We’re beginning to see it – the expression Digital Asset Management’ in mainstream media. Ok, well just a little…or am I dreaming?

If only we’d coined a better phrase for it, perhaps it would be mainstream by now?

Or are we guilty of never seeing the bigger picture’? Did we set our sights too low?

I have long argued that no-one is untouched by DAM. But try the topic at your next dinner party and you may be excused for thinking not. Why is that?

Ninety-five per cent of the conversations I have about DAM have been with Marketers. You know – the agencies, their clients, the creative and increasingly web developers. Every board room table I have spoken at segments’ the subject of DAM into a marketing silo. Job done.

But not really.

In any DAM implementation I have done or read about the cleverest bit is in the work done pre-adoption. Even of the vendor. The journey of an asset’ is so often the most revealing piece of information about how an organisation can benefit from DAM, but it doesn’t stop there. Where could that asset be channelled down subways and cul-de-sacs that might add significant added value? When did you last discuss DAM with HR, Research or Operations, for example?

The point is this – we are talking about Digital Asset Management’ in a world where, frankly, everything is digital. In the born-digital generation it’s almost a non-word’. Of course its digital – why keep telling me? So we are down to Asset Management’ – now to be confused with the term broadly defined as a system whereby things that are of value to an entity or group are monitored and maintained, including non-tangible as well as tangible assets. So we can’t go there either…

But hang on a minute – this is exactly what we are talking about. Marketing content is only one piece of the asset jigsaw that is most valuable to an organisation. If we see an asset as having value to the whole organization then perhaps we unlock the secret we have been waiting to reveal? No digital’ boundaries, but more importantly, no conceptual boundaries either. Can DAM be truly beneficial to the enterprise? You bet.

Now go and lift the bar on what you first thought of as DAM – it might just be what we are looking for to go mainstream.