

Customizable categories ensure you can manipulate and organize your categories in a way that is specific to your team’s needs. You won’t be hindered by having to use a certain set of categories designed by someone else.

This is a huge advantage for teams to be able to build out their DAM so that it’s perfectly aligned with their workflow. Essentially, you are customizing your categories in a way that makes sense for your team and how they’ll use the DAM. This feature allows you to:

• Improve your workflow,
• Increase DAM adoption and usage, and
• Implement feedback from the team.

With customizable categories, you can bucket any categories together as you see fit, with input from those who are using the DAM.

3. Automatic Keywording

When a category is created in MediaValet it automatically becomes a keyword, and every asset that is placed in the category will have that keyword attached. Keywords are used for searching for assets, and automatic category keywording helps you to find what you’re looking for with ease.

There is less manual work for the team. Without this feature, someone would be responsible for adding that keyword to each asset. This feature allows you to:

• Avoid manual keywording,
• Eliminate inaccuracies in the DAM, and
• Improve ease of use for the team.

With automatic category keywording, you’re able to save time and eliminate inaccuracies—which improves search functionality and makes the DAM that much easier to use.

Other Category Features

The expanded functionalities of MediaValet categories don’t stop here. There are many more capabilities that keep your assets safe and easy to use—ensuring the whole team remains on-brand:

• Watermarks: MediaValet allows you to add watermarks for specific categories. One of the simplest ways to safeguard your assets is with a watermark—a visual cue that the asset is out of commission. Watermarks keep your assets safe from misuse, screenshots, and web scraping.
• Role-Specific Access: There will always be some assets hanging around that are not really meant to be discovered by everyday users of your DAM. With custom access permissions, you can keep those assets out of sight while still being able to store past campaigns, photoshoots, and videos in MediaValet.
• Partner Enablement: The MediaValet DAM admin can create a category that is exclusively for external partners to access brand logos, product imagery, spec sheets, and brand fonts. Exclusive and specific categories help to ensure that your partner agencies only have access to the relevant assets required for the product catalog.

The category features available with MediaValet help enable your team to customize your DAM in a way that works best for your organization. Keep your assets safe and in the right hands, allowing easy access for those who need to work with your assets.

Make Your Digital Asset Library Work with You

Your media library should reflect your organization’s digital assets and how you work with them. The features offered with MediaValet’s categories allow you to organize them in a way that makes sense for your team while still providing plenty of breathing room. To learn more about MediaValet categories, and everything else we have to offer, check out our product page, here.

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.

Partnerships are a major part of our growth strategy here at MediaValet. In order for our customers to maximize their digital asset management (DAM) adoption, we count on our partners to help us to optimize their workflow across technologies, all over the globe.

Our partner, FFW, is a global digital agency focused on ensuring their clients’ success grows with the speed of digital innovation. With experts across 17 time zones, FFW closely collaborates with world-leading organizations to build integrated and tailored digital solutions that deliver immediate impact, while overcoming the challenges of achieving digital scale.

We spoke with Ricardo Osuna, the Senior Director of Partnerships at FFW about the benefits they can bring to MediaValet customers.

First off, can you tell us a little bit about FFW?

“FFW is a global digital agency that partners with the world’s leading organizations to effectively scale their digital experience platforms. Our interdisciplinary, partnership-driven approach to experience design, technology implementation, and data optimization empower our clients to conquer complex challenges and nail aggressive goals. Over 90% of our engagements are with those who’ve already worked with us because we’re committed to making sure that every step of every engagement exceeds expectations. FFW is a global team of over 625 digital experts seamlessly collaborating across 17 time zones, with North American headquarters in the New York metro area.”

Tell us about your background and your role at FFW?

“My name is Ricardo Osuna and I’m the Director of Partnerships at FFW. I’ve been working in web, digital content production, and marketing for over 10 years. Throughout that time, I’ve become increasingly more fascinated with the connection between technology, people, and the collaboration that happens at that intersection. My role at FFW means that I get to spend my days building effective connections between FFW, our technology partners, our clients, and a practice to support that collaboration.”

Can you give us an overview of the types of organizations you typically work with?

“We work with organizations that need a scalable digital experience platform to sustain or grow their business. This spans across a variety of industries; from a major US broadcaster that needs their digital experiences to scale for major events that drive peak traffic, to a Fortune 500 tech company that needed a digital platform to scale across over a dozen distinct business units and their unique audiences.”

When people come to you, what are the top challenges they’re usually trying to solve?

“Many of our clients are facing challenges that come with digital scale. Scale is a complex problem, with a variety of dimensions to it. How can you make sure that every single person that engages with your brand digitally has an equally great experience? How do you balance consistency with flexibility, especially across many brands and touchpoints? What has to be done to ensure that digital experiences—and the platforms that power them—scale into the future?”

Can you walk us through your typical process with a customer?

“Our entire process is based on an approach that values partnership, collaboration, and above all else, our clients’ success. We take a holistic approach. We listen, take the time to understand our client’s organization and the specific challenges they are facing when it comes to their digital experiences, and how it affects their ability to achieve success. We bring together our expertise across experience in design, technology, and data to recommend and implement, solutions that will set them up for success. Both for success today and for success tomorrow. We look ahead with our clients and create a roadmap that allows them to scale into the future.”

Why did you see value in partnering with MediaValet?

“We saw close alignment between our approach to the work we do and value for our clients in MediaValet. More specifically, we were impressed with MediaValet’s ability to integrate with other systems, as well as how MediaValet has optimized your pricing structure for driving wide adoption across an organization.”

What benefit can FFW bring to MediaValet customers?

“We help MediaValet customers look at the entirety of their digital experience, the platforms that are powering it, and work with them to ensure that those experiences and platforms will scale. The key to doing this is building a strong digital experience practice, which we help organizations to do by providing services across experience design, technology, and data. Ultimately our goal is to empower organizations to drive higher returns from digital investments by building integrated digital practices and maintaining long-term sustainable success through deeper client applied understanding and effective utilization of their digital platform.”

What are 3 things organizations can do today to improve their overall digital experience?

