When bringing digital asset management (DAM) into and organization, few companies consider the area of “Business Support”.  Business Support is defined as the extended organizational infrastructure (people, organizational structures, and technology/systems) that is needed to maintain both the proper functioning of the DAM as it relates to the business (i.e., how the DAM maps to the business, validating proposed changes to the system, adding new capabilities, rolling out to new users, etc.), and the proper governance and communication around the DAM across your extended organization.

Business support is critical to the successful use of DAM in an organization.  However most organizations fail to fully comprehend what is required or needs to be put in place to make a DAM deployment successful.  Furthermore, when considering the total cost of ownership for a DAM, it is frequently a common unaccounted cost.

Business support is an organizational cost and an organizational concern.  While business support is absolutely essential and required in global companies with multiple regional users (e.g. a global product or services company, manufacturer, consumer product provider or media/entertainment company) or for that matter any company that works with Ad agencies on a global basis, it is also essential for small- and medium-sized organizations to establish an appropriate business support infrastructure and business support team for the DAM.

Business support includes the DAM Masters and training roles referred to in the previous blog post.  However, it expands beyond those to include the expanded team of people that play a role in supporting the DAM, as it affects a wide swath of an organization – from the creative teams, through marketing and agency partners, to global sales teams, partners, suppliers, and various outlets or consumers.

What tools and infrastructure are required to successfully support the business use of a DAM system in an organization?

First, keep in mind that organizations can use a variety of organizational structures to support a digital asset management system, especially if it is on a global, enterprise-wide or broad basis (e.g., it integrates with one or more external agencies, partners, distributors, retailers, etc.)  Here are three approaches.  The first two are common.  The third one is new:

1. An organization might employ a structure that uses regional experts who provide business level support in the local language, and serve as contacts between the region’s end users and the DAM Masters, funneling requests inward, and answers and education outward.
2. The organization establishes a cross-functional team including IT, marketing, agency members, regional experts and others.
3. Outsource the business support function to a third-party who provides the DAM Masters, training and more back to the entire organization as a managed service.

Your choice will depend on a number of factors:

1. The structure and size of the business support organization required for your sized organization
2. The degree to which automation can be employed instead of or in addition to people
3. Your budget
4. Your ability to create the DAM Master role internally
5. Your ability to put in place the necessary internal organizational structure

Different structures work better for different organizations.  But regardless of the approach and structure chosen, both people and automation are required.  A good communication infrastructure is required, to communicate changes and education outward, and gather requests and needs inward.  Presentation and messaging tools, a help desk and online help, as well as best practice techniques will facilitate the training and education requirements.  Policies, protocols, survey tools, focus groups, emails and forums or internal blogs will facilitate requirements gathering.  All of these are part and parcel of the DAM business support function. And as can be seen from these statements, because of the variance in how organizations may implement business support, its cost can vary widely.

While there is no “right way” to provide business support for DAM, there are best practices (which is a topic for another post). One best practice, however, is setting up the business support function in the first place.  It is essential that it be set up and implemented, and for that matter, budgeted and accounted for as a critical expense, if you want your DAM to be successful.  This requires executive sponsorship and at least initial oversight.  It then requires ongoing attention, to assure it is being effectively provided.  Often the DAM Master(s) performs this function.

One related statement must be made here: Digital asset management is fundamentally different than content or web content management, and it requires a different support structure (and training).  This is so frequently misunderstood by people in organizations who think they can apply their Web content management (WCM) knowledge and skill sets to DAM and be successful.  In general, they can’t because DAM is distinctly different. What a digital asset management system does, how it functions, what it needs to be successful are all different from that of a Web CMS.   Perhaps an existing WCM support infrastructure can be utilized, but it doesn’t substitute for one that is dedicated to the DAM and the workflows, business processes, training, etc. that are required for its success across the extended enterprise.

In summary, DAM Business Support is critical to establish and maintain.  It is essential to the success of any DAM, and often the area that kills DAM or media asset management (MAM) efforts if it is not properly addressed and furthermore, supported with senior management sponsorship and ongoing support. Lastly, it’s one of 13 costs for a digital asset management system, and one cost that is frequently unaccounted for in both initial planning or ongoing support.

Almost every successful digital asset management (DAM) installation (hosted/SaaS DAM or on premise) has a resident DAM expert or “DAM Master”.  Depending on the size and breadth of the organization this person or sometimes a team of 2-3 people, provides oversight of the DAM system from a combined business use and technical implementation perspective.

