The DAM Business Imperative

People today consume information in radically different ways than in the past, as technology drives the proliferation of new media, new forms of content and new channels for its delivery. For businesses competing for the mindshare of existing and potential customers, this rapid evolution mandates a more streamlined approach to the delivery of marketing messages and product information across the full spectrum of communications media. A failure to embrace this new reality, and invest in the means to thrive within it, can spell disaster for any company—including yours.

A fundamental first step is to consolidate and organize all of the marketing content used to promote your products and brands, to make these messages and rich media content readily accessible for consistent delivery via all channels of customer interaction. This core requirement is driving increasing adoption of digital asset management (DAM) systems to maintain, render and distribute customer-facing brand assets.

While many companies have historically relied on their advertising and creative agencies to maintain this sort of content, the current trend is to bring the management of strategic brand-related digital assets in-house to facilitate the rapid execution of new product introductions and multi-channel marketing campaigns. After all, it's your brand—not your agency's. As with many labels used to describe business applications, "digital asset management" is an imprecise term. Fundamentally, enterprise DAM systems are used to manage a variety of rich media files, including photos and other graphic images; audio and video items; as well as documents and presentations which frequently incorporate renditions, or copies, of the aforementioned images and videos.

The most common strategic business objectives cited as motivation for the implementation of enterprise DAM systems include:

1. Speed-to-market—more rapidly assemble the requisite content for new product introductions and integrated marketing campaigns;

2. Brand consistency—ensure that all channels of customer interaction project a correct and consistently branded customer experience; and

3. Increased marketing effectiveness—enable marketing professionals to spend more time on strategic and creative activities, rather than searching for, or responding to requests for, marketing content.

Beyond these growth-oriented objectives, DAM simply saves money in numerous ways. For example, by enabling the frequent re-use of approved marketing assets, companies can eliminate redundant activities such as photo shoots intended to re-create marketing assets already available elsewhere.

DAM Origins

The first digital asset management systems evolved within two distinct industries: printing, to support the increasingly digital production processes of pre-press and print service providers; and the audio/video production studios serving the media and entertainment industry. These solutions were built for relatively small teams of highly technical users seeking to work more efficiently within these specific industries.

By contrast, modern "enterprise DAM" systems have evolved to support marketing and creative professionals who must manage increasing volumes of rich media content used for promotional activities across an increasing array of channels. Here, a key requirement is to make this content securely available to large populations of not-so-technical business users, including employees and external business partners, who require self-service access to sales and marketing content.

As a business looks to implement a DAM system, the key sponsors will usually be found in marketing, while the focused involvement of the IT department will be crucial to the long-term success of the project. In the not-too-distant past, marketing departments were rarely involved in the acquisition of technology, and the IT department's interaction with marketing was limited to the support of desktop applications, email and customer information systems. With the emergence of the Internet as a mass medium, marketing technology adoption has become mainstream. Fortunately, the task of managing corporate Web properties has brought the IT and marketing departments much closer together within most companies, and CIOs have made it a priority to develop business skills within their departments.

DAM in Action

At a high level, enterprise DAM systems are used in some or all of the following ways:

• A central library. Marketers diligently maintain all of their approved marketing materials while controlling who has access to what. A DAM system used in this way represents the single source of truth for marketing content while providing 24x7, self-service access to an extended sales force, media contacts, business partners and other constituents. 
• A media database and rendering engine. This is for automated publishing applications such as Web content management implementations and document-assembly systems. This represents a related trend in marketing communications to deliver personalized Web content and documents that are more relevant to the interests of specific customers, driving higher sales and increasing customer loyalty.
• A work-in-progress production tool. This helps creative teams work more efficiently as they author, review, approve and produce new marketing materials.

In practice, the potential variations on each of these use cases are nearly endless. You can be certain that your requirements for DAM will evolve over time, so let's take a closer look at the important technical attributes of a flexible, scalable, and extensible DAM