1. “Listen to your customers. It is important to undertake initiatives like user research to understand what is delighting your customers when they interact with your brand through digital channels, as well as what’s frustrating them.
2. Take stock of the current state of how you manage your digital experiences. What is working? And what’s not working? In addition to your customers, be sure to consult other stakeholders internally at your organization. An effective digital practice requires buy-in and collaboration from across departments.
3. Make a plan for the future. Having a roadmap to guide your initiatives is key to being effective in driving continuous optimization of your digital experience.”

What’s the biggest mistake you see customers make when approaching a digital transformation?

“One mistake that I’ve seen is launching into a “digital transformation” project without first defining exactly what that means to their organization, and what a successful transformation looks like. “Transformation” may be the buzzword that we all hear and use, but a lot of times organizations may find that success looks more like digital optimization than transformation. There are likely aspects of your digital experience and platform that work well – so it’s important to build your digital future on top of that strong foundation.“

To that point, do you have one piece of advice you’d share with MediaValet users looking to begin a digital transformation?

“Make sure to address the different aspects of digital scale in your initiative, both during planning and execution. At FFW, we think about digital scale as having three overarching dimensions that organizations need to be conscious of:

1. Scale across touchpoints: How do you power digital experiences across all the channels that matter to your customers?
2. Scale across an organization: How do you drive internal adoption of a technology stack?
3. Scale into the future: How do you ensure that the investment you make today scales with your business into the future?

There is no single “right” answer or solution to each of these big questions. The answers will always depend on specific business needs and context.”

Final question, where’s your dream vacation, and why?

“My favorite thing to do while traveling is to eat my way around a place I’ve never been before. I love learning about the culture and identity of a country or city through the food that the people there prepare and eat. Food is a living and constantly evolving expression of culture, which I absolutely love. And it’s delicious! A couple of the places currently at the top of my bucket list are Spain and Japan.”

Explore FFW and MediaValet

Is your organization looking to drive higher returns from your digital investments? Learn more about how FFW partners with MediaValet to effectively scale your digital experience, here.

When deciding to invest in a digital asset management (DAM) system, it is important to consider the future needs of your company in addition to your existing priorities. Regardless of the challenges that your organization is facing today, your needs will inevitably change down the road—and you’ll want a system that will scale and adapt with you.

As a solution to help companies better manage their digital assets and solve an array of major pain points, MediaValet offers an unlimited model, designed to allow you to grow and change with minimal constraints. In this post, we’ll look at the unlimited model features that are included with MediaValet’s enterprise subscriptions, namely:

• Unlimited users and user groups,
• Unlimited product training, and
• Unlimited product support.

After taking a closer look at these features, you’ll be able to better understand why an unlimited model is a great option when looking for a DAM solution. Read more to find out if it’s the right choice for your organization.

Unlimited Users and User Groups

Unlimited users and user groups allow you to scale your DAM across your entire organization – everyone can access what they need, whenever they need it. This feature also increases the security of your assets, as user access parameters are based on the permissions you set up and control. Since user permissions are highly customizable for each user and user group, you never have to worry about assets getting into the wrong hands.

Benefits of Unlimited Users and User Groups

The unlimited users and user groups feature ensures:

1. Better Scalability: Being able to extend your solution to the entire organization without having to worry about any extra user costs gives you the freedom to address additional use cases and grow with your DAM.
2. Streamlined Productivity: Since everyone is able to access what they need, whenever they need it on their own, your marketing team can spend less time sharing assets and more time on core work and projects.
3. Improved Asset Security: Not only are you able to provide access to your entire organization—you can also set up each user, team, department, and location with a tailored view of the DAM to ensure they only have access to assets that are relevant to them.

Finding a solution that offers unlimited users and user groups opens a realm of possibility for your organization in terms of what you can do with a DAM as your company changes and evolves.

Unlimited Product Training

Unlimited training is an empowering feature that keeps all users up-to-speed and feeling comfortable with the DAM. When everyone is using the system efficiently and effectively, it helps increase overall productivity—companywide. Additionally, with customer success managers keeping everyone updated on the latest features and how to use them, your IT team can spend less time and energy on DAM training.

Benefits of Unlimited Product Training

When your system is working with you, there are several benefits that follow:

1. Improved Efficiency: Training is taken on by the vendor’s customer success managers, so you don’t have to spend hours training everyone individually. This means marketing and IT resources can be used more effectively.
2. Increased Adoption: When everyone is confident in using the DAM, it becomes a part of their daily workflow, rather than “just another tool”. This allows your organization to better ensure brand consistency and high asset ROI.
3. Maintain DAM Health: With unlimited training, users are able to correctly use the DAM, which ensures the DAM stays clean and accurate. This, in turn, makes for a much more organized solution and allows DAM auditing to be easier for your team down the line.

By prioritizing a DAM that offers unlimited product training, you’re able to take away the burden of ongoing training for your team, saving valuable time and resources.

Unlimited Product Support

Unlimited product support ensures that you’ll never have to face any technical challenges with your solution on your own. Whether it’s a small question or a large issue that you’re facing, your DAM vendor’s support team will walk you through how to fix it and help you to understand what went wrong. When technical problems arise, support professionals are always ready to help you find quick resolutions, whenever you need them.

Benefits of Unlimited Product Support

Unlimited support features can help your organization to:

1. Reduce Overall Costs: Support costs can add up very quickly, so unlimited support features are always good to look out for. Complimentary, 24/7 support allows you to rest assured knowing you’re always covered by your DAM vendor.
2. Enhance Vendor Support: Whether you have a small or large issue, you never have to worry about potential challenges with your DAM. No matter the problem, your DAM vendor will support you in finding quick resolutions, every time.
3. Use Less Internal IT Resources: When your company doesn’t have to deal with technical issues on your own, your IT team can focus on other areas of the business, and save valuable time.

DAM vendors that offer unlimited product support help your team to spend more time on high-value tasks and less time trying to figure things out on your own. With unlimited support, you can take your time, reach out whenever you need help, and ask as many questions as you need – without any constraints.

