Stacks' Approach to Scoping, Building, and Managing DAM Integrations

If you've read any other blogs we’ve published, you’ve seen the term “DAM program” used many times in many contexts. The Stacks team firmly believes that digital asset management (DAM) isn’t just a one-time project undertaken by a marketing department or a piece of fancy technology purchased by a creative team. It’s a complex program comprised of processes that move assets from one place to another, people with different jobs and goals, and platforms that maximize the value of digital assets. 

We view a healthy DAM program as a catalyst for the overall growth of a brand, the achievement of high-level organizational goals, and the efficient use of all other MarCom technologies utilized by an organization. Ideally, organizations invest in their DAM programs, making them the central hub of all their content operations—from managing web assets and sales materials to creating personalized ads and beyond. 

Over the last six years, the Stacks team of DAM managers, librarians, and strategists has helped DAM programs of all shapes and sizes launch and realize their potential. Recently, we've begun supporting DAM programs in a new, but increasingly important way: DAM integrations. 

The Stacks team has always understood the importance of seamless integrations for a successful digital asset management (DAM) program. Integrating your DAM program with your other systems and tools streamlines workflows, enhances collaboration, and maximizes the value of your digital assets.  As we’ve built, governed, and helped grow DAM programs for our clients, we've gained insights into best practices for integrating DAM programs with other platforms. We’ve also learned how to scope, build, and manage DAM integrations to facilitate further growth and scalability in new and exciting ways. 

This article outlines our approach to scoping, building, and managing DAM integrations to empower your end-users, increase efficiency, and minimize headaches and costs. If you have more questions about Stacks or our approach to DAM, please contact us today!

Scoping DAM Integrations

In every stage of the DAM journey (image below), we encourage our clients to “go slow to go fast.” This means that without due diligence, requirements gathering, application of best practices, documentation, and buy-in from your team, you’re likely to waste time and money. 

DAM integrations aren’t an exception to this mindset for our team. When a client identifies an integration they’d find helpful or our team recommends one, we don’t dive right into development or testing. Instead, we start by asking questions. 

We work closely with our clients to understand their existing tech stack, business processes, and pain points. We gather end-user feedback to better understand how integrations would help them, what data needs to be involved, and what core workflows are necessary to justify the effort and investment.

During the scoping phase, we also assess the complexity of the integration, potential challenges, and the resources required. This allows us to provide accurate timelines and cost estimates, ensuring transparency and setting realistic expectations.

Our team often scopes a proposed integration and determines that implementing it isn’t worth the investment at the time. Many automations, feature enhancements, and integrations only result in minor efficiency gains while using resources that could be better utilized in other key areas of the DAM program.

Part of our core process in scoping integrations is to determine the value of a proposed integration to your DAM program at each stage of your DAM journey. This ensures that our clients don’t start building additions on a house that doesn’t even have a roof yet.

Building DAM Integrations

We don’t just build a new integration and hand it over to our clients. The Stacks team is focused on the long-term success of a DAM program, not just checking off tasks.

Our development process is centered on validation, testing, and user adoption while considering our client’s long-term goals. Your organization doesn’t need a shiny new integration that either doesn’t do what’s needed, is difficult to use, or will need to be replaced in a year or two. 

As our development team progresses, our team of DAM managers works with our clients to ensure that each iteration of the integration achieves its goals, aligns with the broader DAM roadmap, and that training documentation is developed and updated.

Throughout the building phase, we maintain open communication with our clients, provide regular updates, and seek feedback to ensure the integration meets their needs.

Managing DAM Integrations

The integrations connected to DAM programs, like the programs themselves, aren't a one-time effort; they require ongoing maintenance and support. Managing integrations in a truly effective way is often difficult for many organizations, especially if they were built by a third party.

Once integrations are set up and running, gaining insight into their usage, managing permissions and data, troubleshooting, and understanding feature updates becomes difficult. Over years of managing DAM programs, Stacks has seen this lack of insight and control lead to confusion, lowered return on investment, and inefficiency. 

With this in mind, we provide our clients with custom DAM integrations, a DAM team to help scope the project and guide them, and a central integrations hub (image below). This hub allows clients to access and manage their Stacks-built integrations and control their associated data and permissions. 

Our dedicated support team monitors the integrations for any issues or disruptions, promptly addressing them to minimize downtime and ensure seamless operation.  Additionally, we provide your team with insights into the improvements made and how your users leverage the integration.