Pieter Casneuf, the CEO of ADAM Software, gave the keynote presentations at ADAM’s recent Sync! events held in Ghent and New York City. You can view a recording of Pieter’s presentation at the New York City event here.
In these presentations, Pieter reviewed the evolution of ADAM’s software solutions and announced the upcoming availability of ADAM’s cross-channel campaign management application. Pieter’s presentations dealt specifically with ADAM’s products, but they also generally describe how the DAM market space has evolved over the past decade.
Early digital asset management systems were what might be called “premium file systems.” They provided capabilities that focused on the organization, storage, and retrieval of digital content assets. They typically enabled organizations to use metadata to describe assets, provided relatively robust search functionality, and enabled version tracking and control.
In the first decade of this century, these early DAM systems evolved along three basic dimensions. The evolution didn’t follow a strict chronological order, and of course, not all DAM software providers followed the same path.
One evolutionary development was the addition of business process management capabilities to DAM systems. In fact, ADAM was an industry leader in proving these capabilities. Process management capabilities enable organizations to use their DAM software to manage and/or automate the processes and workflows that are involved in the creation, review, and approval of digital content assets.
The second evolutionary development related more to DAM software providers that to DAM technology itself. Over the past decade, some DAM software providers, including ADAM, have added non-DAM capabilities to their product portfolios to create suites of fully-integrated software applications. For example, the ADAM product family now includes applications for product content management, automated catalog production, and enterprise content localization.
The third evolutionary development was a major shift to the use of “open architectures” for DAM software. This shift was driven by the recognition that most enterprises need to make DAM software a core component of a larger marketing/enterprise content technology ecosystem. To fill this need effectively, DAM software must be highly interoperable with other software applications. Therefore, many DAM software providers have developed and published APIs that make it easier to integrate DAM software with other enterprise applications.
How will the DAM market space continue to evolve over the near-term future? In Pieter’s keynotes, he argued that delivering exceptional customer experiences to today’s demanding consumers requires a tight link between “marketing” content and product information/content. That’s because consumers now expect to be able to easily access very specific information about the products they see in marketing messages or content.
This article was published earlier on the Adam Company blog