The Unlimited Model is About More than Features

MediaValet’s unlimited model offers a scalable amount of users and user groups while providing unlimited training and support—at no extra cost. Our clients have found that this model not only helps them use the DAM to its full potential but it also keeps the DAM clean and efficient to use.

Learn more here about MediaValet’s unlimited model and how it can help your organization, today.

As companies grow, adding hundreds or thousands of employees, it’s no longer secure—or even viable—to manage user accounts and passwords within each individual platform. At this caliber, there’s only one real solution: single sign-on (SSO). Enabling organizations’ IT teams to seamlessly manage all user accounts from a central location, SSO solutions have revolutionized the way that users are managed.

While there’s no doubt that an SSO solution is useful to large organizations, is there value in integrating with your digital asset managment (DAM) solution? In this post, we’ll showcase how a DAM integrates with SSO and the benefits that organizations gain by doing so.

What is Single Sign-On?

Microsoft defines Single Sign-On as “an authentication method that allows users to sign in using one set of credentials to multiple independent software systems.”

Put simply, single sign-on allows users to sign into their various different platforms and solutions using the same username and password. It allows IT teams to configure and manage permission levels for individuals and groups from a single location. The value of an SSO solution is two-fold:

1. It provides users with a faster, better experience as they’re instantly able to access their platforms without needing to use or remember different passwords.
2. It creates a more secure user management process for IT teams, ensuring all employees have the correct permissions for each platform.

Examples of SSO Identity Providers

Why Integrate a DAM with Single Sign-On?

Single sign-on is good at what it does: user management – and a DAM system, like MediaValet, is good at what it does: centralizing and distributing collections of digital assets across organizations. By integrating the two solutions, marketing teams are able to focus on managing assets, while IT teams can focus on managing users.

With an integration, IT teams have the ability to manage user credentials and group policies in a secured way. Specifically, they can quickly reset and delete passwords, update user account information, manage security settings, and enable group permissions for the DAM through their central single sign-on console. Users enjoy an enterprise-scale single sign-on (SSO) environment that allows them to log into their DAM using the same username and password that they use for all corporately approved and supported applications across their organization.

What are the Benefits of an Integration?

While this is a very straightforward integration, the benefits are exponential. When a DAM is integrated with single sign-on, users gain immediate and seamless access to digital assets, while IT teams only need to manage one account per user. It makes a huge difference in workflow for both marketing and IT departments.

When these two systems are integrated together, IT and marketing teams work better, faster, and smarter. The top 3 benefits of integrating SSO with a DAM include:

1. Enhanced Security

The integration provides IT with full control over current and expired user authentication, authorization, and all security policies directly through the single sign-on account. When set up thoughtfully with custom permissions, an integration with a DAM ensures that every department can seamlessly access the brand assets that are relevant to their specific role and seniority. Secondary to this, when an employee moves on from the company, IT is able to seamlessly remove access to the company’s critical brand assets.

2. Increased Productivity

The time spent requesting and waiting for on-brand assets is astronomical for those that don’t have seamless access to a DAM. When users have SSO, they don’t have to sign into every application—they can access all their solutions without wasting time authenticating and using different credentials, ultimately saving time, and increasing productivity. Digital asset management is no exception. Teams are able to work faster when they’re able to access logos, photos, documents and more without needing to worry about managing or using another credential.

3. Improved Scalability

One of the largest hurdles organizations need to overcome when trying to scale their digital asset management solution is user management. As you add more departments and assets, permissions become more complex. Integrating with SSO takes away this roadblock, providing entire organizations, with thousands of employees, with a single, secure brand tool. Not only does SSO also offer a powerful authorization rules engine, it provides administrators with an easy way to create and maintain a custom authorization policy based on their organization’s needs. In short, this makes it simple to manage user groups and group permissions for the DAM in a central location. This ensures every individual can always be confident knowing they’re using the right marketing materials – and the right version.

What Are You Waiting For?

MediaValet offers single sign-on integrations with any identification provider that supports SAML or OIDC/OpenID authentication protocols, including Azure Active Directory, Okta and Google SSO. These integrations can help any organization simplify user management and extend the reach of their DAM. Help improve the workflows of everyone at your organization and get started with your DAM and single sign-on integration today.

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.

Understandably, the digital asset management (DAM) space has always been a little bit confusing. Since there are so many DAM solutions available, the lines have become blurry on what differentiates the variety of solutions out there. And, in addition to the number of DAM solutions available, the introduction of “light DAMs” has caused even more confusion. What is a light DAM and how does it differentiate from a traditional DAM solution? In this post, we’ll discuss the difference between the two, and how to choose which one is best for your organization.

• What is a Light DAM?
• What is a Full DAM?
• Why Organizations Upgrade from Light DAM to Full DAM
• How Do I Know Which is Right for Me?

What is a Light DAM?

A light DAM is essentially a digital asset library within another SaaS solution such as CMS, Work OS, etc. Typically, they have light functionality and are employed with the understanding that the assets will mostly be used within the parent or hosting solution.

Key Features of a Light DAM

1. Asset Previews: Basic previews of your assets are available, typically only for photos and videos.

2. Share Links: Share links can be created for individual assets for easy sharing from within the solution.

3. Basic Search: Users can search for assets with a file name, description, and (sometimes) other basic metadata.

The Bottom Line

For companies who have light digital asset needs and a small library, the capabilities of a light DAM may just fit the bill. Small organizations who need to access assets from a central library, and easily find and share them would see a benefit from employing a light DAM and probably wouldn’t need the sophisticated and robust functionality offered by a full DAM solution.

What is a Full DAM?

Full DAM solutions are built specifically to store, manage, and distribute your digital assets. They offer excellent functionality that allows users to manage most types of digital files and perform a variety of beneficial tasks, including re-sizing and re-formatting media, tracking usage history, and sharing large files easily. With features like branded portals and permission-based user settings, a DAM ensures that only the right individuals have access to the assets they need, protecting your library and ensuring maximum security.

