DAM vs. WCM – do you really understand the difference?

14-Jan-2009

I’ve heard too many people say Digital Asset Management (DAM) is “kind of like Web Content Management” (WCM) or “just like document management, but for pictures.” While there may be similarities between DAM and WCM or DM, DAM is often mis-perceived, or over-simplified, and most of the information out there about DAM is infused with vendor-specific marketing and sales-talk, rather than concrete hard facts about what DAM software does and doesn’t do.

I recently wrote an article for Infonomics magazine, featuring a few short excerpts from our Digital & Media Asset Management Report, about some of the differences between DAM and WCM. This article sparked some discussion among DAM practitioners on one of the LinkedIn DAM groups; it seems that while those who work in DAMknow the differences, most others don’t. That sometimes makes it difficult to justify the purchase of a DAM-specific tool when you may already have a WCM or DM system in place.

The DAM scenarios highlighted in this article and explored in detail in our report as well as our DAM education course are the sorts of scenarios where DAM uniquely fits the bill.

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