DAM Foundation Ten Core Characteristics Update – Vendor Compliance Reviews

DAM Foundation have recently announced that they are now testing DAM vendors for their ten core characteristics, based on an article Elizabeth Keathley wrote last year.  The ten attributes are formalised in this article by Mark Davey.  They have checked and approved about 16 different vendor products so far (although I would expect that list to grow quite quickly).

The criteria covers some basic points which few would argue with, such as ingestion, searching, workflow and metadata:

“Each of the 10 characteristics has been split into subcategories which denote the most important elements necessary for DAM. If any of these features could not be demonstrated then the vendor failed, if the vendor could demonstrate even limited functionality in all areas they passed. We shall not be disclosing how well vendors performed in each area, nor shall we be disclosing those who failed. Obviously the vendors who do fail will be made aware of the fact and furthermore we are happy to give feedback to vendors on where they performed poorly. This is an ongoing process and there is no limit to the number of times a vendor can be assessed, we aim to critique rather than criticise and intend that ‘failing’ vendors have the opportunity to be reassessed.” [Read More]

My understanding is that the compliance verification process is free of charge for vendors, so this is a reasonably straightforward method to allow them to demonstrate that they have achieved a minimum baseline. Given that DAM Foundation is well known across the DAM industry, I would need to question the long-term validity of any product that either has not been verified or has failed since the functionality they describe is all straightforward stuff that has been present in most DAM solutions worthy of the name for at least seven or eight years now.

To show our support for this endeavour at DAM News, we have added a filter option for DAM Foundation 10 core characteristics compliance on our searchable DAM Vendor directory.  Vendors who claim they have met the criteria will need to be able to prove this point when submitting profile updates.

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