Key Features of a Full DAM

1. Easy Sharing: A DAM has multiple features, such as web galleries, portals, and distribution links, that allow for the easy sharing of large media files, such as high-resolution images, large-format videos, etc.

2. Asset Security: A DAM offers version control, history tracking, and watermarking, as well as enhanced security and compliance to ensure full control over digital assets for both internal and external users.

3. File Discoverability: A DAM makes storing, managing, and finding brand and marketing material easy with artificial intelligence, keywords, and advanced search capabilities.

The Bottom Line

A full DAM solution is best for companies that need a streamlined way to produce, store and distribute a large amount of rich media content (photos, videos, audio, and more). Companies with a growing library of media assets or distributed teams likely require more complete solutions and long-term strategies for their ever-growing digital asset management needs.

Why Organizations Upgrade from Light DAM to Full DAM

Organizations that are having a hard time managing their content and are in need of a more robust solution to manage their content—especially rich media, have probably outgrown their current solution and would benefit from upgrading to a full DAM solution.

While organizations gain vast benefits from upgrading to a full DAM from a light DAM, here are a few noteworthy features:

• Sharing: Not only can users share all popular formats and sizes of files, but a DAM allows them to instantly send files of up to 200 GBs to anyone, anywhere in the world, no matter what browser or operating system they’re using. Firewalls aren’t an issue as only links are used, eliminating the need for attachments.
• Searching: A DAM offers additional advanced search features, including AI auto-tagging, that allow users to find what they’re looking for without the hassle of sifting through a large number of assets.
• Asset Rendering and Resizing: A DAM enables users to crop or customize the format and size of each asset when they use them.
• User Permissions: Custom views and access for teams and individuals ensure that all users can only access what’s relevant to them.
• Integrations: Teams can use their assets in several other platforms, creating a more advanced and well-rounded solution.
• Scalability: As your team and/or assets grow, the number of people who need access to them may also expand. A DAM scales easily to thousands of users while keeping assets safe and secure.

How Do I Know Which is Right for Me?

Small organizations that don’t work with very much content and only need to store a small number of brand assets and stock photos, may only need a light DAM solution. On the other hand, organizations that are creating, purchasing, and storing a large amount of content, are looking to manage and share their content easily and prioritize security and compliance would highly benefit from implementing a full DAM solution.

Is it Time to Upgrade?

After reviewing the key features that both a full DAM and light DAM have to offer, it’s obvious why many organizations are choosing to upgrade to a full DAM solution. Companies that have outgrown their light DAM and need a better solution for storing, sharing, and managing their digital assets in a secure way—and require a solution that can grow with their needs—have moved on to full DAM systems and aren’t looking back.

MediaValet is a digital asset management solution that’s trusted by hundreds of leading brands around the globe to help them make the most of their high-value digital assets. Ready to learn more about what MediaValet has to offer? Check out our DAM demo today!

If you’re considering implementing a foundational layer like a digital asset management (DAM) solution, there might be a possibility you haven’t thought of leveraging your organization’s Microsoft strategy.

MediaValet is now available for purchase on the Azure Marketplace. The Azure Marketplace seamlessly allows organizations to cover 100% of their MediaValet subscription fees with their Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) benefit, giving teams an easy and convenient way to purchase a DAM.

How to Get Started

Remember your friends in IT? Now’s the time to organize a quick meeting. If your organization is a heavy Microsoft user, there’s a good chance that IT has committed to a certain level of Azure consumption that needs to be used. Azure consumption benefits have an expiration date, so it truly is a “use it or lose it” scenario.

Plus, if your organization doesn’t use a MACC benefit, you can still leverage the Azure Marketplace using a pay-as-you-go account or simply, a credit card.

Benefits of Purchasing on the Azure Marketplace

Purchasing through one of Microsoft’s Marketplaces offers several benefits that ultimately help smooth out your buying process. It allows you to:

1. Take full advantage of your existing benefits

A Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment is a contractual agreement to spend a certain amount with Microsoft over a period of time. It’s a “use it or lose it” plan, where organizations are incentivized to spend the entire amount or lose out on the initial investment. With that said, purchasing MediaValet on the Azure Marketplace can help your organization make full use of its MACC benefits before they lapse.

2. Purchase a DAM without increasing budget requirements

When you choose to purchase MediaValet through the Azure Marketplace, you’re able to use the budget that’s already been “spent”, as it’s already been committed to Microsoft. This can help get the DAM initiative approved, as the organization doesn’t need to reallocate the budget from other initiatives or solutions to fund it.

3. Boost buying power and help make the procurement of a new DAM solution easier

Solutions that are available on the Azure Marketplace are “pre-vetted” by Microsoft, meaning they have Microsoft’s stamp of approval. This can help smooth the procurement process and make IT more comfortable with accepting an unfamiliar solution.

Simplify Procurement with the Azure Marketplace

With budgets experiencing greater scrutiny and competing pressures, finding alternative funding solutions can help you move foundational projects ahead without having to go into battle. A DAM can very easily enable the entire organization by managing all digital assets in one central library.

At the end of the day, the main thing to remember is that procuring a new solution doesn’t need to be a cumbersome experience. By staying within the Azure platform, you can fast-track your DAM procurement process and move your operations forward, so you can focus on delivering results.

The need to provide consistent, on-brand, and visually rich experiences for customers across all platforms and channels has seen the development of an increasingly complex marketing technology (Martech) landscape. The typical martech stack now includes CDN, PIM, CMS, and much, much, more—in fact, it’s been reported that the marketing team at an average enterprise uses 120 different marketing technologies. It’s simply not realistic to think that every team member using these tools is logging directly in and out of so many channels… exactly where headless DAM solutions come into play.

• What is a Headless DAM?
• What are the Benefits of a Headless DAM?
• Functionalities Made Available with a Headless DAM
• Who is Headless DAM best for?
• Is it Time to Upgrade?

What is a Headless DAM?

