As a DAM champion at your firm, you know all of the benefits Digital Asset Management can bring to your team and to your workflows. DAM supports your company in the ability to store, find, use and share digital assets, reducing the demand on marketing resource and ensuring your digital assets deliver value where they’re most needed. But like the adoption of any new technology, there will likely be some convincing to do and buy-in required across multiple stakeholders to get the platform you want in place. This is especially true if the budget for your new DAM system needs to be approved by senior management or comes from a separate department. While you can’t always prevent blockers from happening, having a heads up of what might come your way can help you to reduce the impact on your DAM project and enable you to get the investment you need.
Budget
Great digital asset management means that your marketing team is more efficient, you are able to react to opportunities more quickly, and you can ensure everything you produce remains on brand. However, as with most technology, DAM systems don’t come for free. While you may have done your homework and fully understand the many benefits that DAM can bring to your organization if you’re not the one holding the purse strings you may have some convincing to do.
There are multiple questions that can be asked around budget but the most common thread across most budget concerns regard Return on Investment (ROI). Luckily, with a bit of time spent number crunching, this one is actually pretty easy to address. First off, there are 2 types of ROI to consider:
- Time and resource – DAM streamlines workflows and saves time so you can increase the output from your team.
- Money – the cost that goes into purchasing and maintaining DAM needs to be balanced against the money saved from having the product in place.
You need to show that upfront investment you make in DAM combined with the ongoing year on year cost benefits, really makes sense. To help you do that we’ve put together some ROI resources:
- Our ROI calculator looks at 4 key high-level elements of calculating your return on investment and gives you an ROI range and an estimated time savings percentage. If you’re new to looking at DAM this is a great place to start getting an idea of what DAM can save your firm.
- Our Guide to Understanding DAM ROI gives you a break down of all the metrics you need to consider to get a true and individual ROI value for your firm. If you’re looking to really get to grips with your ROI this is the guide for you.
Ownership
“Who is going to own the implementation and rollout of this new software?” or something to that effect is what you may hear when you start discussing DAM adoption. In most cases, the owner is the DAM champion or a nominated team member, usually within marketing. In larger firms, you may have multiple nominated team members across different teams or offices. Whoever it is and however many there are, this is a really important question you need to be able to answer. The successful adoption of any new technology is dependent on a strong owner(s) who knows the product well and can showcase the value of it to new users. So if this isn’t you, start to think about who this would be in your team and who would potentially make a great nominated DAM champion across your business.
Setup and Data Migration
This is a different question to ownership but there is some overlap. Like most software, digital asset management requires some initial effort to get up and running. In the case of DAM this includes defining your taxonomy, migrating your existing digital assets into your new system and connecting your other business platforms through integrations. Depending on the size of your business this can vary significantly in the time and resource this takes. Knowing who will need to be involved and how you’ll manage this initial set up is definitely something you should know and be able to discuss with management and budget holders.
At OpenAsset our onboarding team will support you with the initial set up and configuration of your DAM plus we offer a data migration service to make it really easy for you to get all of your assets into your new system. So you could almost say we’ve taken care of this question for you. Take a look at our onboarding and services for more information on how we can help you set up your DAM.
To help you get to grips with how to get the investment you need for DAM we’ve put together a guide running you through:
- How DAM will add value to your organization
- How to justify DAM with a benefit’s led and solution based business case
- Choosing the DAM that meets the needs of your firm
- Additional questions to prepare for from budget holders and management
