Tuesday 2¢: Theresa Regli and Back to DAM Basics

Welcome to the Tuesday 2¢. It’s Tuesday, the weekend is a distant memory and it’s time to let off some steam and give our 2 cents on a hot industry topic. This week Ian Truscott, fueled by DAM expert Theresa Regli, suggests that the right way for most organizations to update their content operations and process is to focus on the basics of Digital Asset Management.

This week, I am inspired by Theresa Regli, former Real Story Group analyst, now author and Digital Asset Management speaker. She’s a thought leader, expert at large and industry chum who has resurrected her blog and her latest post takes a look at the state of Digital Asset Management (DAM) in 2018. I wondered if the experience she shares means organizations should focus less on all that glitters in DAM and get back to basics?

Theresa writes from current client project experience, rather than the theoretical analysis you might get from other industry points of view. The article takes a slightly dim view of all that is shiny in the industry today. She paints a picture showing the gap between analysts’ rose-tinted view of DAM software capabilities versus today’s true content management maturity in most organizations. She states:

"We’re still solving very basic DAM problems. For example: overcoming organizational and silo paralysis, just getting our assets into a single repository of truth. Justifying the budget for DAM. Investing in taxonomy creation. Hiring a DAM Manager. Migrating from shared drives to a DAM. Getting assets tagged so they’re findable…"

This honest reflection of the true state of content management in these organizations concerns me. Content marketing, personalization, multichannel, digital experience are all things marketers are striving to do to meet raised consumer demands. To exploit the digital marketing opportunities today has created an explosion in content need. Getting its management right is becoming critical to brand competitiveness, large or small.

The silos that Theresa refers to are the first challenge. The content consumer, whether it’s an external customer, employee or partner, doesn’t care about industrial age organizational structure - marketing, sales and service. They also don’t care if the content is considered product information, a digital asset or web content and is therefore locked away in its private vault of PIM, DAM or WCM. They just want it now, on the channel of their choosing.

I’ve chatted to Theresa on Inside censhare about this and she has a strong belief in DAM at the center of an organizations content operations. I have seen her describe it as the “engine”. But, if an organization still clings to its industrial age structures and doesn’t take a more holistic view, updating its content operations and process, it’s hard to put that engine in place.

The gap that Theresa refers to also suggests that organizations and industry analysts need to worry less about the long list of best-of-breed features and functions and get back to figuring out how a system can sit across their organization. They need to work out how to meet the heterogeneous needs of all the organization stakeholders, throughout the digital supply chain and across the silos.

I’ve focused on one aspect of Theresa’s article. I would encourage you to read the rest of what she says about DAM in 2018 here. If you are in London this week, there is an opportunity to listen to Theresa and meet her (and us!) at the Henry Stewart DAM event where, among other things, she will discuss some of the points she has raised. I will be listening with interest.