With a traditional DAM, users log into the library and then search for, share, download or reformat the digital assets they need, all from within the DAM. A Headless DAM, however, is “digital asset management software features without a user interface or front-end” — DAM features are instead plugged into other services that teams already use and enjoy, whether that’s another piece of software or a custom solution. This enables you to build custom, top-to-bottom solutions and workflows that connect assets with your entire tech stack using low-code solutions such as web generators or iPaaS solutions, like Workato.

Headless DAM vs. Integrated Content Hub

In 2018, Real Story Group shared the concept of an “integrated marketing content hub”, in which DAM is bi-directionally integrated with multiple systems in an organization’s technology stack. The critical component of this is that it’s bi-directional, meaning that in addition to pushing assets to a platform, the connection will also serve to report data back to the DAM, so it can be reviewed from one central location.

While an integrated content hub offers a great solution for those looking to only supply other platforms with content, a headless DAM enables organizations to create custom applications and workflows that dynamically manage, manipulate and distribute digital assets using triggers and actions across platforms.

What are the Benefits of a Headless DAM?

There are 5 key benefits of a headless DAM:

1. A single, centralized location for all content: Every user can find what they need in one convenient hub, with no confusion on versions or formats.
2. Fewer information silos: Easy access to content from any location, for all users that have permission, means that everyone is on the same page.
3. Custom UI tailored to your business: Companies can build their own interface and aren’t required to use the DAM’s UI. Since each industry has its own unique set of user needs, this helps set up for success using the DAM.
4. Better digital dexterity: Technologies and tools can be easily swapped out, making it easy for your organization to stay nimble. A Headless DAM is not tied to out-of-the-box integrations.
5. Easier custom solutions: APIs built with headless functionality in mind are created for ease of use. This allows the companies to truly build a solution that addresses their use case.

Functionalities Made Available with a Headless DAM

Once you’ve implemented a headless DAM, there are endless opportunities that it can bring to your organization, including these 6 functionalities:

1. User Management: Create new user groups and add, delete, or edit those groups within other platforms, such as your identity and access management tools.
2. Distribution: Access your assets from within other platforms for downloading, sharing, transforming, and more. When an asset is updated, the new version is dynamically updated across all channels.
3. Quick Uploading: Transfer new assets to your DAM directly from your desktop or other applications, mapping relevant metadata.
4. Publishing: Create embed links or upload your assets directly into your publishing platforms.
5. Advanced Search: Find your assets within other productivity tools using enterprise-level search capabilities, such as advanced filters and AI-generated tags.
6. Report Creation: Gain valuable insights by generating customized reports based on information tracked within your DAM.

Who is Headless DAM best for?

A headless DAM is best suited for enterprise organizations that require custom solutions, have a suite of technology tools they want to connect with, and have complex or multiple teams that all need access from within platforms (and often custom access). In today’s geo-dispersed working world, a headless DAM is an important tool for these bigger teams that are working with large amounts of assets.

It’s important to note, as well, that headless DAM is only suited for organizations that have a technical team that can implement, maintain, and support custom solutions.

Is it Time to Upgrade?

The foundation of a strong headless DAM is a clean, easy-to-use API. MediaValet’s API is consistently praised for being easy to understand and connect with (plus our customer success team is pretty amazing). Learn more about MediaValet’s open API here.

Having partners world-wide who are product experts has helped MediaValet integrate with a variety of industries and clients all over the globe. Our partnerships are a huge part of our growth strategy here at MediaValet—we wouldn’t be where we are without them.

Work Management Australia (WMA) is an Adobe Workfront certified partner and leading Workfront expert in Australia. WMA has more than 100 implementations in APAC and works with clients on Workfront, proofing, DAM and Fusion. Designing world-class solutions and tailored Workfront implementations, WMA is a valued partner and integral part of MediaValet’s connection to the Australian region.

We talked with Nicky Allen, the founder and director at WMA about how MediaValet has helped her add value to her clients’ Workfront strategies.

First off, can you tell us a little bit about Work Management Australia?

I started Work Management Australia about six years ago because there was no Workfront presence in Australia. So, we set out to be the Workfront subject matter expert here in the region and to be able to service the APAC work management market. We also work with partners or vendors, who might integrate seamlessly to Workfront, like MediaValet, to create a beautiful end-to-end solution for our customers.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what it is that you do at WMA?

I had a background in TELCO and consultancy in the IT space for many, many years. I got into that space after university, then had a fantastic ten years in the UK with Texas Instruments and Accenture. When we came back from the UK to Australia, I spent time selling TELCO and project management solutions until I set up WMA in 2015 to address the Workfront presence here in Australia.

I’m the owner and director of WMA. I’ve grown the team with several fantastic Workfront specialists who not only know how to implement and support and train for Workfront, but also the third party solutions that hook into Workfront like DAMs and the other integration pieces as well, so we’re able to give the client a total solution around the whole work management processes both upstream and downstream.

When a client comes to you, what are the top challenges that they’re trying to solve?

They’re mostly trying to manage their digital work processes in projects and marketing campaigns and trying to centralize all of that work in the one place. When they first come to us, many of the processes might be manual. For example, they might be reviewing and approving their digital assets by email. Assets can get lost; versions can be confused; and audit trails can be lacking. There’s a big lack of visibility into what everyone’s doing, what’s going on in campaigns and where the holdups are on approvals.

One of our clients, who sells thousands of brands of drink products, implemented Workfront just before Christmas, and had set up processes for each of the different brands, but pretty rapidly realized that many of those processes were similar. Once they realized this, we were able to work with them to standardize those processes and make them much more efficient. So, we were able to help them gain efficiencies of scale between the teams and their brands, which was very rewarding.

We have another large agency client that enables their customers to submit a request for a marketing campaign directly through Workfront. They’ve automated all of those requests to ensure they have visibility into all of the activities, approvals and asset proofing, all the way through for the final client review and approval. This visibility ensures that they know what’s going on and are also able to give each client an update on what’s happening with that campaign. In fact, they even have some clients collaborate as part of their campaign.

What are some of the different types of organizations that you work with?

