Some organizations may have considered a DAM (Digital Asset Management) system, but thought:

“We’ll do it later” or “We don’t need one of those DAM things.”

In the same breath, you might as well pick any of the following phrases below:

1. “We don’t need to save money now.”
2. “We will be here forever, so we will be able to preserve our institutional knowledge.”
3. “We love filing cabinets full of CDs, DVDs, tapes as well as multiple external hard drives, shared drives, folder structures on our computers and other ‘organized’ methods to store and manage our files every day. There is no other way to do this today.”
4. “We can’t find anything promptly, and we’re okay with that.”
5. “We can wait until tomorrow when the other office is open with the files we need for that presentation today.”
6. “We will continue to wait for Joe to come back from vacation and Susan to return from sick leave to retrieve files we really needed for that public release last week.”
7. “We love employees who hoard company assets on just their computer that are so important to our business. What could possibly ever happen to their computer or them for that matter? Our employees never go anywhere.”
8. “We love to wait hours or days for files, don’t we all?”
9. “We like to waste time and money and so do our managers.”
10. “We don’t need to know what files we have. Why would anyone want to know that?”
11. “We don’t accumulate many files each year. We trash our intellectual property every few months just to clear our limited hard drive space. It’s really no big deal.”
12. “There is no other way we can be more efficient. We each have our very own sets of standards and procedures followed sometimes.”
13. “We love paper. It’s so cheap. We like swimming in it too. What’s a PDF anyhow?”
14. “Why would we change how we deliver stuff? Mailing stuff is really cheap and fast nowadays. We don’t even need email today.”
15. “We can only collaborate in person or by email nowadays. What will they think of next? Telecommuting for office workers? We would have to trust our employees.”
16. “We have to hold all our files very close, so no one can find our files including us.”
17. “We love re-creating files over again because we can’t find it to use it again. In fact, we’ll do it all over again next month.”
18. “We love to think inside the box. We don’t streamline anything around here. I know because I’m an innovator. We don’t need any changes here.”
19. “Improve workflow? Our work flows just fine around here. We do not need to upgrade any software nor hardware each decade.”
20. “Change costs money. Technology can’t save the organization time and money. We just need more people to work harder and longer hours. That’s why they are here, and they know it.”

None of these ridiculous phrases have to be true in any organization today. Everything listed in bold can be done with DAM. If you don’t believe any of these ‘unspoken ways of doing business’ actually happen in your organization, find out how all your files are really stored and managed every year. Be ready for a surprise. Aside from what was discussed in the last 20 points above:

• Can you find every file created last month or last year?
• What if the person looking did not create nor archive any of the files they are looking for themselves?
• How quickly can these files be accessed?
• How many files do you have?
• Where are these files kept?
• Are they archived for future use?
• How many files are redundant (not a backup copy nor a different version)?
• How can you be sure without opening each file?

There is a better way. With a DAM, you can know the answer to all these questions. Planning for a DAM can make any organization really audit their assets and their workflows. A properly implemented DAM can make an organization streamlined and standardized. If a DAM is applied to an organization the right way, people can efficiently and effectively store, archive, search, find, use, reuse and repurpose assets as needed. Anyone who should be able to access files can securely find out what is available at anytime from anywhere with an internet connection.

Stay tuned to this blog for more on DAM and how it can help your organization.