Digital Asset Management Toolkit

A new approach to IT Asset Management

Until this time, digital asset management software was developed to focus on a the following items:

• Keep track of what you own
• Know where it is
• Know how much it's costing you

This could limit its value to other parts of the business, such as operations and IT services, and could lead to silos and turf wars over which group owns what processes and data, and diminished returns. By combining the digital asset management repository with the CMDB, and further integrating the tools that IT uses to manage systems and implement change, asset management becomes something that everyone is participating in, whether they know it or not.

Information about Digital Asset Management that you'll use

Not only can you have metrics that will help you prioritize projects and demonstrate the business value of keeping IT in-house, IT staff will have the data they need to understand how a given device is currently configured, what it's related to, and perhaps whether or not it's under warranty. They can also act on this information using any of the other integrated management tools that Altiris provides to execute change in a managed, repeatable way.

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Digital Asset Management Goes Enterprisewide

Digital asset management (DAM), like many other technologies, had its origins as a point solution, targeted to the needs of media companies and marketing departments to effectively manage the images, video, audio and other digital material they created and used. Digital Asset Management technology has continued to evolve, and today it is being deployed not only in companies outside the media vertical, but also to user communities across multiple departments as part of companywide enterprise content management (ECM) strategies.

If the activity in the vendor community is any indication, this is a trend with staying power: Interwoven purchased MediaBin and Documentum acquired Bulldog, Adobe developed a media server designed to integrate with multiple enterprise content management systems, and both IBM and Stellent have developed internal Digital Asset Management tools while also allying with prominent third-party vendors. In the case studies that follow, we see how three prominent companies, Chrysler, Acuity and Reebok, are benefiting by taking an enterprisewide approach to Digital Asset Management.

Enterprise Digital Asset Management

Definition: Enterprise Digital Asset management is the asset management solution of digital knowledge base of an Enterprise. Digital Data here would basically mean product images, management pictures, product and services logos, etc. These are company resources and can be in various file formats like gifs, jpegs, PNG, PSD, TIF, etc. The bigger the enterprise the larger is the memory data bank. These digital files have to be stored in an organized manner, in appropriate categories, so that they can be located easily later. Many a time a single file may have many different versions as it would have been worked on quite a few times. Therefore all versions need to be stored methodically as one never knows when the client may need the earlier version. Also the final file or image that was finally worked on, needs to be located promptly without too much expenditure of time. Digital assets can include other material like spreadsheet files, documents, product or factory slideshows, rich media files like audio files and movie clips, flash presentations.

The word asset means capital or resources and in case of knowledge loaded organization this means files, documents, etc. The purpose of Enterprise Digital Asset management solution is to allow users to create new files/assets, store it in the requisite spaces, share it with select users and collaborate on the matter with the rest of the team.

Digital Assets like images, movie files, audio files, pictures are bulky and difficult to keep track of simply because it is difficult to know if the file is the final ‘complete’ one. Any creative (image/movie/audio) goes through numerous changes, it is impossible for even the designer to say with finality during the review which media file is the one being looked for. At times the file may have been changed but the creative may not remember the change done and so may mistakenly use the older file and this could result in loss of face while interacting with the client. Such silly and “unprofessional” mistakes cannot be committed by reputed companies, and that’s the reason the more serious the organization and the work the more necessary it is for them to invoke a really good management system.

Consequently a professional strategy of Asset organization is approved for supervision of files. This will allow rapid access to data, save employee effort spent in locating data and promote the employee’s initiative in improvement ideas.

Defining Enterprise Digital Asset Management

Let's begin by clarifying what we mean by enterprise digital asset management. But first we should define what we mean by a digital asset.

A digital asset is an asset that exists only as a numeric encoding expressed in binary form. Or, to be slightly less abstract, as computer storage files. Images, music, video and computer software distributions are all examples of digital assets. It is important to note that, in enterprise Digital Asset Management, we are only concerned with managing the finished product, the asset. Works in progress are better managed by domain-specific management solutions. Enterprise digital asset management is about gaining maximum value from these valuable resources, with the key aims being to:

• Maintain a record of ownership and location of digital assets;
• Protect the economic value of digital assets and rights;
• Maximize the future benefit of digital assets and rights.

Digital asset management infrastructure should be distinct and complimentary to related systems, such as web content management, document management and publishing systems. Integration between systems can, in many cases, optimize the value of an Enterprise Digital Asset Management solution.

Is this something that you should be considering for your organization? The answer to that question is certainly yes, if your organization:

• Cannot say for certain that it is not paying a number of times for the rights to use a particular asset;
• Does not know if it is breaking license agreements by using assets in ways that it does not have the right to;
• Does not know if its own assets are being used by others without agreement/payment;
• Does not keep track of where particular assets are stored;
• Is not able to easily find digital assets that it owns or has rights to in order to re-use them;
• Does not know how much it is costing to store and manage the same assets many times in different places;
• May lose valuable digital assets in the event of a major systems failure.

If any of these statements apply to your organization, then you should consider whether there is a business case for Enterprise Digital Asset Management through a Digital Asset Management strategic review process.

Enterprise Content Management

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the category of software that helps you manage all of the unstructured information - or content - in your enterprise. This information exists in many digital forms: text documents, engineering drawings, XML, still images, audio and video files, and many other file types and formats. Enterprise Content Management helps you create content with common desktop applications and easy-to-use content authoring templates. It can also capture and incorporate existing content from a variety of sources. Enterprise Content Management manages this content and the content from other enterprise applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and enterprise portals. It adds intelligence by creating categorization schema, metadata, and tags that make search and retrieval faster and more efficient. Enterprise Content Management also manages the review, revision, and approval process for any piece of content according to user-defined business rules - often termed Business Process Management (BPM). It has inherent workflow and lifecycle management capabilities to help achieve this.