Much has been written, discussed, presented, and illustrated to summarise Digital Asset Management (DAM) and its impact in a world exploding with content. But it never does any harm to remind oneself of the key criteria for success, tips to follow on the journey, and pitfalls to avoid. And just where is DAM heading? What trends should you look out for?

In a series of 4 small extracts Nigel Cliffe helps guide your DAM strategy plans.

No.4# Trends

• Immediacy of content
• Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS)
• Mobile platforms
• Social media
• Semantic web technologies

DAM never stands still. Technology, user experience and the growth of social media in particular determine that we need to be aware of what’s coming, if not already here.
The changing world of marketing and advertising has led to a major shift in the way we consume messages. Increasingly, we select our content over having it pushed at us. From a DAM perspective this drives a new urgency for the real-time availability of assets. The discipline of a framework for adding metadata as content is created is becoming essential, not a nice-to-have. Authors of content have the responsibility to tag content according to the architecture of taxonomy and of the organization upon creation. The immediacy of the availability of content can be the difference between opportunity and visibility, profit and loss.

In this context, increasing relevance will be placed on Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) which serve to improve the connectivity between Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. Much activity is in place to establish a common set of standards within the DAM industry and the wider ECM and Document Management communities.

Of equal importance is the recognition of the platform on which the content is viewed. It is commonly understood that the world is moving to mobile and tablet’. This means that the platform on which the assets are viewed and managed has to be mobile enabled, taking into account the major platforms for mobile and their key differences. Users in different countries might also have different trends to look out for.

The features we have come to accept as common on social media will find their way into DAM system technologies. How useful will it be to incorporate like’, +’ and recommend’ features into the DAM experience? The development of tools and features which offer this kind of functionality will serve to enhance the DAM user experience and provide an added level of value to the asset itself, providing real-time value and immediacy of useful information to the enterprise.
Further, to hang a collaborative communication environment specifically around the DAM, a social platform if you will, will become an emerging feature. If we can use such platforms to arrange a beer with friends then surely it can be justified to manage the valuable brand assets of the enterprise? This adds a new level to the expression workflow that we might call collabflow’.

Semantic web technologies will find their way into the DAM experience. The development
of data about data as well as documents on the web that machines can process, transform and assemble, will enable new value to be gained from that data in really useful ways.

At a practical level, we will see increased use of image recognition technologies in search. Selecting a colour palette common to a suite of images will allow us to find images of similar colourific values stored in the DAM. A whole new dimension to the feature of search.

And last but not least, we will see increasing use of cloud-based technologies as the platform for DAM with improving user interfaces and dashboards which will make our experience more valuable and enjoyable.

The real deep dive value of DAM has yet to be realized. The value of the asset and the intelligence contained within the metadata surrounding it will increasingly drive the business benefit of DAM. The DAM solution will increasingly form the back-bone of the knowledge management of the enterprise – we might even call it Business Asset Management, or BAM! Additionally, new measurement tools will develop out of the metrics of DAM which will help to justify the return on investment.

The full article can be found at http://damroadmap.com/
So there we are. As we promised: Success Criteria, Tips, Pitfalls, and Trends that together make a road map for your successful journey with DAM.

Enjoy the ride!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4