Tag Archives: Digital Asset Management

How DAM Can Enable and Support Customer Experience Management

December 10, 2013 | 0 Comments

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

December 3, 2013 | 0 Comments

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.

Siteworx and ADAM Software Team Up

October 16, 2013 | 0 Comments

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

August 20, 2013 | 0 Comments

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:

A New Resource Regarding SaaS vs. On-Premises DAM

July 16, 2013 | 0 Comments

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.

Read More

Why MAM is a core piece of your EMM strategy

July 3, 2013 | 0 Comments

Saepio Technologies, in  the whitepaper ‘MAM, Making Assets Actionable and Engaging’.

And why is that?

As a vital part of the advertising process, MAM combines digital asset management, collateral customization and marketing automation technologies into a single, seamless process that:

  • improves brand compliance;
  • advances measurable return on marketing investment (ROMI);
  • eliminates repetitive tasks;
  • enables speed-to-market; and
  • engages distributed marketers.

In the white paper Thomson first defines where MAM fits in the Enterprise Marketing Management strategy. “There are many models that depict the component of an EMM system”, according to Thompson.”But this document focuses on CRM, business intelligence/analytics, MRM, MAM and customer nurturing as key components.”

Read More

How Digital Asset Management Helps Marketing, Creative and Sales Teams

June 27, 2013 | 0 Comments

Digital Asset Management (DAM) technologies have emerged as a strategic necessity for businesses and organizations of all types to operate more efficiently and effectively. Watch this video to learn more about how DAM solutions are used by marketing, creative and sales teams to (1) improve efficiency of marketing operations, (2) increase brand consistency, and (3) increase return on marketing investments.

This short video from Widen Enterprises tells the story on how DAM systems are used by marketing, creative and sales organizations. Learn more at www.Widen.com

Why Blending Brand and Product Content Has Become Critical

June 25, 2013 | 0 Comments

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.

How the DAM Market is Evolving

June 4, 2013 | 0 Comments

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. Read More

Big Data: Who owns customer and budget?

April 24, 2013 | 0 Comments

Though frequently at odds, marketing and IT executives agree that harnessing Big Data is imperative to building a customer-centric corporate culture, SAS.

They also agree that a lack of CMO/CIO alignment, rigid silos, unclear responsibilities, and a lack of leadership impede an organization from using Big Data to its full potential, the survey of CMOs and CIOs found.

Big Data is important to achieving a customer-centric culture, according to the study:

  • 40% of marketers and 51% of IT executives said its critical for improved decision making.
  • 36% of marketers and 23% of IT execs said data drives the ability to personalize customer experiences.

Below, additional findings from the CMO Council study, titled Big Data’s Biggest Role, Aligning the CMO & CIO.

Access to in-depth data, and the ability to translate it into insights, is a competitive advantage according to 70% of marketers: 30% say it is critical, and 40% say it is part of the overall picture.

However, most respondents view the flood of incoming data as part obstacle and part opportunity: 61% of CMOs and 60% of CIOs say so, admitting they have a long way to go still in using Big Data properly.

The main challenge, according to 52% of marketers (and 45% of IT professionals), is that functional silos block aggregation of data from across the organization, making it difficult to truly achieve customer-centricity:

Moreover, 39% of CMOs say the corporate culture is not aligned around the needs of customers.

A likely explanation for the lack of total customer focus is that no clear ownership of the customer exists. Among marketing executives, 18% say that ownership rests with the CEO, 17% say the CMO, and 19% say sales. IT professionals assign ownership to the CEO (20%), CMO (19%), and sales (17%).

Organizations that report they have achieved total partnership between CMO and CIO also have clearer ownership of the customer.

In such organizations, marketers (24%) and IT professionals (30%) say the CEO owns the customer. Furthermore, marketers and IT executives in total partnership organizations are highly satisfied with their companys ability to engage the customer (42% of marketers, 31% of IT execs).

Read more: 

Older posts