We work primarily with digital agencies, but we’ve worked with all sorts of organizations. We’ve worked with everything from IT PMOs to marketing organizations in companies such as banks, airlines and even opera houses. We’ve seen a significant rise in the use of Workfront among agencies and marketing teams, who are now realizing that work management solutions can be highly useful for managing marketing campaigns and their processes because they often have the same problems as traditional project managers.

It’s a broad spectrum of organizations, both in the PMO space and marketing spaces, and also in New Product Development, finance and HR organizations. They all use Workfront to be able to have that visibility of the work management process.

Do you mostly work with large companies or do you also work with smaller businesses?

Both actually. We’ve worked with a wide range of organizations, from large global banking organizations to some of the smaller agencies who only have a few licenses and use it in a simpler way just for proofing for example.

How long does the process with WMA typically take?

If it’s a low hanging fruit, we’ve done some of them in a couple of weeks, but typically they would take three to four months. Usually, we would go in and do a discovery session with the client to kickstart the project. It’s like building a house: you have your architects have a look at your processes now, what do you actually want, and work through some of your requirements. We’ll do some discovery workshops and after we’ve done that, we’ll be able to give them a design of the solution to build out their requirements.

For example:

• What do they want to manage in a new campaign?
• What are the steps for the process?
• How do we automate them?
• How do we digitally review and approve an asset that’s needed for a campaign?
• What reporting is needed?

We also encourage our clients to help us build their solution. Not only does it help our clients become self-sufficient and learn the system, it also reduces the cost for them. Once it’s built, we’ll support their user acceptance testing, provide walkthroughs, host training sessions, and then stand by while they pilot the solution and eventually go live.

We always recommend keeping it simple initially because it’s a learning process and they’re able to tweak the solution as they go. Then afterwards, we might look at integrating MediaValet, for example, and that would be a second phase when they really start to understand the solution and processes.

And of course, the relationship doesn’t stop there. We host master groups and regular communication groups to keep in touch and check in with our clients throughout their journey with Workfront and any other downstream systems, such as MediaValet.

So, for large organizations, you’d recommend a phased approach?

Absolutely. Some of our customers, for example an agency with multiple clients, we may suggest running with one client, so that they can get used to how this new digital solution works and evaluate how to automate their processes. Often, they’ll find that they think they need a bunch of complex processes, and then realize after they’ve implemented with the first client actually it’s much easier and streamlined if we simplify.

Or they could do it by teams – such as starting with the studio team first, then rolling it out to the rest of the organization. It really does depend on where the quick wins are and what problems the client has. We’ll discuss with them what’s going to be the best for them and how do we roll that out for them, specifically.

Getting that low-hanging fruit is important. They’re paying for licenses and we want to make sure that they’re getting the maximum value out of those licenses as soon as possible.

Why would someone use WMA to set-up a work management environment, as opposed to doing it by themselves?

“About 90% of the clients or organizations we’ve talked to who’ve tried to set it up themselves don’t renew with Workfront after year one, and it’s quite sad because they’ve made that investment. What it usually comes down to is that they were unable to implement Workfront to achieve ROI in an effective manner, or set-up a simple user interface to get high user adoption, which is really, really key.

Part of the process of working with WMA is the practice of identifying the low hanging fruit and the best client to use as a pilot to really test Workfront out. We can advise our clients on how to set up processes efficiently using little tricks and techniques that you wouldn’t know unless you’ve used the system for years and years.

We have that broad experience of setting up a client and then advising them on what other systems are going to create that end-to-end solution, such as using MediaValet to manage those assets that they’ve created.

At the very least, we recommend holding the client’s hand while they do it, so we can pass on our IP to the client. Doing it themselves is…brave.”

What makes WMA stand out from other work management environment consultants?

“For one thing, we’re the only consultants in Australia that are solely focused on Workfront implementations. Because we’re focused specifically on Workfront, we’re very, very good at it. But, of course, this knowledge extends to integrations too.

Aside from being the absolute experts in Australia, we’re also extremely focused on our integrity and what’s in the interests of the client. I’ve got a real belief that you do what’s right in the short term for the customer, even if it’s not maximizing that initial sale. Ensure that the client gets what they need and what is really going to benefit them. We want to get the most ROI for them in the short term and then build on that to add value for them later down the track in a timely manner.

What would you say the benefit is to connect a platform like Workfront with a DAM?

Organizations spend so much money on beautifully processed and approved assets that are managed in Workfront, only to dump them in Google Drive or local storage. But, you really need a proper asset management storage solution, like MediaValet, to ensure they’re managed and secured. You don’t want to take the risk of losing your assets, or using the wrong version, or having to pay the suppliers to access it, which is often the case.

One of our clients was paying their supplier $6 to access an asset every time they needed to use it. If you own it, you don’t have the cost of trying to retrieve your asset. This alone really shows the ROI of implementing a DAM, like MediaValet.

What’s the value you see in the partnership with MediaValet?

I love the fact that MediaValet is very agile and flexible – the team is able to react and move very quickly. We would love to expand the footprint for MediaValet here in Australia, as there is a big need for great DAM solutions to be able to help our clients with their digital asset storage requirements. As it also has a simple demonstrable plug-in for Workfront, it is a valuable addition to our toolkit to help solve our customer’s challenges.

Do you have any advice for organizations looking to connect DAM and a work management solution?

I’d certainly say define what’s important to you—what are your needs, what are your processes? It’s really important to understand how your marketing and creative teams work with digital assets.

Because different solutions work for different clients, it’s also important to be able to have a good understanding of the type of vendor that you want to work with. Is it a small vendor that you want a really personal connection with and that ability for the vendor to be able to really get to know you, or do you want a big name with a big reputation?

And, of course, what’s the budget. MediaValet is an amazing DAM at a reasonable price point. We really love the fact that we’ve had the opportunity to work with MediaValet to give our clients a great option in the DAM market space. It also comes back to the fact that MediaValet is small, agile, and very easy to work with.

I feel like MediaValet is a small family that you get to know, and you care about each other and you’re working towards the one goal. It’s a great organization and I’m really pleased to be partnering with you.

Just a fun one to end off on: What are you currently binge-watching?

