Information
Assets
Metadata
Reuse
Findability
Use Cases
One of DAM’s strengths lies in its capacity to structure and maintain metadata, taxonomies and controlled vocabularies.
Information is split into the greatest number of sub-categories in order to achieve the greatest possible level of detail, relevance, functionality and flexibility in terms of effective DAM operation.
DIMENSIONS OVERVIEW
DIMENSIONS OVERVIEW
COMPETENCY LEVELS OVERVIEW
Assets
A digital file becomes an asset when you add value to it through metadata and through other organisational tools employed by DAM systems.
Companies at operational and optimal levels will operate under defined practices and standards for the creation and reuse of assets across multiple channels and employ distinct practices when authoring for different intentions.
Ad Hoc
Unorganised, with no policy or organisation strategy.
Incipient
Common repositories and policies.
Formative
Centralised organisation and policy.
Operational
All new repositories and asset types registered with defined standards and practices for authoritative asset management.
Optimal
Assets prepared and authorised for use and reuse across multiple channels, with organisational understanding of authoring for different intentions.
Metadata
The real workhorse of any DAM system; metadata forms an important part of DAM strategy and is the cornerstone of most DAM functions.
This relates not only to metadata’s usefulness in defining and organising a repository of assets but also in terms of administration, access, and rights management which use metadata to assign rules in these areas.
Companies at operational and optimal levels will require all new assets, libraries and repositories to be registered and related under defined strategies.
Metadata will be insistent upon ingestion, travel with assets and the tracking and monitoring of metadata changes will lead to constant improvements in this area.
Ad Hoc
No metadata (filename only); unorganised; no policy or organisational strategy.
Incipient
Inconsistent asset tagging; department-level common repositories and policies.
Formative
Conforming vocabularies for organisational use.
Operational
Enterprise taxonomies created; all new repositories and asset types registered and related.
Optimal
Defined standards; defined job responsibilities; enterprise taxonomy in use; metadata is complete and travels with asset; metadata changes are tracked; ongoing refinement.
Reuse
Through the use of workflow tools, DAM allows the ability to repurpose and reuse assets.
Companies at operational and optimal levels will have a strong focus on the reuse and repurposing of assets and will strive towards the discovery of new uses beyond those originally intended for an asset.
Ad Hoc
No reuse.
Incipient
Inconsistent, unplanned or unsupported reuse.
Formative
Development of a reuse strategy and planned reuse of specific assets.
Operational
Execution of a reuse strategy across all assets.
Optimal
Discovery of new uses of assets beyond original intention.
Findability
The retrieval of assets relies upon an associated, detailed array of metadata.
One of the main reasons that organisations opt for DAM is that its employees spend a lot of their time trying to find assets.
Companies at operational and optimal levels have a strong focus on search tools, operating multiple methods of refining and improving searches and with a view to continually add search functionality when available.
Ad Hoc
Employees spend excessive time searching for material without finding it – often resorting to the re-creation of assets.
Incipient
Search engine(s) adopted and indexing started.
Formative
Indexing completed; usage patterns reviewed, leveraging vocabulary terms for further refinement.
Operational
Implementation of specific enterprise and/or federated search mechanism.
Optimal
Search and classification becomes a central service with business-driven variants seamlessly delivering relevant assets and metadata by role; search mechanisms continuously improved.
Use Cases
Perhaps the most variable of the categories within Information, Use Cases reflects the breadth of different ways in which the DAM is accessed and utilised and the corresponding information employed to benefit the largest number of use cases.
Companies at operational and optimal levels will recognise the specific needs of different use cases and operate well structured and defined strategies to meet the needs and expectations of disparate parties.
Ad Hoc
Unstructured meeting of organisational needs; no value applied to user scenarios.
Incipient
Project-level requirements gathered, but with no end-to-end context.
Formative
Program-level requirements gathered; beginning to apply end-to-end context.
Operational
Use cases well structured, organised and prioritised; all users identified with known input and output expectations; dependencies, prerequisites and interrelationships identified.
Optimal
Framework in place to define, measure and manage existing and new use cases; systems validated against use cases.