Choosing Your DAM Solution

So, you’ve decided you need a DAM system. By that very fact, you will already have something in mind of what you would expect from a DAM, but it is important to consider a broader set of features than those that fulfil the immediate need and might otherwise be overlooked to ensure you choose the right tool for the job.

Your DAM should last you many years, and from my experience, once a DAM has been put in place in one part of the business then other areas are keen to capitalise on the investment. If I had to put a figure on it I would say that 90% of the DAM projects that I’ve worked on have, rather pleasingly, caused “DAM envy” to some extent, with other areas of the business seeing the DAM being commissioned for a particular project and wanting in on the action. Even if this isn’t the case, the scope of a DAM system is rarely so well defined that all the required features and functionality are known right from the off.

This article aims to cover some of the most important aspects of a DAM that you should consider when making your DAM vendor selection. It is by no means an exhaustive list, as that would require many, many pages, and I’m not writing this as a cure for insomnia! The sections in this article can be used to help you kick-off your selection process. Should you need more in depth assistance, then please get in touch through the contact page and I would be more than happy to discuss how we can assist.

Metadata Is Key

This seems to have become the mantra I’ve unintentionally adopted throughout the many DAM projects I’ve worked on, and I cannot overstate the importance of metadata for making a DAM project successful. This is why it is essential that when selecting your DAM solution, the software’s metadata capabilities are high on the priorities list, as it will ensure that your DAM will provide long term benefits to your business.

Some of the key features regarding metadata that you should be looking out for include:

• Flexibility – the software should allow for flexibly metadata models the meet the needs of your business scenario. It should be able to do this as easily as possible, ideally with a intuitive user interface. It should also allow for multiple models to support different areas of your business or different asset types, whilst allowing reuse of fields between them.
• Control – The solution should allow control over the metadata that is entered to ensure consistency and integrity in areas that matter. This control can be realised in the user interface with features such as drop down fields/cascading fields, data type options (text, number, currency, date, geographic…), taxonomy support, inheritance etc. and enforced in the back-end with relational integrity constraints, rules engines and workflow engines. 
• Standards – there are a number of standards around that you may want to use, such as Dublin Core Metadata for structure and content. There are also lots of metadata embedding standards and technologies out there such as IPTC, XMP, exif…A good DAM will have support for these standard metadata schemas as well as provide mechanisms for extracting any embedded metadata.
• Internationalisation – as DAM systems become ever more prevalent in multinational companies, so the need for multilingual metadata grows. A good DAM solution will have language options available for both the UI and the metadata that is entered against an asset.

Search

DAM users are becoming evermore accustomed to searching rather than browsing for assets, thanks largely to the Google effect (other search engines are available, apparently), though admittedly this can be an area to address for new user adoption in situations where the DAM is replacing something along the lines of a file share.

Search capabilities have always been a core part of any DAM system, it is important that the more advanced search features are evaluated when making your DAM selection.
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• Faceting – the ability to narrow down your search using dynamic filters has become a higher and higher priority in a DAM’s search capability, as it makes finding assets so much easier and quicker, and can allow for dynamic categorisation of assets if implemented correctly. A DAM that has properly configured, faceted metadata can make it a breeze to find the assets that people are interested in.
• Speed & Scalability – speed of both searching and indexing are crucial as searching for assets is the action that users will interact with most, and complain about the most if not up to scratch. The DAM should be able to consistently return results quickly, and be able to scale as your user base and asset library grows.
• Full Text Search  – although DAMs are often viewed as dealing with “rich media”, images, video, audio etc., it can be very beneficial to store more textual assets too. As such, the DAM’s search engine should also be capable of providing “full text” search results in a relevant and meaningful manner, meaning that it will index the contents of textual assets too and able to return smart results.
• Internationalisation – it may seem obvious that in conjunction with the internationalisation of your metadata, the application’s search engine should be able to support multiple languages and international alphabets, however this isn’t always the case, so it’s something look out for.

Extensible & Integrable

DAM systems can be complex things, and as such no DAM system has it all, whether that be from specific DAM functionality or non-DAM functionality, it is important that the DAM solution you choose is capable of bridging the gaps.

In the case of the aforementioned non-DAM functionality, it is never a good idea to try and have a monolithic beast of a system that tries to be a Jack of all trades, master of none (see my previous article. However, the DAM you select should have a well designed architecture that allows for integrations between the DAM and these other systems without customising the core product. When making your selection, look for a system that has modern APIs available (such as a REST API) as well as APIs native to the programming language that the software is written in (e.g. Java, .NET etc.)

