Digital Asset Management (DAM) platforms have gained widespread popularity due to their ability to effectively address the challenges of content organization and management.
Essentially, these platforms serve as a central hub, often referred to as a “single source of truth,” allowing enterprises to efficiently manage their digital assets such as images, videos, you name it.
If you’re reading this, chances are you find yourself in one of two situations:
Either you’re currently managing digital assets using old-fashioned (aka chaotic) ways and considering adopting a DAM platform, or you’ve realized that your existing DAM system no longer meets your needs and you’re planning to migrate your content to a new platform.
The process of transitioning to a new DAM system doesn’t have to be overwhelming or stressful.
By finding the right tools and implementing a well-planned approach, the migration can in fact be much more streamlined and not as chaotic as you might think.
In this article, we’ll explore the best practices for the DAM buying process and provide five essential steps to prepare for a successful DAM migration.
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Table of contents
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How to drive the DAM buying process
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5 steps to prepare for a successful DAM migration
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How to drive the DAM buying process
Before migrating your DAM system to a new one, it’s crucial to choose the right one. Which in a lot of cases can serve as a challenging task – like successfully getting everyone on board with the implementation etc.
No company is truly the same, which means the process can vary for everyone. However, there are some crucial steps to consider:
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First, you need to have a clear understanding of your business requirements and DAM vision.
It’s essential to identify the challenges you’re facing, brainstorm with colleagues, and research to establish a broad vision for what you want the DAM platform to achieve.
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Next, you should map out your use cases, understand the necessary requirements for your DAM system, and conduct an audit of your current assets.
This audit will help you identify the asset types and distribution channels your DAM platform should manage.
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Once you’ve completed the previous steps, it’s time to identify three to five vendors who could be a good fit and review the proposals they send you.
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Next, shortlist vendors with well-scoring proposals and invite them to demo their offerings, demonstrating how they can support your long-term DAM vision.
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Finally, it’s crucial to conduct real user case testing to identify the functionalities that meet your business needs. Focus on a few core usage cases that align with the problems you’re trying to solve.
By following these steps, you can ensure you choose the right vendor that provides the best value for your business, and your DAM system meets your needs for years to come.
5 steps to prepare for a successful DAM migration
From auditing your current DAM system to training your users, here are 5 steps to prepare for a successful DAM migration.
Assess your current DAM system
To migrate your DAM system, start by assessing and auditing your current content.
Why?
This is a great way to identify your core strengths and areas for improvement, plus understand which features are important to include for the new system.
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Ask yourself questions about your current system:
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What do you like in particular?
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What specifically needs improvement?
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Are any significant features missing?
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By understanding these pain points, you can make sure your new system addresses them.
It’s also important to be aware of the types of data that need to be migrated and where they are located.
This includes understanding the structure of your content, the metadata associated with it, and who has access to the data.
When auditing your content, ask yourself some additional questions:
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What kind of data do you have?
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How is it organized?
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Where is it stored, and how is it currently being used?
Answering these questions helps determine the best approach for how you’re going to migrate your content to the next system.
Define your migration goals
When migrating to a new DAM system, identifying specific goals is crucial for success.
A tip: Goals should in most cases be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
For example: Improving the searchability and findability of assets is a major goal in a DAM migration.
Choosing a DAM that uses AI to automate the tagging process of assets can significantly enhance searchability, saving time and increasing efficiency.
Streamlining workflows for asset management is another crucial goal. Which is why opting for a system with automated workflows can reduce workload and boost productivity.
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Adding on:
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Enabling the creation and production of creative content in various formats is essential for reaching a wider audience.
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The best DAM systems today can help boost marketing activities by providing insights from content analytics – plus facilitate quicker publishing through integrations with content management systems (CMS).
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Lastly: Compliance with regulatory requirements is yet another significant goal that you should want to achieve when migrating to a DAM platform.
Because here’s the thing:
Choosing a DAM that comes with rights management capabilities and regulatory compliance will ensure that only the right images are used – particularly relevant for highly regulated industries like the life sciences.
Digizuite as a DAM offers tight access control by easily letting you set strict permissions, restrict certain users from assets and put in place asset expiration dates – which altogether helps prevent unauthorized access.
Identify your metadata strategy
When it comes to organizing and retrieving digital assets, metadata is essential.
A well-defined metadata strategy can help ensure that your digital assets are easily searchable and accessible.
That’s why identifying the metadata fields you need and how you plan to populate them is the third step in a successful DAM migration.
There are several questions to consider during this phase.
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Here’s a few to keep in mind:
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What metadata fields are required for your digital assets?
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What metadata standards will you follow?
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And who will be responsible for populating the metadata fields?
Quick note: Need a refresher on digital asset metadata and taxonomy?
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Metadata makes the task of managing digital assets effectively for digital marketers, as you apply labels and numbers to make them easy to search and retrieve.
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To ensure easy accessibility, digital asset management taxonomy involves organizing digital files (like images and videos) into structured metadata fields and folders. This systematic classification enables convenient searching and categorization of valuable assets within a unified system.
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A properly defined DAM taxonomy and comprehensive metadata system can significantly enhance the way users adapt to your system – regardless if you’re managing your digital assets within or outside your organization.
Plan your migration process
The fourth step comes down to organization. Proper planning is crucial for a successful digital asset migration.
The main purpose of this step is to plan out your migration process, which involves creating a detailed plan that outlines timelines, milestones, potential roadblocks, and user responsibilities.
It’s also essential to involve users from various teams to ensure the taxonomy aligns with the user base’s needs.
We recommend putting together a dedicated team to oversee the process. Say you pull together a project manager, system administrator and different subject matter experts.
This dedicated team collaborates to create a thorough and structured plan – and efficiently manage the entire migration procedure from A to Z.
All in all, by having a well-defined plan (that you actually spent time on instead of throwing something together last minute) and the right team: A seamless transition to your new DAM can be achieved without any issues or bottlenecks.
Train your users
Last but not least: Training your users is an essential step in a successful DAM migration.
Once you’ve migrated to a new DAM system, it’s crucial to train your users on the new system’s features and functionalities in order to get comfortable with the new tech.
This can be easily done through consistent training sessions, handing out user manuals, and providing tutorials.
When training your users, it’s important to consider the key features and common use cases of the new DAM system.
Additionally, a good tip is to designate someone to be responsible for training users and ensure that there is sufficient training support available.
To ensure successful training, consider requesting one-on-one educational sessions and support for creating a metadata strategy or model.
It’s also important to confirm that your DAM partner can provide 24/7 resources and support when needed
Conclusion
All in all:
A successful DAM migration can transform your organization’s content management from chaos to cohesion – saving time, effort and money.
In this article, we outlined 5 crucial steps to follow in order to migrate your assets to a new platform in the best way possible:
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Assess your current system and audit your content
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Define your migration goals
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Identify your metadata strategy
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Plan your migration process
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Train your users
Interested in learning more about what Digizuite DAM can do for you and your organization?
Book a demo with us.
