10 questions to ask a vendor when choosing a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system

The success of a DAM system implementation largely depends on how well it is adopted by users.

Here it is important to understand not just whether you need the system (if you are already thinking about it, you most likely do), but first and foremost who will use it and what work tasks they need to solve with the DAM.

This makes it possible to choose the system vendor more precisely. For example, if the DAM system will primarily be used by the marketing team, you will need special features for managing brand assets and advertising and marketing campaign materials.

Creative teams will most likely need tools for collaborating on files.

The e-commerce department will request a feature for delivering different sets of media content to different sales channels — to meet the requirements of each platform.

If the chosen DAM does not match the needs of its primary users, its implementation will bring many times less value than it could.

Also pay attention to whether the vendor or integrator provides comprehensive training and support so that users can use the system correctly.

Scalable and customizable DAM software can adapt to changing business needs, support growth and expansion, and improve operational efficiency and productivity.

When assessing scalability, it is important to understand how the vendor will support upgrades, migration and maintenance over time.

As for customization options, it makes sense to evaluate: the software's flexibility regarding the user interface; the flexibility of metadata schemas; workflow automation capabilities.

To the frameworks and languages the vendor uses to develop the DAM, to the availability of ready-made APIs and integration options.

This will help you understand how well the system can be adapted to your business requirements.

A DAM system can be perfectly designed, with plenty of useful features and embeddable options.

But if it is not obvious to users how exactly to use these features, if the interface is inconvenient and confusing, and there is no sensible training, then instead of optimized processes you will get a work-to-rule slowdown and a drop in productivity.

That is why, before implementation, it makes sense to request a system demo from the vendor or its representative in order to assess the interfaces yourself. The best systems have an intuitive interface, with sections and buttons placed in obvious spots, easily readable icons, and automated processes (for example, image validation, metadata entry, watermarking) that are clear and predictable.

For this, the interface must be designed in line with the UX/UI standards users are accustomed to.

Additional advantages would be: — open documentation and training courses available from the vendor or its representative; — the vendor's or integrator's readiness to write a manual for your customized portal and run user training; — readiness to support the training process with consultations and assistance.

In this section, we (KT.Team) depart as much as possible from translating the original article. In its text, Pimcore advises checking whether ready-made solutions exist for integrating the chosen DAM with your existing CRM, CMS, ERP and other systems — and how experienced the solution provider is in delivering such integrations. This is certainly one way to synchronize the entire IT landscape.

But direct integrations have their drawbacks: tight coupling of the landscape, the need for constant refinements, and the ever-growing complexity of connections between systems as new entities appear or existing ones change.

That is why, in our projects, we usually recommend integrating the DAM system with the company's other systems through an ESB layer.

A properly integrated bus in the IT landscape makes it loosely coupled: this allows changes to be made to each system without the risk of blocking all business processes.

To start, you will need to answer several questions inside your company or project team: — Do you plan to scale the system? — What data security requirements does your company have? — What regulatory requirements does your company impose on IT systems?

By answering these questions, you will determine whether the cloud or on-premises suits your company. Cloud DAMs are favored by ease of deployment, flexibility and scalability.

This option makes it possible to organize remote collaboration and speed up content delivery. In turn, DAMs deployed on your own servers provide greater control over the system and fewer vendor-related risks.

As we already mentioned, hosting the DAM system on-premises protects the company from sudden shutdowns on the vendor's side.

Every DAM system has built-in reporting and analytics modules — they help business users and clients make better-informed management decisions or refine product cards.

But different systems vary in their reporting capabilities, as well as in how easily reports can be generated.

As a rule, systems already provide standard reports, such as reports on the usage and uploading of media assets.

Some DAMs let you configure custom reports tailored to the organization's requirements. For example, for one client we set up two types of reports in Pimcore: 1. By images — lets you find all files with a specific upload date and, for instance, mark them as outdated.

This is how the retailer removes seasonal product photos from all sales channels; 2. By products and images — the reports let you see how products and images are linked and whether there are any products with no image attached at all.

Once they have a list of such products, content managers can quickly fix the problem of empty cards.

It is worth clarifying separately whether the DAM supports integration with BI systems and how data visualization can be configured.