Writing for DAM News, Ralph Windsor covers “The Confused Picture of Enterprise Digital Asset Management Adoption.” The confusion the title refers to pertains to the outcomes of two seemingly contradictory studies. In the first study, conducted by Kable, analysts found that about 75% of larger businesses now have digital asset management (DAM) technologies. However, a report commissioned by the Chief Marketing Officer Council says that only 27% of large businesses have any ability to curate, organize and manage their assets across teams. We agree with most of Windsor's conclusions, but think he may have missed the larger point.
Windsor endeavors to explain this discrepancy, suggesting that, because the CMO Council research was sponsored by Libris, a DAM vendor that is relatively new to the scene, the findings reflect what the sponsor would wish them to reflect – that levels of DAM adoption have not been very high until now. Alternatively, he posits that the difference is due to very different samples of survey respondents. The CMO Council study focused on marketing, as one might expect, while the Kable research respondents likely came primarily from IT.
Respondents from IT would know that DAM software has been purchased and exists within the organization. Marketing would only know about the software if they use it in marketing. This implies that the problem is more about siloed software usage and/or that the software isn’t being used much, if at all, after purchase and installation.
As to which finding is correct – that most enterprises have DAM solutions or that most don’t – Windsor believes it’s the former, but that internal adoption rates by end users are low. He posits that “the single biggest opportunity to increase ROI from DAM is to just get people to use one at all.”
Our Take
While we agree that low end-user adoption of existing DAM solutions is very likely a factor in this seeming discrepancy among research findings, we think that Windsor may have misinterpreted the CMO Council's report. We think that the outcomes don’t contradict each other at all. We don't believe the CMO Council’s report is saying DAM has only 27% adoption; rather, that only about a quarter of companies can manage assets across their entire organization using their existing DAM solutions. We believe the lack of DAM interoperability is the key reason for the finding that "a mere 27% have the ability to curate, organize, and manage their assets across teams."
The solution is the adoption of an industry-wide standard that would allow DAM systems to function smoothly with more enterprise software solutions – which we hope will come with the introduction of CMIS4DAM in the near future. Until then, we recommend looking for customer experience management solutions, including customer communications management software, which is built on open standards to enable better interoperability and integration of all your technologies throughout your organization.
If you’d like to explore ways of sharing digital assets across your organization, then you should consider joining the Customer Experience Architects group on LinkedIn. Us the button below to learn more.
