Improving DAM User Adoption
Emily Quan, has written an article, How to Improve DAM User Adoption and Maximize ROI for the blog of consulting group, Optimity (who metadata expert, John Horodyski also works for). The item is concise, but it covers some useful points that are succinctly expressed, for example:
“Achieving high user engagement and active participation post-launch is challenging, especially if metadata quality is poor, which can make users lose confidence that the DAM system will return expected search results. Your user adoption strategy must be supported by effective communication and targeted messaging to internal users, external third party users, user groups, and user levels, given varying levels of technical expertise and user permissions. Establishing a platform and culture for continuing education and training will take time to socialize, but empowering users to properly upload, download, share assets, and apply metadata is invaluable to improving user adoption.” [Read More]
The first sentence of the above quote encapsulates the reality of most corporate DAM implementations. In many (probably the majority) of cases where I get asked to look at DAM software which the users believe ‘has bugs’, many of them are actually the fault of those responsible for the asset cataloguing task not entering metadata which would allow other users doing searches to find them again. This speaks to one of the core points I have been making in our Finding Signs Of Life In DAM series, i.e. if metadata of a satisfactory quality hasn’t been provided, people won’t find what they are looking for and they are less likely to use a DAM. Each of these partially successful implementations bubbles up to create a froth of dissatisfaction about DAM software ROI which is a problem for everyone involved, whether you sell it or have to justify why your organisation’s recent purchase is not delivering ROI.
This is a great article about this subject and I note it is fully spam-free, there are no sneaky references to Emily’s employer, nor made-up branded ‘methodologies’ with ‘Service Mark’ shorthand tacked on to them, nor any of the other nonsense that frequently gets bundled in with articles of this kind from consulting firms. The copy is straightforward and you get the idea the author (and Optimity) have a comprehensive grasp of the subject and is confident enough of their expertise to not need to tell you that, it’s just obvious from what they say. As I mentioned a few weeks back about Jens Lundgaard’s article, Good Questions To Ask DAM Vendors, this is how to do these kind of pieces.
For other articles on DAM adoption, there is a series I wrote for CMSWire back in 2015, The Stages Of Digital Asset Management Consciousness, (the second part is divided into two pieces here and here). Another good item on this subject is 5 Steps For Company-Wide DAM Adoption, by Jody Vandergriff (who was formerly CEO and co-founder of vendor, WebDAM).
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