Well, I’ve done The Crown—tick, I’ve done the Queen’s Gambit—tick, Bridgerton—tick. I’m now onto a series called Fauda which is absolutely amazing, which is about the Israeli and Palestinian conflict.

Learn more about our Workfront integration

Ready to ensure your assets are at your teams’ fingertips? See how the MediaValet and Workfront integration helps you make the most of DAM and project management.

There’s no doubt about it – video has become a critical component of any marketer’s content toolbox. Not only are 55% of people watching video every day, 52% of marketers in a recent HubSpot guide actually identified it as the content type with the highest ROI. Short video formats, in particular, like those found on Instagram and TikTok, have seen a particular increase in interest. Wordstream even cites that videos, on average, get 12x more shares on social media than text and images – combined!

While the value of video can’t be disputed, it can be incredibly challenging to manage. Even for those that have a digital asset management solution and some form of artificial intelligence in place, the inability to pinpoint a specific moment in time in a video can leave people spending hours sifting through terabytes of footage to find that “magic moment” they need. This is why advanced, time-based video indexing capabilities, like those offered by Microsoft, when combined with a digital asset management solution, are critical to driving significant productivity and ROI gains for marketing and creative teams.

Using DAM-based, advanced video AI capabilities, like those offered with MediaValet Audio/Video Intelligence, users can not only identify which videos contain a specific keyword, it can also identify where in the video it’s present. It identifies objects, people, text, spoken words, sentiments and so much more. It can save marketers countless hours, allowing them to instantly find the exact moment they need from any given set of videos.

Here are three ways that artificial intelligence is enabling organizations to maximize the value of their video content.

Increased Video Re-Use

The nature of video content makes it incredibly challenging to reuse. At any given time, an organization is hosting thousands of hours of video across hard drives, shared servers, and cloud platforms – all with nothing to go on but the file name (which, let’s be honest – is usually named something like “VID-145246″). There’s a ton of legacy knowledge that’s involved in knowing:

1. If any given video exists and
2. Where that video is stored.

Artificial intelligence makes it easier to find and reuse entire videos, as well as identify opportunities to reuse shorter clips within longer videos. Artificial intelligence for video also enables marketers to more easily find quotes and information within video content to be used in other content formats, such as blog posts, infographics, and whitepapers. With this functionality, you can maximize the ROI of your videos and significantly improve their lifespan.

Example: Anniversary Campaigns

You’re the marketing coordinator for a fast-food restaurant that’s about to celebrate its 50th year in business. As part of an anniversary campaign, the marketing director wants to showcase the commercials that were used to promote the grand opening 50 years ago. Using Video Intelligence, you search for the term “Grand Opening” in your DAM. The DAM then pulls all videos that included the term “Grand Opening”, either within on-screen text or spoken word. You’re quickly able to identify the best videos and send them to your director for use.

Improved Time-to-Market

Creating high-quality videos at scale can be a big challenge – especially for organizations without a dedicated video team. In addition to maximizing ROI, another benefit of making your video content more discoverable with artificial intelligence is improved time-to-market for video projects. Sifting through hours of video footage for content to use in a new piece can take hours if not days. Artificial intelligence can significantly reduce this time, allowing you to identify specific moments within hours of videos where any person, object, or topic is present.

Example: Social Media Highlights

You’re on the social media team for a large basketball franchise. You’ve been tasked with creating a new post that highlights the top moments from star player, Josh MacKenzie, in the game the night before. Using Advanced Search, you search for People: Josh MacKenzie and Uploaded: Last 24 hours. With Video Intelligence, you can quickly navigate to specific timestamps including Josh MacKenzie, and identify the best clips to use. You edit them into a quick highlight reel and submit the video for approval within an hour. It’s live on social before noon that day.

Enhanced Accessibility

Another major improvement that artificial intelligence brings to video is enhanced accessibility. Not only does artificial intelligence boost video footage with auto-generated subtitles, but it also allows the viewer to translate those subtitles into their native language. Microsoft Video Indexer, for example, can auto-translate transcriptions into 57 different languages – on the spot. This opens up huge potential to train, communicate and share more effectively with individuals, learning about their personal preferences and needs.

Example: New Employee Training

You’re an HR manager for a federal government organization preparing a video training series for all new hires. Once the training videos are finalized, you upload them to your DAM and run Video Intelligence for these new videos. A transcript is then automatically created for the videos, which will allow each new hire to apply subtitles in their preferred language if needed.

Learn More About Audio/Video Intelligence

Are you ready to maximize the value of your audio and video content? MediaValet’s Audio/Video Intelligence enables you to quickly generate asset transcripts and easily identify people, topics, scenes, and more within your audio clips and video footage. Learn more

MediaValet is one of the world’s leading cloud-based digital asset management (DAM) solutions, helping top global brands manage and distribute their assets. A centralized DAM approach enables marketing and creative teams to move fast, with confidence and control.

Our integration and implementation partners are the lifeblood of MediaValet. They help our customers maximize their digital asset management (DAM) adoption, optimize their workflow across technologies, and more. In our new Partner Showcase series, we’re highlighting the amazing people behind our partnerships that help champion our initiatives and help our customers take their MediaValet DAM to the next level.

To kick off the series, we interviewed Gary Colon, Manager of Strategic Partnerships at Wrike, a leading work management platform and key MediaValet partner. As our primary point of contact, Gary works with the MediaValet team to identify opportunities to bring the best solution and experience to MediaValet and Wrike customers.

First off, can you tell us a little bit about Wrike?

Wrike is an enterprise-ready, cloud-based collaborative work management solution for managing cross-functional work at scale. We help over 20,000 companies achieve the best work of their lives, by enabling them to work as one. Many teams have called us their “virtual office,” even before 2020.

Tell us a little bit more about your background and your role at Wrike.

I’ve been at Wrike for almost six years now. I started in sales as an account executive and now I’m the strategic partner manager for the majority of our partnerships, including MediaValet and chat partners, like Microsoft, Slack, and Zoom. My role now is mainly focused on managing the revenue from our partnerships, but it also allows me to be creative in helping Wrike bring new or deeper product integration to market.

