This morning, on his Premedia Trends blog, Brian Lawler advises that premedia companies that haven’t already done so should consider adopting digital asset management services as a revenue source. Lawler is a prominent graphic arts consultant, digital imaging expert, photographer, and professor of graphic communication at Cal Poly (California Polytechnic State University, in beautiful San Luis Obispo, California–speaking of which, if memory serves me, Brian is also a proud veteran of the US Coast Guard…and just in case I’m wrong, I’ll give a big “D’oh!” right now).
Though his recommendations may seem elementary for readers here, it is important to note that many premedia shops have not yet made the leap from storing and archiving their clients’ valuable digital assets to the more rigorous disciplines and advanced technologies found in serious DAM implementations. That’s an opportunity, of course, for DAM system developers and integrators.
Brian’s simple explanation serves as a good reminder of what is really at the heart of digital asset management:
“The idea is that your company becomes an active media storage and distribution center for the client’s images and documents. Instead of putting these files into a dark closet for who knows how long, it means making them available to the client (and to anyone the client wishes to give access) so that they can use the digital assets they have used in existing jobs.”
There is a trend for companies to do two things, firstly rebrand themselves as a premedia company and secondly implement a DAM solution. My experience is that the companies that have already implemented DAM have been unable to realize the advantages of the DAM solution due to their inability to see outside the service offerings they already offer clients. It is also evident that the DAM solutions are not researched fully to meet the clients needs and thus some companies do end up with lemons having spent a lot of money.
The other part that is a little worrying in the DAM sector is that DAM’s need to continually evolve when a company invests in one, something else that companies don’t appear to take into account when they implement one.