Will Enterprise Content Buying Become an Integral Component of Content Digital Asset Supply Chains?
Enterprise Content Buying (ECB) providers could be viewed as the new breed of waiter in the DAM restaurant, efficiently ferrying digital content from numerous suppliers, through to the kitchen and on to your desk, to be consumed as desired. ECB is a relatively fresh term in the digital asset management sector, and essentially acts as a centralised hub responsible for procuring digital content and feeding it into the systems that utilise it (DAM, CMS, ECM, PIM etc.). In a recent article for smint.io, DAM News Editor Ralph Windsor examines the concept of ECB and how its potential to provide the missing link in end-to-end enterprise content digital asset supply chains could see it becoming a familiar and fundamental component in our workflows.
“A frequent feature of Digital Asset Managers’ daily lives (and many DAM users who are tasked with uploading and cataloguing digital materials) is what might be termed the ‘hairpin manoeuvre’ where the user is required to manually download a file from one upstream source and then re-upload it to the DAM. This adds very little value and creates a bottleneck which makes digital asset supply chains far less efficient than they should be.” [Read More]
On a basic level, Ralph explains the concept of a middleware connector that communicates with various upstream media providers (e.g. stock image libraries) and pulls the required digital content into the DAM platform. On a more advanced level, the ECB connector is also responsible for managing the contractual, licensing and rights management aspects of the content. In addition to the obvious gains of tapping directly into a content source without having to download and re-upload to your DAM, a further benefit of using an ECB system is the automatic transferal of any metadata that was present in the original media.
“When digital asset managers have to upload stock media digital assets to their DAM, they usually also need to manually transfer at least some metadata. This frequently has to be carried out by copying and pasting from one graphical interface into another. The process is highly inefficient and a very poor use of Digital Asset Managers’ time…With an ECB Platform, the transfer of metadata is automated and not only does the file get received into the DAM, but also the metadata. The complete digital asset (binary essence and metadata) is exchanged in a single, fully audited action.” [Read More]
Ralph continues by breaking down the numerous benefits and a couple of potential pitfalls of using an ECB system, including the re-structuring of licensing practices, the possibility of having to negotiate and implement both internal and external Change Management programmes with users and suppliers, and whether or not your chosen DAM and content providers are actually supported by the ECB platform. However, in summary, Ralph appears to fully support the idea of ECB, indeed, he considers it an essential evolutionary step if DAM is to break the bonds of its provincial presence in the enterprise technology sector and survive a joined-up future where digital content asset supply chains are far more fluid.
“This is a concept which meets one of the key challenges numerous DAM users are currently facing, and I would expect to see this kind of technology becoming more pervasive over the next few years.” [Read More]
You can read the full article at the link below.
https://www.smint.io/en/news/ralph-windsor-enterprise-content-buying-content-supply-chain
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