There is no doubt that DAM has become a “must have” system for the enterprise today. Nevertheless, how far you can take DAM and the value you can squeeze out of it depend on your ability to overcome significant challenges. According to our survey data, the majority of organizations view system usability and adoption as their main DAM challenges. In fact, these challenges showed up in the top 3 spots for both Top Performers and Everyone Else. Usability speaks to how easy, intuitive and valuable users see the system as being. For this reason, extreme focus should be given to keeping the system simple to use and delivering only the highest value functions to business users in the early stages. For example, deliver robust file search and discovery along with easy file upload for the first few months.
User adoption is the first major DAM challenge. While dependent on usability, adoption does not automatically occur with DAM just because you have implemented an easy-to-use system. To ensure enterprise-wide adoption, your organization must enlist a DAM project team as well as DAM champions who will work to involve business users throughout the DAM scoping, planning, purchasing, testing, and implementation processes.
Top 3 Challenges with DAM
User Adoption in the New System.
User adoption is the number one challenge to successful DAM implementation (just behind integration). This is why both Top Performers and Everyone Else cite “user adoption” as the highest percentage challenge, 96% and 91%, respectively. To maximize user adoption, DAM implementation teams must plan far in advance and do the following: involve end-user groups across the organization; identify powerful DAM champions; communicate stages and related benefits to users; and make short-term gains with impact. At the micro level, Top Performers minimize adoption pushback by automating as many tasks as possible so that users don’t need to spend inordinate amounts of time manually entering and approving metadata.
Integration with Relevant Internal Systems.
Many DAM solutions have suffered in the past from relatively poor APIs to other enterprise systems. Now, with almost every part of the enterprise requiring DAM capabilities, DAM solutions need to integrate with systems like eCommerce and CRM platforms, portals, ECM, WCM and numerous sales and marketing point solutions. The low percentage of Everyone Else (54%) citing integration as a challenge reflects the reality that only Top Performers (72%) have proceeded far enough along the path of enterprise-wide DAM to recognize the integration challenges.
System Usability.
DAM systems normally gain adoption only after both technical and non-technical end users find it simple to incorporate into their everyday tasks. While usability is hard to measure objectively, it appears consistently as the top challenge with DAM systems. To avoid usability problems, the DAM team should focus on the basics of file search and upload while foregoing unnecessary or nice-to-have functionality. Moreover, while technical teams may have solid reasons for wanting certain pieces of DAM functionality immediately, catering to business users and other non-technical users should take priority at the outset. Adoption among people from these groups will dictate system success or failure.
Download the 2014 Gleansight Benchmark on Digital Asset Management for a comprehensive review of all 9 challenges faced by Top Performers and how they are mitigating these challenges and maximizing the ROI from DAM investments.
