What is Digital Asset Management all about? - EPiServer World

What is Digital Asset Management all about?
Johan Magnusson
www.meridium.se

• Johan Magnusson
• Meridium
• Product Manager
ImageVault TM
www.meridium.se

What is DAM and MAM
• Digital Asset Management
• Media Asset Management
www.meridium.se

What is an asset?
content + metadata = an asset
www.meridium.se

Assets
• Files without metadata are in many cases useless
– We can’t find them!
– Are we allowed to use them?
• Cost time or money to produce
www.meridium.se

What is DAM?
• The process of management of digital media throughout its
lifecycle
• The tools to support it
• An combination of people, process, assets and technology
www.meridium.se

The DAM process supports
• Finding/Search
• Organization
• Distribution
• Creation/Production
• Storage
• Protection/Digital Rights Management (DRM)
• Transformation
• Management
www.meridium.se

Metadata
• Data about data
• Makes content more visible
• Without metadata an asset is like a text book without an index
www.meridium.se

Implicit metadata
• It’s an inherent part of the asset, such as file size, MIME type,
date modified
• A human being did not decide those values.
• The values originate from the file.
www.meridium.se

Explicit metadata
• Information based on the content or the context of the file.
• Requires some form of assessment or decision.
• Examples could be subject, ranking, category, description, …
• The information can be embeded in the file.
E.g. IPTC, Exif, ID3
www.meridium.se

Derived metadata
• The metadata is extracted from an asset.
• Text extracted from a PowerPoint or Word file
• Subtitles or key frames extracted from a movie.
• Derived metadata often make up an asset in its own right, hence it
could possible have metadata of its own.
www.meridium.se

How to work with metadata
• Metadata standards, e.g. Dublin Core
• Academic vs practical approach
• Try working in a consistent way
• Use predefined taxonomi and categories
www.meridium.se

Why use DAM
www.meridium.se

Finding and reusing assets
• Someone can’t find an image, video, piece of media, or
PowerPoint slide that someone else needs right now
• You can’t easily share assets across projects, groups, divisions or
partners.
• People are using old or incorrect versions of an asset.
www.meridium.se

• People are always recreating content, artwork, layouts, slides,
presentations, and assets starting from scratch every time
• You find it difficult or impossible to reuse your own, or other
people’s work
• A lot of time i spent on creating new versions of the same content.
Different sizes, formats etc.
• Tracking asset use is impossible. Where it’s used, who is using it, and
how frequently it’s used
www.meridium.se

DAM can help you
• Introducing a common architecture and infrastructure shared by
multiple groups.
• Reducing and/or eliminating recreation costs
• Enabling asset sharing across and between organizations, hence
increasing asset reuse
• Reducing employee, partner, and customer frustrations around poor
search capability
• Enabling multiple distribution mediums
www.meridium.se

Processes and systems
• The production or distribution process isn’t streamlined
• Multiple systems duplicate or complicate efforts
• The collaboration, review, and approval cycle is slow, inefficient, and manual.
• Multiple efforts focus disconnectedly on pieces or on similar things in
multiple noncommunicating groups across the organization
www.meridium.se

DAM can help you
• Make it easier to create different versions based on a orignial
• Improves efficiencies and responsiveness
• Eliminates production, duplication, and shipping costs of physical media
• Optimizing and automate workflows around a shared repository and shared
assets
• Reducing or eliminating content or asset location costs (making assets easier
and quicker to find)
www.meridium.se

Digital Rights Management
• Confusion reigns around licensed photos, images, or other assets
• A group was fined for violating the usage rights of a licensed
photo because no one knew the rights.
www.meridium.se

DAM can help you
• Making it easier to track usage
• Makeing it possible to store information about rights with the
asset.
www.meridium.se

Marketing
• The marketing message isn’t presented consistently across
groups, organizations, verticals, and target markets
• Your logo is misused or your brand is inconsistently used
www.meridium.se

DAM can help you
• Improves market or brand perception and competitiveness
• Puts marketing managers in better control of communications
www.meridium.se

New opportunities
• Generates new revenue opportunities
• Improves agility
– New possibilities
– Required to be competitive
• Respond rapidly to partners or customers
Shorter time to market
www.meridium.se

ROI
• It is important to have a goal and a strategy
– This will give you the key figures to measure against
• Improved efficiency
• New possibilities
• Competitiveness
• Rights
– Violations can get expensive
• Consider organizing the assets an investment
www.meridium.se

Getting started
• Start with what you need now. Consider legacy later.
• You will need a champion
• Have a clear strategy and a goal.
Create a business case
• Measure the result
• Have some early wins
www.meridium.se

Trends in DAM
• Mobile platforms
– Distribution
– Usage
www.meridium.se

Trends in DAM
• Integration with CMS and other systems. DAM becomes part of
the infrastructure.
• Web instead of desktop clients
www.meridium.se

• Increasing volumes of data
Trends in DAM
• SaaS / Cloud
• Shared Services
www.meridium.se

Trends in DAM
• Metadata that sticks to the file. E.g XMP
• DRM
www.meridium.se

Trends in DAM
• Immediacy of the availability of content
• Social media
• Personalization
www.meridium.se

Thanks for listening
www.meridium.se

Johan Magnusson
johan@meridium.se
www.meridium.se
www.meridium.se