In most organizations, this role is often divided between several people (e.g. technically focused vs. business focused) who work as the DAM Masters or governing council, to make sure the organization has smooth and ongoing system operation.

They are not necessarily IT people, because they need to understand how the DAM is applied to the business and across groups including potentially external agencies, partners, and users. Nor are they strictly marketing folk assigned to babysit the DAM, as they also have to understand, sometimes technically, how the DAM works and how to get things accomplished with it.  The DAM Master is thus a core person or team, and needs to be able to understand both the business needs, workflows and processes of the DAM’s various stakeholders, as well as the technical architecture and capabilities of the DAM system.  In essence, these people “own the DAM” and are responsible for its proper function, use, maintenance and success within the organization.

Their key responsibilities are:

• Solicit, vet and resolve all enhancement requests and modifications to the system
• Expand and update the metadata model and definitions (assuming the system supports the capability to update the metadata model after it has been established)
• Enforce consistency of metadata (“metadata quality assurance”) – are people using the same terms, controlled vocabulary, keywords, etc. to describe the assets so they can be found later?
• Implement and update the folder/collection/catalog hierarchy for consistent access
• Implement new business rules, policies, and in some cases automated workflows within the system to facilitate business processes around the system
• Function as more than a librarian or governance provider for the assets
• Potentially manage user organization and access to functionality in the system
• Potentially provide internal training and problem resolution as well

With this lengthy but essential introduction, the key question is: Do you have the right people in your organization to serve as DAM Masters in the first place?  You must ask and assess this critical question.  It’s very important, because it directly affects three of the hidden costs of DAM: initial training, ongoing training and business support.

If your organization is like most, you don’t have these key people on staff and instead have to hire them.  Or perhaps you do have some people with relevant skill sets, but they’ll need to be “grown” and trained.  In some cases organizations outsource these skills/roles from a third-party (e.g., a system integrator), or from the DAM vendor.

Once you identify who is going to be your DAM Master(s), you can identify this hidden cost – whether it will be new headcount, outsourced headcount or service, or purely training fees for those few key people in your organization.  Establishing the DAM Master role is critical success factor for your organization’s use of a DAM – without it, it is highly likely your DAM project will wither and die, because no-one “owns” the DAM along with the requisite skills to manage and expand its use.

For more on calculating the total cost of DAM and finding out more about some of the hidden costs of DAM, download the North Plains’ white paper “The 13 Cost Areas for a Digital Asset Management System”.

Another data point for the growth of the eBook market comes from data released from Amazon.com:

“Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books–astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months,” according to Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos.

And Kindle eBook sales are accelerating:

• Over the past 3 months Amazon has sold 143 Kindle eBooks for every 100 hardcover books
• Over the past month, Amazon has sold 180 Kindle eBooks for every 100 hardcover books
• Amazon sold more than three times as many Kindle eBooks in the first half of 2010 as in the first half of 2009
• The Association of American Publishers’ (AAP) latest data reports that e-book sales grew 163 percent in the month of May and 207 percent year-to-date through May. Kindle book sales in May and year-to-date through May exceeded those growth rates.

This is across Amazon.com’s entire U.S. book business and includes sales of hardcover books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the numbers even higher. What’s interesting is that this is with a relatively modest book inventory: 630,000 eBooks, with an additional 1.8 million out-of-copyright e-books made available for free.  It also clearly coincides with the growth in sales of the Kindle itself — device unit sales accelerated each month in the second quarter–both on a sequential month-over-month basis and on a year-over-year basis.  (Unlike Apple, Amazon still won’t disclose exactly how many Kindles have been sold.  Isn’t it about time they did?)  It stands to reason, more people with the device… more eBook sales. However it is outpacing hardcovers. And one would think there are many more people available to buy hardcovers than eBooks.  It hasn’t yet outsold paperbacks, which may be the larger of the three types of books.

Publishers are still highly selective in publishing eBook titles because they still lack the infrastructure to quickly and easily put out all books as both hardcover and eBooks.  There are many more books that could potentially be e-published, especially if they had better eBook publishing and distribution processes.  It illustrates both just how far the industry has come, and just how fare it is from getting to “long-tail” eBook publishing.

The continued rapid growth of eBooks is further underscored by the AAPs year-to-date data for eBooks sales:  The 13 submitting publishers to that category currently comprise 8.48 % of the total trade books market, compared to 2.89% percent for the same period last year — triple the growth of last year and nearing double digits — a marker for the industry that there is real money to be made in eBook, and companies that lack an eBook strategy could miss out on this increasingly significant revenue stream.

