Tag Archives: ADAM

How DAM Can Enable and Support Customer Experience Management

This month, ADAM is offering a series of webinars exploring how digital asset management solutions enable and support major strategic marketing objectives.

On December 5thhere.

On December 19thhere.

On Wednesday of this week (December 11thCognizant.

In this week’s webinar, our panel of experts will address three critical questions.

  • Do you see an evolution/trend in the requirements for DAM projects over the last 5 years?
  • Can you describe the biggest challenges to avoid DAM projects being deployed as stand-alone siloed point solutions, but become a business critical part in corporate marketing processes?
  • How can DAM solutions assure their vital role in tomorrow’s CXM/WCM solutions?

Customer experience management has become one of the hottest topics in business and marketing circles. IBM recently published the highlights of its 2013 global C-suite study, The Customer-activated Enterprise, and this study revealed how much importance C-suite executives place on customers and customer experience management.

  • CEOs said that customers exert a bigger influence on their organization’s business strategy than all stakeholders other than the C-suite itself.
  • No matter what their specific role, every CxO wants to become more involved in managing the customer experience.
  • Among CMOs, designing customer experiences for mobile applications was identified as the top marketing priority.

The Role of DAM in a Marketing Technology System

a feature article for DAM News.

As you might expect, there’s no shortage of opinions on these topics.

  • Some industry experts contend that DAM software has become “bloated” with features that most users don’t need.
  • Others say that most DAM solutions are too “generic” and don’t provide the specialized functionality that many users require.

Debates regarding the future of DAM are certainly interesting to those of us who are directly involved in producing DAM software. For obvious reasons, we’re also deeply interested in how the DAM software industry will evolve from a competitive perspective. But these are not the only issues that are important to many current and potential DAM users.

One of the greatest challenges facing marketing leaders in large enterprises is to select and implement a marketing technology system that will enable and support the delivery of exceptional customer experiences. DAM software is a critical component of an enterprise-class marketing technology system, but it is only one piece of the puzzle. Therefore, astute marketing leaders will not evaluate DAM software as an isolated, stand-alone application. Of course, the functionality of the DAM software is important, but the ease with which the DAM software can be integrated with other marketing applications is equally important.

On Thursday, December 5th, ADAM will host a webinar – Building Blocks to create your Integrated Marketing Solution – that will address these important issues. During this webinar, Bart Omlo, CEO of HintTech, will explore how to build an integrated marketing technology system and describe the role that DAM software plays in that system.

You can register for this important webinar here.

Is Branded Online Video More Efficient Than TV for Marketing?

recent research by Accenture revealed that 25% of consumers watch video content on a PC or laptop every day, and other 22% do so at least 3 times per week.

A new (June 2013) worldwide survey by Be On, the AOL global branded content business, shows that enterprise marketers are becoming more confident about the effectiveness of video content, and, as a result, they are increasing their investments in online video.

The Be On study was based on a survey of more than 770 marketing experts from leading brands, media, and creative agencies in the United Kingdom, Europe, and North America. Survey participants were asked about their experiences of using branded online video when planning online advertising campaigns.

Here are some of the major findings of the Be On study.

  • Although television is still considered to be a key driver of brand awareness, 78% of respondents in Europe and 58% globally said they could achieve greater engagement and scale with online video.
  • Seventy-three percent of respondents said that online video spending had increased over the last 12 months. Respondents also indicated that the majority of the increased spending on video content is coming from budgets previously reserved for TV and display advertising.
  • The key reasons for increasing online video spending in the future are better audience targeting (mentioned by 73% of respondents) and measurement (cited by 67% of respondents).
  • Eighty-four percent of survey respondents believe the Internet is becoming a rich brand medium that provides engaging, interactive opportunities to connect with consumers.

The findings of the Be On study demonstrate that enterprise marketers are becoming more reliant on video content to create engagement with prospects and customers. As I indicated in my earlier post, enterprises need an effective and efficient way to manage, localize, and publish videos in order to maximize the potential of video content.

ADAM has recently released ADAM Videos, a new application studio for the ADAM Platform that is specifically designed to meet the rapidly growing needs of corporate video management. ADAM Videos enables enterprises to manage video content with the same flexibility and control that the ADAM Platform provides for other types of digital content assets.

You can learn more about ADAM Videos here.

Siteworx and ADAM Software Team Up

The US-based Siteworx, LLC and the Belgium-based ADAM Software have announced a partnership. The two companies partnered up to help enterprise clients implement and improve their digital asset management (DAM) solutions.

