TED: Barry Schwartz and Paradox of Choice

Click above to watch yet another amazing Video from TED.  This video is excellent {Really – watch it, and you’ll understand why I hate shopping} and highlights the pain of customers shopping for some solution to help manage their digital content.  Back when people started using computers, it was amazing that you could find a file by remembering about when it was created and looking through the list of files for those dates.  Now content is abundant, shareable, searchable, editable and we’ve created a new set of problems of how to manage all these choices.

We frequently talk to people who are looking to solve some workflow problem, or streamline some content issues.  Some want to make sure their archives are searchable and keep the integrity of the original files.  Some want to make sure the groups collaborating are working from the most recent version.  Some want to have a tool to help edit and update layouts they are going to push to print and web.  Some want to be able to track project status from created, to edit, to proof, to revision, to final.

There are SO many vendors with SO many options that many people are overwhelmed just trying to make the short list.  NO ONE wants to sit through 30 demo’s of Content Management software.  How do you pick? Do you start with hosted vs installed?  Do you start with the acronym to narrow the vendors?

Customers ask for a demo so they can see all the features and functionality.  If only we could turn that around and start with the problem customers are trying to solve.  Are you trying to gather images from contributors and have them archive in a way that’s findable?  Are you trying to make your content searchable not just by metadata but by what’s in the files?  That’s where the conversation should start.

Many features of DAM systems are going to be similar across vendors.  What should differentiate is how well the vendor understands the customer issue and how well they can tailor the solution to fit the problem.  Any vendor should partner with you to get a full understanding of the solution you need.  So maybe I can change the way we answer the phones around here.  Maybe we should answer, “What’s YOUR problem?”  Because that’s where the conversation should start.