It is interesting to note that, compared to last year, people are purchasing more books, period.  Perhaps it is a sign of the improving economy, or perhaps it is an indication that people (especially adults) are reading more in general. The data is unclear on the reason.  What is clear is that eBooks continue to grow in popularity, and are unquestionably here to stay.

I was recently asked:

Is there anything you can share about how the file management needs differ from the way a publisher use a DAM?  I would think there would be a lot more transfers of very files (i.e. high resolution print-ready PDFs) and much, much less internal activity involving small files (i.e. photos, production files, etc.)

In general, yes, printers are working with and transferring large print-ready files.  Some of these can be hundreds of megabytes in size and so there can be significant concern in working with clients around bandwidth and the time it takes to send and upload the file.  However, internally on a local network, the size of the file is less of an issue.  But in general they tend to work with whole files and less frequently with the individual pieces — unless they’re doing specific touch up and color correction work on individual assets contained in the final work.

However, in some cases, printers provide DAM as a service to their clients.  They manage the assets on behalf of the client, providing browser-based access to not just the final print ready files, but in some cases the QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign layouts, and both the hi- and low-res components (e.g., photos, graphics, images, fonts, etc.).  In this way, DAM allows them to offer additional or “value-added” services to their clients.

Publishers are a bit different.  They generally use DAM as an internal repository to maintain all of the elements in the publication (e.g., magazine or book), as well as the layout file, and the finished work.  So they are often working with both the large and the smaller files.   However it can vary across publishers. In some cases, a DAM is used as an integral part of the editorial process – where work in progress, all the individual components as well as the layouts and versions of both are kept.  Others may use DAM primarily for storage and distribution management of finished works.  Some use it for both.

Note that “Publishers” may also be either magazine or book publishers.  Magazine publishers typically have a broader range of content than book publishers (so far… but this is changing too) as they often have both print and Web versions of their content, have needs to support both workflows (which are different), and may have exclusive content for the web or mobile devices (e.g., video, audio, and other rich media hanging around) that is updated more frequently. The DAM provides a common repository for feeding both kinds of workflows, for grouping and categorizing related content, for finding other relevant assets that could be used in a developing story, and for distributing to both a web content management system (Web CMS) as well as to individuals, partners, channels, video streaming servers or mobile distribution platforms.

As well, for magazines in particular, they may be working with purchased or rights-controlled images, so managing the expiration and use of them in a publication or publications is critical.  Using an image out of its purchased rights can be extremely costly.  So the DAM helps in a way that printers typically don’t use it. In summary, publishing use is potentially a broader set of use cases, media types, workflows and file sizes (e.g. working with large video files… at least the initial master versions before they’re reformatted or transcoded for distribution).

Book publishers are typically working with a more limited range of content — photos, images, graphics, and fonts.  Now, as eBooks begin to incorporate more interactivity, the book publishing workflows and asset management challenges move towards those of magazine, web publishing and potentially “interactive applications”, and will require working with and managing a broader range of file types, components and workflows.

Lastly, note that print and publishing workflows vary a bit as well.  Print may use the assets in touchup, color correction and other pre-press workflows, perhaps with some limited review and approval with the client.  Publishers often use it in creative as well as review and approval workflows, and distribution workflows — which may embargo information until a set date and release it directly to particular people, partners or distribution channels (including to web sites and direct mobile devices).  It can be used this way too for print and eBooks books, where the distribution processes may include direct to the consumer and more frequent updates.

Feel free to keep the questions coming.

Global marketing is a challenge, regardless of the size of the company. In order to communicate with your customers and prospect you have to have the right content, in the right format, where the customer or prospect wants to consume it. The “right content” means that the pictures, text, videos, audio, messaging and more are appropriate for each region, geography, demographic or culture, and device. In regulated industries, like pharmaceutical and medical devices, it also has to comply with various regulations. Even within a country such as here in the US, how do you make sure that you’re marketing snow shovels in winter in New England while you’re marketing swimsuits and golf clubs in Florida and Arizona?

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After spending a week in Las Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show it’s clear that the demand for managing video – often referred to as “Media Asset Management” (MAM) and for managing all kinds of digital files “Digital Asset Management” (DAM) — has grown substantially in the past year.

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Apparently Wiley has released an eReader comparison tool intended to allow buyers to compare the right reader for the right person. This is novel and perhaps needed, but it seems to me to miss an important point: Content.

Sure you can compare the devices based on what features they have, whether they are color or black and white, wireless or not, can read the book to you or allow you to read in the dark.

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