 “Siteworx is one of our go-to partners in North America. Our enterprise customers depend on the expertise of independent partners like Siteworx for key services, from consulting and integration to ongoing technical support and training.  We’re pleased to welcome Siteworx to the ADAM Partner network, “said Pieter Casneuf, ADAM Software’s Chief Executive Officer.
Siteworx offers proven expertise in implementing, customizing, supporting, and training on the ADAM platform.  Because Siteworx applies equal emphasis on implementation, digital governance, and change management, Siteworx and ADAM joint clients gain the advantage of faster decision-making, quicker user adoption, and higher rates of project success. From pre-selection technology analysis, to product selection and integration, Siteworx helps clients in areas of requirements gathering, product feature business requirement match, and system architecture.
“The management and control of rich media content such as video, audio, and images is now more important than ever as our enterprise clients look to deliver integrated, immersive digital customer experiences,” said Siteworx VP of Technology and Alliances, Gage Short. “Today, digital asset management is an enterprise problem that requires a best-of-breed enterprise solution such as ADAM Software.”

ADAM’s Technical Propositions Explain Critical Marketing Software Attributes

The acquisition and implementation of enterprise-level marketing software entails a substantial commitment of time, energy, and financial resources for any large organization. Marketing and IT leaders who are responsible for selecting such software must consider many factors as they move through the evaluation process. Ultimately, however, the decision comes down to answering two fundamental questions:
  • Does the proposed solution provide the functionality that will meet my company’s current needs and identifiable future needs?
  • Does the proposed solution provide sufficient flexibility to address unpredictable future needs?

It’s relatively easy to determine whether a marketing software solution will meet your company’s current and identifiable future needs. You can collect information about existing marketing requirements and processes, develop a functional specification for the solution, and carefully evaluate the capabilities of alternative offerings.

It’s more difficult to determine whether a software solution has sufficient flexibility to handle unpredictable future needs. This is a critical decision factor because it largely dictates how durable a software solution will be. In this context, durability refers to how long a software solution will meet an organization’s business requirements.

Assessing the ability of a software solution to meet unpredictable future needs is difficult because this capability results primarily from technical features of the software that are not always apparent. In short, the ability of a software solution to address future needs depends largely on how the software is designed and built, on the underlying architecture it uses.

Because of the importance of this issue, we’ve developed a library of resources that describe the technical capabilities that enhance software durability. We call these resources Technical Propositions, and they’re designed to both explain important technical considerations and discuss the business significance of these technical capabilities.

If your organization is currently evaluating marketing software, or if you plan to begin an evaluation process in the near future, our Technical Propositions will provide important insights for your selection process.

So far, we’ve published four Technical Propositions, and we invite you to access these resources via the links provided below:

Great Marketing is Global and Local

Harvard Business Review blog , Jerry Wind, Stan Sthanunathan, and Rob Malcolm argued that great advertising is both local and global. The authors contend that global enterprises have traditionally faced an unattractive trade-off when it comes to advertising. As they put it, “Global brand advertising can rarely reflect the idiosyncratic characteristics of every market, but the alternative – locally designed advertising – often sacrifices a consistent global message and misses out on economies of scale.”

To avoid this trade-off, the blog authors say that enterprises should pursue a glocal advertising strategy, which they define as, “locally adapting a universally embraced core idea that will resonate in any market anywhere in the world.” As an example of effective glocal advertising, the authors described a 13-year advertising campaign used by Johnnie Walker to reinvigorate its Scotch whiskey brand.

The Johnnie Walker campaign was based on the recognition that men around the world, regardless of culture or nationality, want to advance their lives. The creative expression of this theme was “Keep Walking.” This universal theme was localized through the use of inspirational quotes from multiple cultures. For example, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” by Lao Tsu was used in Asia. Over the life of the campaign, more than 100 “local” quotes were used.

The blog authors contend that an effective glocal advertising strategy has three core components:

  • A global concept that embraces a universal human emotion
  • A global brand vision combined with localized creative delivery
  • An organizational architecture (including corporate culture, technology platform, and necessary resources) that facilitates effective collaboration between global and local marketers

In my view, the points made by Wind, Sthanunathan, and Malcolm about advertising apply equally to virtually all aspects of global marketing. Today, multinational enterprises must pursue both global brand consistency and effective localization simultaneously across all marketing tactics and channels.

Coordinating global and local marketing activities is especially important because the Internet largely erases geographical boundaries, making many consumers both global and local. For example, consumers in Japan or India increasingly expect marketing messages and materials that are culturally relevant and appropriate, but those same consumers can also easily access marketing content that is primarily intended for consumers in the US.

I also agree with the blog authors that both organizational culture and technology play critical roles in effective glocal marketing. Enterprises must nurture a close collaboration between marketers in the central marketing department and those in regional or national marketing offices around the world. Enterprises must also deploy the technology systems and tools that will enable geographically dispersed marketers to collaborate easily and efficiently. Without the right technology tools, timely and effective collaboration is all but impossible to achieve.

