Top 10 Best Practices for Digital Asset Management (DAM)

1. 
   Develop a
   taste for the different flavors of DAM: A great deal of
   differentiation exists among DAM products — DAM means anything and everything,
   depending on the vendor you're talking to. Customization often cannot overcome
   a misaligned DAM technology.


2. 
   Think of
   DAM as a piece of the larger customer experience management (CXM) puzzle: DAM solutions are
   rarely siloed, so consider how they will integrate with other key systems, such
   as web content management (WCM) and eCommerce.


3. 
   Remember
   that taxonomy is the key to findability: Searching images
   is hard; there's no equivalent to a full-text search, so navigation is key. The
   most effective navigation schemes communicate the system's breadth and depth so
   that users are exposed to the whole menu of possibilities from which they can
   choose.


4. 
   Treat your information workers well: Focus on configuring
   user interfaces according by role and creating intuitive advanced search forms
   that will allow users to build robust and effective queries in order to find
   relevant content.


5. 
   Contemplate
   your video plans carefully: Not all vendors are
   created equal. Image concerns often dominate DAM vendor selection despite the
   growing importance of video content.


6. 
   Apply governance
   with a rich media-specific twist: Many
   different types of people implement, administer and use DAM. With so many
   "cooks" getting involved, governance becomes very important.


7. 
   Avoid the
   packrat mentality, and don't use DAM to store anything and everything: While DAM systems can help control the number of renditions,
   they don't prevent information workers from uploading multiple variations of
   the same asset.


8. 
   Call the
   retention police: As DAM initiatives
   grow, enterprise retention policies must align in order to ensure compliance,
   protect company interests in litigation matters and ensure appropriate
   management of company assets.


9. 
   Don't be afraid to play Big Brother: Periodic system
   audits measure and analyze system performance, usage and resource capacity.
   This is especially important with DAM systems, where the assets stored are
   significantly larger than in other ECM systems.


10. 
    Put on your
    detective hat when it comes to customer references: Be careful of
    vendors, regardless of their size, that have all the right features in a demo
    but can't easily produce references of companies like yours.