I recently attended a really good put on by Real Story about Selecting DAM. (It’s probably available on replay – I highly recommend taking some time to check it out.) Many of our customers come to us after reading their reports reviewing DAM vendors. I was curious what they recommended as an approach.

One thing Alan Pelz-Sharpe said really struck me. Software is a small part of the Digital Asset Management Solution. As a DAM software vendor, I have to say, THIS IS SO TRUE!! Many prospects get focused on specific functionality. While functionality is a key part of the solution, there’s a much bigger picture.

The first is getting a good understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. How you structure the solution is completely dependent on how you define the problem.

Get agreement on target solution

• Are you trying to make sure your content is thoroughly searchable by name, metadata, or actual content?
• Are you trying to make sure it’s easy for people to submit content and have it properly ingested with the key information attached?
• Are you trying to develop a workflow where content is aggregated and published across multiple channels, to print, email, web?
• Are you trying to have make sure multiple people can make revisions and not overwrite what someone else is trying to do  - always using the correct version?
• Are you trying to make your content accessible to multiple users around the globe while still trying to enforce some digital rights management?
• Are you trying to aggregate content from various databases to publish a seamless catalog: pulling images, sku information, up to date pricing and have it all update in real time?

When we get requests for a product demo, the question is, how many of the hundreds of things we COULD show do you actually want to see? There is no way to get a full understanding of a products functionality in thirty minutes.

There is also the fact that the DAM solution you need today won’t be the DAM solution you need in three years. Think of how much your work flow had changed in the last three years. The amount of content is growing exponentially. The possibilities for usage have increased. The complexity of tying it all together continues to rise. You need a solution that can grow and evolve as you do.

All of this comes from picking a partner, not a software package.