To provide additional DAM functionality a DAM should allow for the solution to be extended and not customised, meaning that the functionality is provided through services work and not the vendor’s engineering team, and the core product is not modified. Again, this is typically accomplished by systems that have APIs available, in conjunction with an architecture that allows for additional components to be plugged in at suitable points by providing interfaces​. Extending the system can come in all forms, whether that be storing the assets on cloud based storage such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon S3, integrating with external video transcoding engines, handling additional file types, or sourcing external metadata.

Content Acquisition

A DAM system is nothing without content, so clearly all systems will provide a means of acquiring that content, however there are a number of features in and around the import mechanism that could make one system more favourable against another.
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Whilst you may not necessarily initially associate the two, the security features that a DAM offers can have a huge impact on content acquisition as it can determine whether you are able to give direct access to your content providers, such as creative agencies etc. A comprehensive security model can streamline the asset life-cycle, allowing new content to be imported into secure silos, reviewed, approved & rejected all within a common interface.

Some of the key features to asses in and around the content acquisition area are:

• Simple Upload – this will be a given for any DAM, the ability to upload through the user interface so the ease of use will be the main differentiator.  If it’s not easy to use, then your users won’t use it, so ensure that the system you use makes it possible to upload quickly and easily. Drag and drop has been expected for many years, and has all too often been missing, however that seems to be being rectified. Predefined templates for uploading can also ensure your users can upload assets in as few clicks as possible, as does the ability to upload multiple assets at once.
• Batch/bulk Import – as the name suggests, this allows large volumes of assets to be imported in batches, and is often vital for DAM initialisation. A good batch import mechanism will be able to assign metadata and security policies during the process, should be able to be scheduled, and run in parallel to maximise throughput. When scoping a project, it is important to correctly plan the migration of your existing assets as this is often considerably underestimated. The bulk import capabilities of the DAM you select, along with the hardware platform that underpins it, can greatly reduce the migration of preexisting assets.
• Extensible​ – the import process is a good example of where a DAM product can be extended as it is the first point of contact that the DAM has with the assets. A system that allows for the import process to be extended allows for business rules to be applied during the import of assets which could determine how/where the assets are stored, extracting metadata from the asset’s file name or interpreting embedded metadata, applying asset manipulation etc.

Content Manipulation & Delivery

Finally, we come to end game…your assets have been commissioned, created or acquired for a purpose, or ideally multiple purposes once you have a DAM that allows for cooperation and collaboration.

​The DAM you select must provide the ability to get the assets back out easily for their end use. The ease and available export options can set one DAM solution apart from another. This area of your DAM has the potential to have more attention from users, as typically a DAM will have more content consumers than producers, so the DAM you select must be able to deliver the goods.

Some key features to consider around content manipulation and delivery are:

• Output Formats – the DAM should have the ability to transform your assets into a format suitable for use on the targeted platform. This could include reducing the resolution down for use in PowerPoint presentations, converting to the optimal video format for YouTube, converting from CMYK to RGB or vice versa, generating thumbnails for website search results…
• Delivery Options – how and where the assets can be delivered. At the most basic level, a DAM will allow you to simply download via the web interface, however this then relies on the users to do the bulk of the work. A good DAM will allow assets to be sent to remote locations via FTP, shared with users by email, provide accelerated transfer options, allow for time-boxed sharing to external consumers, integrated with CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) and Cloud storage providers such as Azure Blob Storage and Amazons S3 solutions.
• Security & Digital Rights– how, where and when assets can be used, not to mention by whom, is increasingly a reason why companies invest in procuring a DAM. It is important the the DAM you select allows you to create a security model that allows for suitable control to allow trusted users the ability to export assets in a given state. Additionally it should be able to track, record and act upon the channels and regions that an asset can or cannot be used, and restrict access to assets that are embargoed or have passed their rights usage date. 
• Extensibility – you may have noticed by now that this has cropped up a few times, and again it can play an important part when delivering assets in ensuring that your DAM has longevity and flexibility within your enterprise. A DAM that allows for its delivery capabilities to be extended in a non-intrusive way (not requiring the core product to be customised or modified) will be able to grow and evolve as your requirements do. 

As I mentioned at the start of this article, this is not a comprehensive guide by any stretch of the imagination, and it’s been hard to try and keep it relatively concise, as many of the points I have made lead onto others, which could all have an article in their own right, which maybe they will one day.

Hopefully if you’ve read this far, you’ve found this useful and informative. If you want any information or would like to enlist our services, then please get in touch via the contact page.