To manage and enhance your marketing and communications content, you've decided to implement a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution. In the midst of a budgetary crisis, it's time to defend your project to your management. Your CEO is looking for savings and, above all, a return on investment, while your CFO swears by KPIs.

How do you sell a DAM project internally?

To "sell" your DAM project internally, you need to back it up with concrete evidence. But, as with any knowledge management project, finding real benefits can be complicated, and translating them into financial gain can sometimes be an impossible task. Having carried out more than 300 DAM projects, we have identified the best ways to enhance the value of your project, convince your staff and guarantee the success of your initiative.

The first arguments to prove the legitimacy of a DAM project

Save your staff timeManystudies have been conducted on the subject, and all agree that a Digital Asset Management solution offers real time savings for users. According to a 2015 IDC study, the average employee spends 2.5 hours a day searching for a document. However, it is sometimes difficult to quantify this time saving precisely, and therefore to deduce a value from it. Even if you do manage to quantify it, you then have to show that it leads to a real improvement in productivity. This is not always easy. The legalrisksassociated with misuse of the media are very real, and can be quantified. In Austria, for example, a photographer who had photographed the hotels of Vienna produced several photos for the Sofitel hotel chain. Use of the photos was limited to three years, and only on Austrian territory. The hotel chain's marketing department didn't take this seriously enough. As a result, the photo was published worldwide, in hundreds of versions, even after the license had expired - in international magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times. The case ended up in court. The parties settled for a handsome six-figure sum. Amounts escalate quickly, and can reach tens of thousands of euros.Avoiding wasteReworking is also a very good way of finding waste. Because they can't find the media they need, different departments end up buying back the same type of content. Here too, the amounts involved can quickly reach significant sums. The Mousquetaires group has set up a DAM with Keepeek to enable all its banners to benefit from a common pool of product photos. One million euros a year has been saved on the purchase of visuals alone.

But how much does a DAM project cost?

As with any IT project, it's common to divide the cost of a DAM project into two parts: implementation and operation.Implementation (Build phase)This involves building your new platform with a view to opening it up to all your users. It lasts between 3 and 8 months on average. This phase must take into account all the costs associated with implementation, including:- Project management- Documentary analysis to define languages (structure, plan, keyword repository, etc.)- Reuse of existing content (importing historical content into the new platform)- Change management (training, communication plan)- Specific developmentsIn some cases, you may need to purchase a license and the hardware to host your software. There are also internal costs to take into account, as your teams will be actively involved in the development of this system. The cost of implementation obviously varies greatly from project to project. A few thousand euros for the simplest projects, up to several hundred thousand for large groups.Operation (Run phase)It's not enough to invest in a new car, you have to maintain it and put petrol in it. The DAM is no exception to this rule. So you need to factor in the project's recurring costs:- Hosting and software maintenance- Time spent feeding the database and indexing media- Time spent animating the user community (registrations, requests...)These costs can be internal if you take charge of them, but they can also be easily outsourced to professionals like Keepeek. Recurring costs also vary widely, from a few thousand euros to several hundred thousand euros per year.

Given the costs involved, how can we improve profitability?

Setting up a DAM project therefore requires a major investment, as well as day-to-day budgeting. If the arguments of saving time, securing copyrights and eliminating waste aren't enough to convince you, you need to look for other levers. Let's turn to the multiple uses offered by this new platform. We naturally think of searching and downloading media content, the initial function of the DAM.A brand portal, for a consistent, reinforced brand identityYou've invested in a graphic charter and created a genuine brand identity. Your DAM can easily be transformed into a brand portal to disseminate all these best practices. Your contacts are informed. They can use these reference elements to create or exploit content that respects your brand identity.A press room to inform the press of your newsDownstreamcommunication to the press is strategic for your organization. For reasons of image or legal communication obligations, you need to keep the media informed of your main news.Journalists also need to retrieve content, logos or illustrations.Your DAM platform can also serve this new purpose by becoming a Press Room.Workflows to organize your creative processOna daily basis, your teams produce creative content (brand content, marketing content, communications content). This creative process involves many internal and external players, and is quite complex to manage. From now on, your collaborative DAM platform will integrate workflow functionalities to enable you to work in teams on the production of this content. You save precious time in your exchanges and significantly improve your content production times.Simple document baseTheDAM can contain any type of content. Images and videos are of course in the majority, but some DAMs also contain many documents, notably PDFs. Even if a DAM does not have all the functionalities of an EDM (Electronic Document Management), it can prove very practical for managing fairly simple document collections.Connect your DAM to your everyday toolsADAM solution can blend seamlessly into the tools used daily by your users. With the plug-in principle, it's very easy to consult different resources from Word, Power Power Point or Photoshop. Some plug-ins even allow content to be modified and re-published directly in the DAM without leaving the editing tool.

Proving by example

If, after having demonstrated all the possible leverage effects of a DAM, your interlocutors remain undecided, it's time to take action by showing them how a DAM works in concrete terms.Register for free on the Keepeek platform and get a demo account. In just a few hours, you'll have configured your space and added several hundred items of content. With an ergonomic tool and your content in the database, you'll have an effective weapon with which to illustrate all the virtues of this platform to your managers and colleagues.Every day, our customers invent new uses for their DAM platform. To take stock of all these new uses, Keepeek is about to publish a white paper on these new practices. Sign up to receive an advance copy.* ROI: Return On Investment / DAM: Digital Asset Management

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