The Other Data Challenge

recent post, I discussed the importance of big data in enterprise-level marketing. As both consumers and businesspeople increasingly use digital devices and online channels to access information, make purchases, and interact via social networks, the volume of data regarding these activities grows exponentially. Hence the term big data.

Many marketing and technology thought leaders believe that big data constitutes a treasure trove of information about customer actions and preferences that can boost the effectiveness of marketing and thus drive improved business performance. They argue that capturing, analyzing, and extracting insights from big data are now critical components of competitive advantage.

While I contend that big data has been over-hyped to some extent, I also believe that maximizing the potential of big data should be a high-priority strategic objective for most large enterprises.

Enterprise marketers must also recognize, however, that big data is not the only data-related issue that must be addressed to create a world-class marketing operation.

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A New Resource Regarding SaaS vs. On-Premises DAM

Marketing software applications have become mission-critical technologies for most global enterprises. The proliferation of marketing communication channels, the growing need to customize marketing messages and materials, and the emerging need to provide prospective customers detailed, interactive product/service information on a real-time basis have made it all but impossible for large organizations to manage marketing effectively without technology.

Choosing the right marketing software tools is, therefore, a major strategic decision, and one important aspect of the decision is whether to opt for software that is installed on in-house servers or software that is hosted by the software provider and accessed via the Internet. While the use of “cloud-based” applications is clearly growing, both delivery models have advantages and disadvantages. The choice ultimately depends on which model is the best fit for your business.

A new white paper by Ralph Windsor and Nick Brookes is a valuable resource for making this important decision. Ralph Windsor is a senior partner at Daydream, a UK-based digital asset management consulting firm, and Nick Brookes is an independent DAM technology and media delivery infrastructure consultant based in London. Both Windsor and Brookes are also members of the editorial staff at Digital Asset Management News.

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Why Blending Brand and Product Content Has Become Critical

Enterprise marketers across all industries are charged to drive profitable revenue growth by delivering exceptional experiences to current and prospective customers. This would be a difficult task under any circumstances, but it is even more difficult today because potential buyers are more demanding than ever.

Several factors have helped elevate buyer expectations, but three technological developments stand out in importance.

  • The appearance and proliferation of online communication channels and digital communication devices – particularly the meteoric rise of tablets – gives both consumers and business buyers more choices for engaging with brands. Rather than treating various devices and platforms as eitherhttp://www.timeinc.com']);" target="_blank">A recent study by Time Inc. found that “Digital Natives” (individuals who have grown up using mobile technologies) move between devices and platforms 27 times per hour.
  • Today’s channels and devices have enough bandwidth and computing power to allow the use of rich media content such as high quality video and audio.
  • The development of “touchscreen” technology fundamentally changes how individuals interact with their communication devices and experience digital media.

These developments have helped elevate buyer expectations and have substantially raised the bar for providing memorable customer experiences.

  • Buyers now expect interactions with brands to be truly interactive. They expect every communication vehicle – an e-mail message, web page, or Facebook page, for example – to include multiple options that will take them to additional information. I contend that, in the very near future, most buyers will also expect even traditional printed materials (print ads, catalogs, etc.) to provide similar options via QR codes or other technologies.
  • Buyers now expect brands to provide visually compelling information through the use of rich media. If a sweater is available in four colors, they want to see all four colors. A video showing a product in action is more compelling than a static brochure describing how the product works.
  • Buyers increasingly expect to have easy access to detailed information about the products or services they’re interested in. What are the product’s dimensions and weight? What accessories for the product are available? Is there a more (or less) expensive model with more (or fewer) features?

Buyer expectations – enabled by the capabilities of today’s digital communication devices – have blurred the lines between traditional marketing communications content and product information. At ADAM, we believe that delivering exceptional customer experiences in this environment requires the integration of digital asset management and product content management technologies.

We’ve recently released a new white paper on this important topic written by Pieter Casneuf, ADAM’s CEO. You can download a copy of the new white paper here.

More Evidence that PIM Technology Drives Improved Performance

here), I discussed the growing importance of effective product information management (PIM), and I described research by Heller Software AG and Stuttgart Media University that documented the major benefits that enterprises will obtain by implementing dedicated PIM software technologies. Some of those benefits include:

  • Lower data management/maintenance costs
  • Reduced catalog creation costs
  • Lower translation costs
  • Greater use of product catalogs
  • More multilingual marketing

Recently, the Aberdeen Group released research findings that further demonstrate the value of dedicated PIM software technology. The Aberdeen research focused on retailers that use an “omni-channel” go-to-market strategy. These firms need to provide a consistent customer experience across multiple interaction channels (bricks and mortar, web, mobile, etc.).

The table below includes some of the findings of the Aberdeen research. These findings show the year-over-year impact of product information management/master data management systems on several key performance indicators. Results are shown both for retailers that use PIM/MDM technologies and for those that do not.

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