Mick Roovers

Mick Roovers has been doing digital asset management for nearly ten years and understands the value a DAM can bring by having it serve as the backbone for an organizations’ content creation, management and publication processes.

What companies/organizations have you worked for as a DAM professional? What was your role at each?

I have been working for Rabobank, one of the largest all finance banks in the Netherlands and a global Food & Agri player, for almost 10 years. This entire period I have been working as a Digital Asset Management (DAM) professional, although I wasn’t aware that I was doing DAM in the first few years. I was working as a project manager on the brand portal and asset management seemed just one of the things that “needed to be done”. Currently I am responsible for the Marketing Asset Management of the entire organization. I will be leaving Rabobank within a few weeks, to join IntoAction – a digital marketing consultancy firm, to help other companies getting their Digital Asset Management done the right way.

How do you describe digital asset management to others?

Digital asset management is all about getting the right assets to the right people at the right time, by using a central platform for these assets. It involves three steps: creation, storage and distribution. Every step has influence on the other. To be able to distribute the assets, you must be able to find them in the storage, to be able to find them in the storage you must be able to upload the assets with the right metadata. To be able to upload the assets you must have workflows, authorizations, taxonomies in place etc.

How did you learn DAM? Any recommended sources?

Honestly, most of my digital asset management experience was learning-by-doing. Although there are a few recent publications I can recommend: “Digital and Marketing Asset Management” by Theresa Regli and “Metadata for Content Management” by David Diamond.

What’s the most important thing for someone new to DAM to understand about DAM?

First: a DAM is not solely a storage. It’s the backbone of your organizations content creation, management and publication processes. Second: don’t try to put everything in the DAM. Put your assets there that add value, that are (re)usable for yourself or others.

If you weren’t doing DAM as a career, what would you be doing?

Good question. I have no idea. I guess I would have found some other specialization in the field of digital marketing, or in the creative branch.

What is your ongoing greatest challenge with DAM?

The greatest challenge is the quality of the metadata. We don’t have a dedicated team to upload all the assets, this means every marketeer has the responsibility to upload his or her own assets. Most of the metadata is based on controlled vocabularies, but still, the quality of the metadata depends on the time and interest people take for it.

What is your vision for DAM? What will it look like in 5 years?

As I said earlier. A DAM has the potential to be the backbone of your organizations content creation, management and publication processes. With content marketing buzzing around and every company working on a content strategy, DAM is the tool to look at for executing this strategy throughout your entire organization. The DAM can be the central content hub, connected to creation and publication processes in the online and offline world. Maybe even integrating your PIM, DM, CRM, WCM and more.

What was your biggest mistake with regard to DAM?

Not knowing I was doing DAM.

What was your biggest success with regard to DAM?

Getting (almost) every employee of our company to work with our brand portal.

What more would you like to learn about DAM?

I really want to see more DAM implementations at other companies. How do they do it? How do they integrate it in their organizations? The perceived quality and adoption of the DAM is only as good as the way the product was implemented. I think we can learn a lot from each other in communities with DAM professionals.

This interview originally appeared on DAM Guru on Mon, 24 Oct 2016. For more DAM News interviews, see the interviews index page.

Share this Article: