How to Select and Implement Effective Digital Asset Management Solutions

CUPERTINO, Calif. - June 23, 2013 - PRLog -- If you work in an advertising or design agency, a corporate marketing organization, you may be thinking about adopting a digital asset management system to help your team boost productivity, reduce overhead, and mitigate business risk. DAM Systems can deliver tremendous efficiencies that can directly benefit your bottom line, reduce time to market, and help ensure output quality by facilitating strict control of brand usage. At the same time, because they represent a substantial investment, they need to deliver maximum ROI. But how should you go about selecting the right system for the unique needs of your organization, and how will you effectively integrate it into your workflow?

DAM systems offer a centralized location in which you can efficiently store, organize, manage, access and distribute files such as images, layouts, PDF files, and video clips. By giving team members quick, easy access to files anytime and from anywhere, DAM systems help staff focus on core creative work instead of time-intensive, costly file searches and re-creation of missing assets.  Above all, a robust DAM solution should offer benefits that span the entire content life cycle, from creation to management, distribution to storage and disaster recovery.

Perhaps most importantly, you don’t want to invest in expensive technology and then find that no one uses it. To avoid internal resistance to adoption, you need to ensure that key employees are effectively trained in the use of your new system so they can champion the technology and its benefits.

In order to successfully design and implement the most effective DAM System for your organization, you need to identify an integrator who does more than just install software and configure hardware. You need a partner who can advise you throughout the process, from needs-assessment to purchase, implementation to ongoing support. Your system integrator must:

• Fully understand the day-to-day workflows and requirements of creative teams  

• Know the technology landscape and be able to advise you on the benefits and limitations of each market offering as well as each solution vendor

• Be expert at implementing proven technology solutions, customizing them to fit your workflow, and demonstrating how to use them to maximum benefit

• Be able to deliver your system on time and within budget.

First and foremost, integrators who serve creative professionals should have deep knowledge of their clients’ industries as well as their day-to-day workflows and associated pain points. Integrators who have hands-on experience in fields including advertising, graphic design, printing and publishing can better understand the flow of your projects from concept to completion.

Good integrators know the entire solution market and every advantage and disadvantage of each system and vendor. They constantly evaluate new technologies for effectiveness and possible fit within different types of organizations. And they communicate with you post implementation to discover what’s working well and what, if any, bottlenecks or weaknesses still exist.

Implementation expertise is also essential. The best integrators have years of experience successfully installing systems for leading ad agencies, marcom departments at Fortune 500 companies, and major commercial printers and publishers. Their partnerships with market-leading solution providers ensure that their technical knowledge is always up to date.

But in addition to proven experience designing and customizing world-class workflow systems, your integrator should have a rigorous methodology for working with creative organizations. A successful engagement should begin with a thorough, on-site audit of your current workflow and technology resources. This discovery process will ensure that the integration team fully understands your unique challenges and desired outcomes.

During an audit, integration team members should conduct in-depth interviews with key players from creative, IT, and related groups, shadow people at their workstations, and review your LAN setup to discover exactly how different people interact with assets, and how projects progress from department to department.

Next, your integrator should mine the audit data for common themes. Are people in several departments having trouble locating assets, or is there a lack of consistency in corporate branding across regions? The resulting implementation plan should propose technology solutions that address those issues and deliver immediate efficiencies. And since few systems work exactly as desired right out of the box, the plan should detail any system customizations, both of newly purchased systems and of overall system design.

The subsequent system deployment should follow an agreed upon schedule, and your integrator should work closely with collaborators at your site, provide regular status updates to key team members, and test the new system. You should expect post implementation training as well as continued support and process improvement to ensure your complete satisfaction.

Finally, integrators should understand and respect budgets and timelines, delivering systems that fit within the frameworks established up front. Implementation timelines vary depending on a number of factors related to system complexity and organizational makeup. And it’s important to note that even a quick, technically smooth installation is no guarantee that staff will use the system properly — or at all.

Internal processes and support must be in place to ensure that the system is used as intended. Provided that the effort has the full support of managers, as well as, individual contributors across creative and IT functions. Implementation of a DAM system (http://www.iointegration.com/solutions/digital-asset-mana...) should take about a week from the time software and hardware components arrive on site. Once management signs off on a DAM implementation plan, a typical one-month timeline looks something like this:

• Two weeks to receive system components once they’ve been ordered

• Two days to set up, configure, and test hardware

• One day to deploy and test the new system

• Three days to train system administrators

• Two days to train end users

By investing wisely in a digital asset management system , creative organizations can realize efficiencies, boost innovation, and even take business in previously unimagined directions. That’s why it’s essential to choose the right system integrator who can help you navigate an ever-changing technology landscape

About IO Integration
IO Integration is one of the leading system integrators in the United States, specializing in the North Plains Xinet (http://www.iointegration.com/xinet-digital-asset-manageme...) digital asset management solution, iBrams (http://www.iointegration.com/ibrams-brand-management-soft...) integrated brand management solution, high-end server-based automation, and web-based comprehensive approval and production tools that provide profitable workflow solutions for creative organizations. For more information please visit:
http://www.iointegration.com/solutions-for-your-industry