Business Proposition Digital Asset Management
Executive Summary º º The Changing Face of Digital Asset Management Today, a true enterprise-class DAM solution must be the core component of an integrated and optimized system for developing, managing, and publishing rich media resources º º DAM as a Vital System of Record Since their introduction in the early 1990 s, DAM solutions have been designed to be the system of record for rich media resources. º º DAM Must Support Creative Lifecycle Management Marketers in global enterprises have a strong need for efficient and controlled processes to effectively handle increasing operational complexity º º DAM Must Support Omnichannel Content Delivery Enterprises must be able to publish or distribute their rich media resources in multiple formats using multiple marketing communication channels. º º DAM Must Be Easy to Integrate In high-performing organizations, the DAM solution is now an integral part of the overall enterprise IT infrastructure, and to play this critical role, the DAM solution must be integrated with other marketing software tools and with other enterprise information systems.
The Changing Face of Digital Asset Management One of the most significant changes in the marketing landscape over the past two decades has been the growing role of content, particularly rich media content, in effective marketing. Enterprises in virtually all industries are now competing in an Age of the Customer where providing outstanding customer experiences is paramount to success. Today, both consumers and business buyers expect to find (or be provided) current, detailed, engaging, and relevant marketing content, whenever they want or need it, in their own language, via the interaction channels of their choice. Therefore, rich media has become critical for creating the kind of customer engagement that drives increased sales conversions and customer loyalty. Because of heightened buyer expectations and the proliferation of digital marketing channels, marketers must develop more content, produce content in more languages for more local cultures, and publish new or updated content more frequently than ever before, while simultaneously maintaining a consistent brand message across all customer touch points. In addition, marketers are under growing pressure to streamline and improve the productivity of marketing operations. For example, competition is forcing brands to introduce new or improved products more frequently, and marketers are being pushed to reduce time-to-market in order to accelerate revenues from new products. And while both content demands and operational pressures are intensifying, marketing supply chains (particularly in global enterprises) are becoming more complex and challenging to manage. 1
These developments are placing increased demands on the processes and technologies used to create, manage, and distribute marketing content. Since the early 1990 s, enterprises have used digital asset management (DAM) software applications to manage rich media resources. DAM solutions have delivered significant value for many enterprises, but as the content demands facing enterprise marketers have changed, so have the requirements for DAM software. Today, a true enterprise-class DAM solution must be the core component of an integrated and optimized system for developing, managing, and publishing rich media resources. Rich media has become critical for creating the kind of customer engagement that drives increased sales conversions and customer loyalty. At ADAM Software (ADAM), we believe that an enterprise-class DAM solution will have the four attributes shown in the illustration below 2
More specifically, we contend that a capable, enterprise-class DAM solution will have the following attributes and capabilities: º º It will provide complete system of record capabilities (e.g. a central repository for rich media resources, flexible and robust metadata management capabilities, powerful asset search functionality, and extensive asset processing capabilities). º º It will support the activities of marketers across the entire life cycle of rich media resources, from creation to distribution. An enterprise-class DAM solution will enable workflow automation, support collaborative content development, and provide content creators access to DAM functionality from within familiar technology workspaces. º º It will support the publication and/or distribution of rich media resources (including videos) in multiple formats, via multiple channels, devices, and operating systems. º º It will be designed and built using an open architecture that enables easy and extensive integration with other enterprise information systems. Today, virtually all capable mid-market DAM solutions provide the basic system of record functions described above, and many of these basic capabilities are also found in other marketing software tools, such as web content management, product information management, and marketing resource management applications. However, many of these alternative solutions are designed to support specific marketing functions or individual marketing channels, and the increasingly omnichannel character of modern marketing makes the use of siloed DAM s or channel-specific point solutions both inadequate and inefficient. 3
DAM as a Vital System of Record Since their introduction in the early 1990 s, DAM solutions have been designed to be the system of record for rich media resources. For our purposes, a system of record can be defined as an information system that serves as the authoritative source ( a single source of truth ) for rich media resources. Therefore, DAM solutions have historically focused on providing a centralized repository for rich media resources and on providing basic library functions for managing those resources. These basic library functions typically include tools for managing user access and permissions, for associating metadata with rich media resources, and for searching the rich media database. 4
The software solution offered by ADAM (the ADAM Platform) provides the full range of system of record capabilities. It provides a centralized, authoritative database and repository for rich media content resources, and in addition, the ADAM Platform provides a robust set of capabilities for managing those resources, including: A security model that enables user access and permissions to be managed at a granular level, which allows enterprises to provide internal stakeholders and external business partners appropriate access to rich media assets. º º Extensive and flexible metadata management capabilities that enable enterprises to implement metadata schemas that will support their unique business needs. For example, there are almost no limits on the number of asset classifications or descriptive metadata fields that can be used in the ADAM Platform. º º Flexible and powerful indexing and search functionality that enables users to easily and quickly find and retrieve rich media assets. The ADAM Platform provides full-text indexing for all rich media assets, free-text search against the full-text index, search based on specific metadata elements, and faceted search. º º The ability to automatically convert rich media assets from one format to another, thus enabling enterprises to easily prepare rich media resources for publication or distribution via multiple marketing channels with different content format requirements. DAM solutions have historically focused on providing a centralized repository for rich media resources and on providing basic library functions for managing those resources. 5
