November 28, 2017 by Maria Jollie
We were excited to attend Henry Stewart DAM Los Angeles in November. It was the last of the Henry Stewart DAM conferences for 2017, and provided confirmation on some of our insights and a sneak peek into the future of DAM
We love attending the Henry Stewart conferences because we get to hear from and speak with so many people who use a DAM on a regular basis.
Below are five themes we observed from Henry Stewart LA this year.
Digital asset management is about digital and physical and the two don't just impact each other, they are extensions of each other.
Technologies watch the behavior of the physical world and attach it to digital assets. For example, when you upload a picture taken on a camera, you can also include the metadata attached to it. This metadata is based on location, time, and other physicality.
Conversely, when you take a digital asset and turn it physical, such as packaging, you can track the performance of that physical asset and add it to the digital metadata.
We will see more and more transference between digital and physical as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning continue to mature. The emerging challenge is learning how to preserve that information so we can extract meaningful insights for the future.
Digital assets that have clear, structured metadata aren't just easy to find, they enable services to be used efficiently.
With the proper structure, service buses can be leveraged across an enterprise through a DAM. The right images can be pulled into the different applications to create consistent and powerful marketing materials because of metadata.
Strong metadata also facilitates the ability to reuse appropriate assets and realize more value.
If possible, it's important to start the conversation about metadata before you buy a DAM so that your assets can be used across services, distribution channels, and throughout time.
There is so much that a DAM can do, but to get the best value out of it, you should focus on the top priorities.
To understand priorities, the users of the DAM need to be analyzed and interviewed so that the use-cases of how they need to use the DAM can be identified.
Typically, users can be segmented into two groups: the main users and the infrequent users. These groups of users should be studied to understand how they interact with your DAM to determine where the focus of the functionality of the DAM should be.
The windows of time for finishing projects are shrinking for marketers, so they need to drive a faster speed to market to keep up with the demand for responsiveness.
Work-in-progress (WIP) functionality and workflows are paramount to achieving faster completion times. The recent focus on WIP and workflows in DAM is designed to help with this improvement.
Other integrations are also important for strengthening speed to market, so DAM's need to have infrastructures that are scalable and can handle pushing assets into other systems to enable cross functionality.
Capabilities like WIP, automation, AI, Internet of Things (IoT), advanced video options, etc. have been talked about a lot in recent years.
We are approaching a new year of vendors reaching a maturation in their software as a culmination of what has been trending in the DAM industry.
You can look forward to seeing more thorough demos that include these elements in 2018.
Interested in learning more about DAM and considerations for choosing the right solution for your company?
