Don’t let DAM fool you. Despite being around for a few decades and being the lesser-known cousin of digital experience platforms (DXPs) and content management systems, digital asset management (DAM) is cornerstone technology to deliver personalization at scale. If you’re not using DAM today, you’re already in the minority, but it’s not too late. In our just-released Forrester Wave™ evaluation on the DAM space, we found that 50% of the customer references we surveyed have been using their DAM for two years or less. But increasingly, DAM is seen as a strategic part of an enterprise’s technology and content initiatives (see our graphic below).

Increasingly, DAM Is Core To An Enterprise’s Digital Experience Stack

 

If you answer “yes” to any of the following questions, it’s time to invest in or double down on DAM:

  1. Has your content creation grown through the pandemic?
  2. Do you want to manage your content creation process and finalized assets more strategically?
  3. Have the channels that you deliver your content to increased?
  4. Do you want to drive content creation efficiency, speed time-to-market, or build the foundation for scalable personalization?

If these challenges sound familiar, then you’re in the right spot. I have hundreds of conversations with enterprises just like yours that are investing in DAM or looking to get better use of their existing DAM. Our Wave evaluation looked at the top 14 vendors in the space and measured them against 27 criteria.

When considering a DAM, you should look for one that:

  • Fits into an integrated ecosystem. The top technologies that DAM integrates into are content management systems, product information management, and creative toolsets. In our evaluation, we looked at the productized connectors into those technologies, whether customer references were using them, and if they got solid value from the connections.
  • Supports all stages of the content supply chain. DAM is increasingly moving into the upstream creative process. In fact, about 25% of reference customers used the DAM for both work in progress and finalized assets. We expect DAM’s applicability in workflow, review and approval, task assignment, and other creative processes to only increase.
  • Embraces automation and AI to advance personalization goals. Almost all vendors in this evaluation offer AI capabilities for smart tagging of assets. This can be hugely helpful to enterprises that have large libraries of content and have been a bit — let’s say, casual — with metadata governance. We’re seeing expanded use of trainable AI to surface business-specific tags and conditional logic to smart route tasks and content.

Selecting the right DAM is complex and can be complicated. I can help you put these nuances into context. Schedule an inquiry to get started.