Three Steps to Choose DAM

Three Steps to Choose DAM
By James Heard

What are your expectations? Discovering Digital Asset Management solutions, three steps to help you.
If you've discovered that a Digital Asset Management solution is one of the important things your organization or company should have, then you'll need to select the software that suits your particular business needs. Before you select a vendor, it will be very important for you to set your expectations and identify features that are critical for you. Below are simple steps to help you make the process easy and effective.

Define Your Goals and Set Expectations

You should have a clear idea of what you will accomplish with the Digital Asset Management software. If you need a solution that should cover the whole organization, then it will be very necessary to work with every department in the organization to assess the organization's needs and to have a clear vision of what want to accomplish. This can be a challenging task, but it will help you choose a solution that can best address the needs of your company or organization. There are firms that specialize in handling this kind of project and they can help you define your goals and set your expectations.

Find out How Much Help the Vendor Is Ready to Offer

To have a comprehensive solution, it is best to work with vendors who can identify critical issues affecting each department and address them. You want a solution that can become a sustainable part of the processes and work flow of your entire organization. It is important to note that Digital Asset Management solutions are not something to use just for a single moment. It is a solution that should become part of the organization and employees must embrace and use it.That is why you want to be certain that the vendor can help you to integrate the solution into your organization's work flow and processes.

Consider Your Basic Technological Needs

This is one of the important steps in the process, and you should make sure that the solution would be compatible with the operating systems that your organization uses. Other things to find out will be if the solution supports the type of files, file sizes, formats, and numbers that your system generates. The solution should also be compatible with the kind of browser used by your organization. You'll have a big problem if the solution uses an unsupported operating system. Make sure that these issues can be efficiently handled before you make a decision.

Think about the Critical Features You Need

Digital Asset Management solutions have four critical features: cataloging, hybrid, asset repositories, and customized features. The Digital Asset Management is a big and search-able media catalog, an indexed database that may not manage assets on its own. It is a secure repository where different people can download and manipulate data on assets, which can result to multiple versions depending on the need. You may want to consider a hybrid feature that combines cataloging and asset repositories. This will allow your organization to gather all its assets in a single virtual repository accessible through different networks. You can also find out if the vendor can offer customized settings that allow the DAM to do what you want it to do. It is important to note that customized settings can require a lot of maintenance and support.

Docurated is developing a cloud based application to help knowledge workers surface, organize, reuse and share their most powerful content, regardless of information location or format.

James Heard is a technology writer with a focus on time saving applications and easy to use tools. Content Search is his current focal point.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Heard
http://EzineArticles.com/?Three-Steps-to-Choose-DAM&id=8196941