Six years is a long time, you obviously love it! What do you think makes Wrike stand out in the collaborative work management space?

I would say that the number one thing is our ability to scale while keeping things simple. And while the solution is great for scalability, it’s not overly complex that you would need custom development or heavy configuration to change the way that you work. It’s very adaptable to growing needs. We put our customers, innovation, and the demands of an ever-changing market first, and that is one of the reasons Forrester named us a leader with the best offering in the Work Management Wave report in 2020.

When people adopt Wrike, what are the top challenges they’re trying to solve?

When they adopt Wrike, they’re most often trying to solve for either a dispersed team or dispersed work in general, where things are all over the place. The common thread among everyone is that they’re looking for a single source of truth for their work management. They want one place to go to not only manage or create a project, but to actually work on the project. There’s a difference between project planning/management and work execution. Clients that come to us need both.

And to that point, what would you say are some of the immediate benefits that users experience and once they’ve implemented Wrike?

Happiness.

Love it!
I’d say that they experienced time savings, of course. With Wrike, they really have a cut-and-dry central workspace to find everything. That, along with the ability to find work quickly is something that everyone can benefit from by using Wrike. Another benefit that Wrike brings is that our partnerships and integrations allow us to easily integrate into companies’ technology stacks. Quite frankly, we wouldn’t be in the position we are today without our partnerships and integrations, like MediaValet.

Is there a customer success story that you can share with us that demonstrates the power of Wrike as a solution?

Sure, a story that excites me is the way we’ve helped Walmart Canada centralize their workspace with Wrike. With the heavy adoption of Wrike at Walmart Canada the teams have drastically improved the way they work. Now, Walmart has a single source of truth for work management, eliminated non-value-added work, and are now able to easily work cross-functionally with other departments. We have a case study online, with a short video from the Vice President of Transportation at Walmart, covering how Wrike has enabled them to identify one version of the truth and really work as one.

What promoted Wrike to pursue a partnership with MediaValet?

Well, from my perspective, over the past few years we’ve really seen the collaborative work management space and creative and marketing use case really come together nicely. So much so, that in 2016 we created our Wrike for Marketers (WfM) package. Shortly after, WfM became our number one product because it was dynamic, feature-rich, and applicable to all departments.

We chose to partner with MediaValet specifically because of the combination of having a great product that customers love and also being very partner-friendly. This was a win-win opportunity for both of us to deliver more value out of the box, while providing a best-in-class approach to our customers (work management and digital asset management)

What value is the MediaValet partnership going to bring to Wrike users?

The MediaValet partnership brings our clients and users a native experience that is extremely easy to set up and use, and thus maximizes a team’s workflow. That speaks mostly to the integration itself, but what I think is just as valuable is MediaValet’s willingness to partner with another best-in-class product to better serve our clients’ mission. What people don’t see is the knowledge sharing and collaboration that goes into truly serving a client to have a world-class experience. When we collaborate, we’re able to share industry challenges and solutions that can relate with the clients we interact with. Our partnership is truly one that betters everyone involved.

In addition to the actual product integration, the collaboration between our two companies helps us push past any limits to deliver extreme value to those involved.

What makes you excited about the MediaValet and Wrike partnership?

We’re starting to see very positive trends of working closely together and I’m excited about where we’re going. We’ve been able to work with some amazing clients, and the list keeps growing. I’m excited to take what was our best year working together, take our learnings, and apply it to this year to make 2021 exceptional.

What advice can you share with companies looking to connect a DAM and collaboration tool, like Wrike?

I tend to ask a lot of questions, so if a company was looking to connect a DAM to Wrike, I would ask a series of questions around how they are tracking workflows, managing requests, and how they are getting their work done and/or approved. All of this is critical in the work management umbrella and incorporating a DAM into a collaboration solution is a part of the puzzle that is very meaningful to save time, reduce wasted efforts, and make it easy for users to adopt. The benefit is quite simple; when you have solutions that speak to each other, it makes work more meaningful and productive, and I think everyone can benefit from that.

2020 was a very unexpected year (to say the least) and many agree that it has potentially reshaped the way organizations work. In your opinion, how do you see the way we work evolving over the next year?

I would say that in the next 12 months, there’s going to be a great amount of pressure on software, like Wrike and MediaValet, to continue innovating in this new work environment. And for us — I can probably say jointly — it’s not entirely new, since we’ve supported cloud-based and remote work since the start of our companies. The key is to keep innovating and help teams work as one, whether remote or in office. So, in short, the main change I think we’ll continue to see is this “work from anywhere” mantra.

To that point, what technologies do you think will have the greatest impact on the way we work in the next few years?

I would say that the collaborative tools, like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom, are not going anywhere — and I think there will be a growing need for tools that can complement those platforms. You know, it used to be email — now it’s Slack or Microsoft Teams. Finding a way to integrate with those tools to make it more powerful is going to be extremely important, so we’ll likely see an increase in that type of functionality across SaaS platforms.

Do you think the work-from-home policies are here to stay?

I think that once it’s healthy and safe, we’ll go back to working in a hybrid environment that’s more structured. I really miss the in-office lunches, I mean collaboration, that happens between departments, and I truly think people are a company’s greatest assets. Wrike is an awesome company because of the people, and I miss them.

There’s a lot of magic that happens when you’re collaborating in person. I’m a fan of virtual meetings, but I don’t believe they have the same effectiveness as an in-person coffee, department sync or collaborative kickoff event. There’s something special that comes from working together in person that, again, I look forward to once we can do it safely and in a meaningful way.

Now, for one final, fun question. What are you currently binge-watching?

This is so funny and maybe unpredictable, but there’s an anime called “Dragon Ball Super” that my wife and I have been binge-watching for no good reason at all! We started by saying, “They’re only 30-minute episodes, let’s just try it.” Next thing you know, we’re three, four, five episodes in! It’s something I used to watch as a kid, so it’s fun to watch it again.

Learn more about our Wrike integration

Ready to streamline your workflow and improve collaboration? See how MediaValet and Wrike work together to bring the best out of DAM and project management.