The Ideal World: 5 Resources You Need to Grow Your DAM Program

With a detailed roadmap in hand that aligns with your organization’s goals, you can begin taking steps toward the next stage of DAM program maturity. Taking action on this roadmap requires more than just a plan— you also need the resources to make it a reality and achieve the daily, weekly, and monthly goals you’ve outlined. 

These resources will look different for every organization, but some high-level categories of support can make anyone’s life easier. Over the course of dozens of DAM projects, Stacks has identified the kinds of support that are most effective for those responsible for growing a DAM program. Likewise, Kristi has led DAM programs in both large and small organizations. Together, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most important DAM resources you should factor in your planning and internal discussions.

If you’d like specific advice on what these resources could look like for your organization and need assistance in securing them, contact Stacks today. Our goal is to help build successful DAM programs and facilitate their growth.

1. Executive Support

The first major resource for achieving your DAM roadmap is support from your organization's leadership. Progress becomes a lot easier when leaders—those responsible for making budget decisions—understand the value of DAM and are bought in. Stacks works with many DAM managers to effectively pitch the value of DAM to executives. 

The best way we've seen this resource secured is by ensuring executives are well-informed about DAM and its benefits. If they’re not already knowledgeable, provide them with resources about DAM in general, and about your DAM specifically. 

Having data to point to as well as a clear vision statement for the role the DAM program plays in the organization is extremely helpful in securing this support. If you haven’t already, clearly align your DAM program’s roadmap with the overall business strategy so that leadership understands that supporting the DAM program supports the business as a whole.

2. Product Ownership

Having a centralized resource who owns the DAM program is critical to its long-term success. This could be a dedicated person or a team that shares responsibility for achieving short-term goals, keeping day-to-day tasks under control, and tracking the overall health of the program. 

This person or team provides the roadmap, governance, and strategy for the DAM program and its workflows. Not every organization can dedicate someone to this, so it can be a combined role, though at larger companies, this isn't ideal. 

Having a clear product owner makes decision-making more efficient, gives leadership, other product owners, and end-users a single point of contact, and ensures there's always bandwidth dedicated to keeping the DAM program on track and growing.

3. Program Governance & Workflows

The first two resources refer mostly to people, but those individuals need structure to confidently navigate the DAM system and produce value.  This is where governance and clear processes come into play. Like the banks of a river, processes direct the power of your people and assets in specific directions. Without these frameworks, the people, assets, metadata, and tools you have in place will remain stagnant and produce less value than they could. 

Governance refers to the consistent, day-to-day activities that keep the DAM program clean, but it can also refer to the processes, automations, and safeguards that are in place to aid in that effort. Examples of this are DAM platform features that allow you to track asset rights and quickly retire them, permissions hierarchies that ensure users have access only to what they need, and versioning features that ensure your library isn’t filled with duplicate assets.

During the initial stages of the DAM program’s lifecycle, you must identify which governance features and processes will best serve your users and the product owner tasked with keeping assets accessible and safe. 

4. Training and Documentation

Like governance features and processes, effective training and thorough documentation can help lighten the workload on any DAM manager or team. If there are easily accessible materials users can reference to help themselves, that's less time the DAM team has to spend repeatedly answering the same questions. Many DAM program owners are constantly peppered with questions such as, "Can I share things externally?”, “Why can't I find this SKU?", or “How do I filter my search results?”

The other component of this is holding training and AMA sessions and/or office hours regularly so users have a place to come when they need help. This also serves any new additions to the organization by providing ways to address specific questions they have. Beyond these sessions, many organizations have training modules built into their DAM portal that all new hires must complete when they start. 

5. IT Support

While DAM isn't just a platform, it isn't less than one. Technology plays a key role in a DAM program, so you'll need a strong relationship with your IT team to implement the necessary technology and carry out any changes you've planned. 

Many DAM teams use IT as a resource to understand how different systems can be integrated and how those integrations will impact the overall workflows and architecture of the DAM program. Since most systems will need to go through IT first for InfoSec approval or implementation, they're often the team that’s familiar with all the tools being used. 

It’s incredibly valuable to collaborate with other product owners or system admins within your organization.  These connections can help guide and inform your roadmap, particularly if you need IT technical support or an external development company. Sharing your roadmap broadly ensures you aren't surprised at the last minute if you find out that IT can't dedicate specific resources to your project.