DAM Must Support Creative Lifecycle Management System of record capabilities remain an essential component of an effective DAM solution, but they are no longer sufficient to meet all of the needs of today s enterprise marketers. Marketers in global enterprises have a strong need for efficient and controlled processes to effectively handle increasing operational complexity. In the current content-intensive environment where reducing time-to-market is critical, effective marketing requires the ability to quickly and efficiently develop rich media content that delivers consistent brand messages across multiple channels. In addition, the growing need to localize marketing content both increases the volume of content resources that enterprises must develop and adds another layer of complexity to content development processes. Therefore, to support the needs of today s enterprise marketers, a DAM solution must provide capabilities that span the entire lifecycle of rich media content resources. In particular, it s critical for a DAM solution to provide tools that streamline and facilitate the processes used to develop rich media resources. 6
User-Friendly DAM for Content Creators The creative personnel who author, design, or otherwise create rich media resources frequently need many of the capabilities provided by a DAM solution. For example, they may need to add new resources to the DAM solution and associate metadata with those assets in order to make them accessible to other enterprise stakeholders or external business partners. In many enterprises, creative personnel perform most of their work in the Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) family of applications. Adobe CC is the industry-standard working environment for designers, editors, and publishers. It provides tried and tested tools for rich media creation, and it is the set of tools that creative professionals across the globe are familiar with. To gain the benefits of a DAM solution, creative professionals are usually forced to work in two technology systems. Not only does this require them to learn how to use an additional technology application, it also means that they are required to jump back and forth between their Adobe CC environment and the DAM environment, which adds to the complexity and time required to manage rich media assets. The ADAM Platform solves this problem with a unique technology that brings deep and transparent integration between the ADAM Platform and Adobe CC. This technology essentially closes the gap between the ADAM Platform and Adobe CC and makes all of the DAM and workflow features of the ADAM Platform available within the familiar Adobe CC and desktop operating systems environments. In short, the ADAM Platform gives Adobe CC users full DAM functionality at their fingertips without leaving their familiar workspaces. 7
Automated and Collaborative Content Review and Approval The dynamics of today s marketing environment are placing greater demands on the processes used to develop, review, and approve marketing content resources. First, because of the growing number of distinct content resources that enterprises must develop and publish, they must also perform more review and approval cycles. Review processes are also becoming more complex. More people are involved in reviewing and approving content resources, and the nature of the input has changed. Content development has become a more collaborative process, and the individuals involved in reviewing and approving rich media resources routinely offer comments and suggestions in addition to simple approved or not approved decisions. Finally, the need to constantly provide marketing content that is always fresh and up-to-date means that review and approval cycles must be completed in less time than ever. The ADAM Platform enables enterprises to streamline and optimize the processes used to review and approve rich media assets and provides specific capabilities that support extensive collaboration among enterprise stakeholders and outside business partners. a. Workflow Automation The ADAM Platform can be easily extended with a powerful business process management application that enables managers to streamline communications, collaboration, and approvals for rich media assets among their internal teams and their external partners. With the ADAM workflow solution, managers can easily and quickly design and implement new processes or change existing ones. It enables enterprises to build user-driven workflow tasks or design fully automated workflows that do not require human intervention. In addition, the ADAM workflow automation framework is extensible, which enables enterprises to develop custom workflow tasks and triggers as needed. Lastly, the ADAM Platform provides a configurable dashboard that makes it easy for managers to follow up on all open tasks across their team. 8
b. Easy Collaboration As noted earlier, the processes used to review and approve marketing content resources have become more complex because more stakeholders are involved and because their input is frequently more extensive and detailed than in the past. Review and approval processes can be particularly complex when they involve multichannel marketing campaign materials that include multiple rich media assets in many file formats. The ADAM Platform provides an extensive yet easy-to-use cross-media annotation, proofing, and approval tool that facilitates the complex human interactions that are increasingly required for marketing content review and approval processes. This optionally available technology operates in a secure environment and enables enterprises to provide relevant stakeholders easy access to rich media resources that require their input. In addition, this application can be fully integrated with other components of the ADAM Platform, which means that it can accommodate all marketing approval cycles in any process. The ADAM collaboration solution includes robust tools for annotating and providing comments on rich media resources, and enterprises can allow input on groups of rich media assets or require approvals for individual assets. In short, this technology enables and facilitates a truly collaborative approach to content development, while simultaneously streamlining content review and approval processes. 9
