Risetime was a sponsor at Henry Stewart DAM LA 2025. One of the great things about this event is hearing from companies about their successes with Digital Asset Management. As a marketing director for a DAM services provider, I am guilty of using many clichés that tend to litter the landscape. Who wouldn’t want “streamlined workflows,” or a “single source of truth” and “faster time to market?” But sometimes, the reality gets hidden behind all the platitudes.
Our session at DAM LA was facilitated by two experienced DAM professionals: John Florance, Sr. Director, Content Strategies at Risetime, and Christi Klein, a longtime DAM administrator who is currently the Group Product Manager for Content Systems at Dick’s Sporting Goods. We gave the audience a scorecard with twelve clichés and asked them to rank their top five:
___ Single source of truth
___ Streamlined workflows
___ Promote collaboration
___ Increase productivity
___ Best-of-breed user experience
___ Drive digital transformation
___ Simplified search
___ Maintain brand consistency
___ Centralized repository
___ Break down silos
___ Future-proof your DAM
___ Faster time to market
In analyzing the results, we learned that DAM professionals have a good sense of what each cliché means and, ultimately, the value offered to the organization. But these only represent a promise of value because they can be hard to quantify (I’ll have five units of streamlined workflows, please) and qualify (great results are the result of great execution).
It’s interesting how these are interdependent; a centralized repository will help break down silos, resulting in the creation of a single source of truth and making brand consistency easier. Plus, despite the best intentions, factors outside of DAM’s control, such as budgets, staffing, logistics, and organizational changes, can hamper efforts to reach your goals.
Here are the top five:
1. Streamlined workflows
2. Centralized repository
3. Simplified search
4. Increase productivity
5. Single source of truth
On the other hand, the bottom three items were:
10. Drive digital transformation
11. Future-proof your DAM
12. Maintain brand consistency
What is not captured in the best and worst lists above is a discussion of how these clichés translate into our own individual, real-world experiences. While it might make sense to use these terms when “marketing” your DAM, selecting which resonates with you still requires a deeper dialogue. Understanding the underlying drivers for the DAM’s users and stakeholders helps ensure your DAM project is tracking with the organizational goals and prioritizing what is most important to accomplish in the next phases. Long gone are the days of building it, and they will come.
