Take control of your digital assets!

To have your digital assets scattered over a number of servers and local disks is a problem that many people faces on a daily basis. At some point along the way there has probably been one or two attempts to install and manage a DAM solution (Digital Assets Management solution), but after only a few years most people find themselves back at square one, back in a situation where the assets are stored on different local disks and in various places in the business. Once again you face classic problem with version handling: how do you know if this is the latest version if you got one version mailed to your inbox, you find another one in the central DAM solution and a third one a local disk out in the regions. It’s hard to know where to start. You want to create a structure and find processes that work for all the business needs. Often there is not one single solution or process to be found, that can handle the management of digital assets. The solution is more likely to be found in a flexible solution that can support different processes for different categories of digital assets. Below follows a number tips: Create a DAM strategy - Ask yourself questions like: How do we work today and how would we like to work today? How do we like to work with our digital assets in 3 to 5 years? Digitalisation is moving forward at an enormous pace and the latest technology quickly becomes obsolete, so it is a good idea to invest in a dynamic solution and in dynamic processes. Once you have answered the questions above, you should divide all assets in suitable categories such as: images, videos, briefing templates, and so on. Then you should try to map the different workflows and lifecycles to each category. If two categories should have the same workflow they should probably be merged. Once this exercise is completed, the goal is to have a flow chart (swim lane diagram) for each category. These flow charts can then be broken down into "user stories" which can be the basis for the requirements specification. Managing your requirements can quickly become maze of various requirements. A recommendation is to split the requirements into different groups. Start by making a distinction between functional and non-functional requirements. Functional requirements answers the question: What? What will the system do? For example: uploading and tagging should be done in the same interface and on upload. Non-functional requirements, answers the question: How? How will the system do it? For example: The corresponding non-functional requirements for the above functional requirement could be: upload speed should not be less than 256KB/s based on minimum 2 Mbit/s. The requirements can then be broken down into smaller subgroups, such as security, integration, architecture, etc. Build a metadata structure - Next challenge is to revise the search criteria and tagging structures. The "user stories" that you have created will come handy here as well. They will show you the different contexts in which a specific category will be used. Even if your DAM solution has a smart search function, you still need to create the relation between different criterias. A good start is to generate reports on what the business is searching for and compare that with the tagging index. To secure your digital assets you should focus on having dynamic structures so tagging easily can be updated and on several assets simultaneously, for example if a specific keyword has been replaced with a new one. Post GO Live - How to avoid getting back on square one? Well, the business consists of the people and the purpose of the processes and systems is to support the business and not the opposite. A sign you should look out for is when the business starts to deviate from the established processes. That could mean that you are moving towards square one. This is however quite natural, since organizations constantly develops. The key is to have a dynamic solution with dynamic processes that will enable you to meet your business future challenges.  These are just a few areas out of many that you can start to look over. Recoordinate are Subject Matter Experts and consultants in DAM. We can advise you towards better efficiency through improved processes and applications that will meet today's and tomorrow's needs. Martin Steiner Senior Marketing Consultant Recoordinate