c. Support for SharePoint Collaboration In many enterprises, Microsoft SharePoint has become the de facto standard for digital content sharing and collaboration. SharePoint is primarily designed for Microsoft Office documents and other light-weight content formats, and it is not ideal for working with some types of rich media resources. To share and collaborate on such assets, enterprise users are typically required to run a DAM solution in addition to SharePoint, which requires users to be familiar with operating two technology workspaces, makes managing rich media assets more complex, and does not provide a simple way for users to access and utilize rich media assets that are held in the DAM solution. The ADAM Platform addresses this issue by providing enterprise users easy access to full DAM functionality from within the SharePoint environment. ADAM offers a connector that provides seamless integration between Microsoft SharePoint 2013 and the ADAM Platform, including: º º Full bi-directional access to all rich media assets managed in the ADAM Platform, including retrieve, download, edit, and upload capability º º Access to the full search capabilities of the ADAM Platform from within the SharePoint environment º º The ability to download content assets from the ADAM Platform to a SharePoint library, edit asset metadata, and upload the revised content to the ADAM Platform º º The ability to create workflows in the ADAM Platform from within SharePoint 10
DAM Must Support Omnichannel Content Delivery It s now clear that delivering outstanding customer experiences is paramount to competitive success. From a marketing perspective, the key requirement for delivering great customer experiences is to provide the information the customer (or potential customer) wants or needs, when he or she wants or needs it, via the channel or touch point he or she prefers to use for each interaction. Therefore, enterprises must be able to publish or distribute their rich media resources in multiple formats using multiple marketing communication channels. The ADAM Platform supports omnichannel content distribution in two ways. First, it is designed and built to be completely file format agnostic. Through the use of media engines, the ADAM Platform can ingest, store, and render most currently existing content file formats out-of-the-box, and it can be easily extended to accommodate any content file format, whether currently existing or developed in the future. Therefore, the ADAM Platform can be used to manage any type of rich media resource, and it will support the publication or distribution of rich media content via any marketing channel, regardless of format requirements. Second, the architecture of the ADAM Platform (described more fully below) facilitates omnichannel content delivery by making it easy to integrate the platform with content presentation applications. For example, the ADAM Platform includes standard connectors for several web content management systems (such as Sitecore and SDL) and marketing resource management systems (such as Teradata). 11
DAM Must Be Easy to Integrate Until fairly recently, digital asset management systems typically functioned as stand-alone applications that were used primarily by media-centric enterprises and by creative personnel in the marketing departments of other large organizations. Today, the full potential value of a DAM system will not be realized unless employees all across the enterprise (and, increasingly, external business partners) have easy access to the content resources the DAM system contains. 12
In high-performing organizations, the DAM solution is now an integral part of the overall enterprise IT infrastructure, and to play this critical role, the DAM solution must be integrated with other marketing software tools (such as marketing resource management systems, web content management systems, and e-commerce systems) and with other enterprise information systems (such as ERP and CRM systems). ADAM has long recognized that some enterprise customers may need to modify or extend the functionality of the ADAM Platform and that most customers will need to integrate the platform with other marketing software tools or enterprise information systems. Therefore, as discussed earlier, the ADAM Platform includes standard integrations with Adobe CC, Microsoft SharePoint, several web content management systems, and some marketing resource management systems. Just as important, the ADAM Platform has been engineered using a core architecture that makes integration easy. Specifically, the flexibility and interoperability of the ADAM Platform is derived from two key mechanisms. First, all components of the ADAM Platform have been developed using the Microsoft.NET framework and the provider model design pattern. The provider model design pattern enables enterprises to easily modify or extend the functionality of the ADAM Platform and integrate the platform with other applications without having to rewrite extensive portions of software code. Second, the ADAM Platform is built around a robust and fully documented application programming interface (the ADAM API) that exposes all functions and features of the platform. ADAM s internal development team uses the ADAM API to program all of the platform s standard features and functions. In other words, the entire ADAM Platform has been built using the same API that is available to ADAM s customers and business partners. 13
Conclusion Enterprises in virtually all industries are faced with growing customer expectations for rich marketing content that is current, detailed, and engaging. In addition, potential buyers expect this content to be available whenever they want or need it, in their own language, via the interaction channels of their choice. To meet these heightened buyer expectations and deliver the kind of outstanding customer experiences that drive increased sales, marketers in large enterprises need a capable, enterpriseclass digital asset management system that provides all of the traditional system of record DAM functions, enables them to effectively manage the entire creative life cycle, supports omnichannel content delivery, and easily integrates with other enterprise IT systems. The ADAM Platform has been designed and built to be a truly enterprise-class digital asset management solution that meets the demanding needs of today s enterprise marketers. Notes º º In this business proposition, we re using the term rich media inclusively to refer to all types of content resources that are not primarily text based. Therefore, rich media includes photographic images, audio resources, and video content. Rich media also encompasses compound marketing content resources, such as brochures and product sheets, that include both text and non-text elements. 14
For More Information Contact ADAM Software ADAM Software Kortrijksesteenweg 1108a BE-9051 Gent Belgium Phone: +32 9 381 63 36 Fax: +32 9 381 63 46 ADAM Software US Inc 1515 Broadway New York, NY 10036 United States Phone: +1 212 520 1028 Email: info@adamsoftware.net Web: www.adamsoftware.net About ADAM Software ADAM Software is a global provider of media workflow and marketing technology software. We offer enterprises the ability to manage, structure and deliver media between people, processes and systems. Working with our partners enables us to implement our software globally while providing workflow solutions to all types of enterprises. What drives us is a passion to organize media intelligently, making it easier and more accessible to everyone. 15