For many years, marketing services companies, post production houses, advertising agencies, print and pre-press organizations, and other digital media service providers have embraced digital asset management (DAM).  DAM was used to improve their own internal operations and production environments by better managing projects and streamlining workflow.  A new trend is emerging, however, as some of these creative organizations are recognizing the competitive benefits gained by extending DAM solutions beyond internal operations outward to their clients.  These clients are facing a growing volume of digital media—graphics, images, video, flash—which is being created and consumed faster than ever before. There is also increased complexity around the distribution of advertising, promotional materials, and other digital media (print, Internet, e-mail, mobile, HDTV) as clients look to repurpose high-value media across delivery channels. Service providers are well-positioned to help clients overcome these challenges with new digital media services built on a DAM foundation.  The opportunity to offer DAM as a service gives production companies, agencies, and others a way to diversify their services and benefit from new revenue streams, stronger client relationships, and a competitive differentiator.

Software as a Service (SaaS) Opportunity for DAM

Online delivery of software, or “SaaS”, has become a widely adopted practice for many business applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), sales, and even human resource administration.  The benefits to the customer are many.  Rather than purchasing a software license for an application and installing the software on-premise, a business uses an application hosted by a company that has developed the software with expertise in its implementation. This is a faster on-ramp for the customer and alleviates many of the headaches of an in-house solution such as capital expenditures, training, general maintenance, and the need for IT resource support.  

Digital media service providers, with their knowledge and expertise in graphics and media (as well as experience with DAM in their own businesses) are in a unique and advantageous position to offer their customers DAM on a SaaS basis.  Agencies, marketing services firms, post houses and the like are already providing services and solutions for the creation and delivery of digital media and graphics. To extend these services to now manage and distribute the digital media through online DAM services brings a whole new level of value for their clients. 

According to a recent InfoTrends study (March 2007), “….business communications today are more targeted and timelier and delivered through multiple touch points.  This translates into several content management requirements.”  The report adds that brand consistency across all corporate communications is critical and that content technologies (like DAM) should “help insure brand consistency by allowing marketing teams to manage and control assets centrally, yet offering others throughout the company the ability to access those assets on an as-needed basis.“

InfoTrends describes DAM as “…providing the underlying support for the entire communications content workflow by enabling easier content-reuse across channels or documents, faster time to market of communications, template-driven tools for complex sales channels, synchronization of brand elements across campaigns and greater empowerment of content experts (as opposed to IT experts).” 

There’s no arguing that there is an emerging need for solutions to address the growing volume of digital media and its distribution complexity – from web to print and everything in between. That said, what are the major considerations if a digital media service provider is looking to exploit the DAM SaaS opportunity?

Considerations for DAM SaaS

When considering a DAM SaaS model, service providers need to determine whether they will make, buy, or partner with a vendor for this offering.  In any case, working with a vendor well-versed in delivering DAM as a service is an important factor.  There are both technology and business considerations that an experienced partner can offer, such as understanding the details of managing a hosting center, as well as software and infrastructure issues. As the driving force, the hosted software itself needs to be a scalable, high up-time application and operating environment. 

There are important technical considerations you will want to explore.  When hosting software, it is far more economical to host multiple customers on one system. This “multi-tenant” model benefits both the service provider and the customer.  As the ‘vendor’ the service provider is able to easily manage one system (OS and database updates, software upgrades, etc) with a single resource while serving many customers at the same time.  The benefit to the service provider is minimum impact on the organization and higher margins; benefit to the customer is more favorable pricing and faster deployment.  The multi-tenant model only works, however, when the DAM software is designed from the ground up to support such a model. Otherwise, multiple instances of the software are required—increasing operational cost, overhead, and complexity.  

Security is absolutely critical in setting up a DAM service. Each client “domain” needs to be cleanly separated from others.  And within a client organization, the security model needs to support a wide range of users, roles, privileges, and asset permission.  For large companies, literally thousands of users within a single client organization could need access to the digital repository and workflow processes – from internal MarCom contributors to designers, print houses, and even external teams like sales or retailers.  It’s essential that the DAM system be equipped with an access control system that can easily manage any size group of users, with very granular, yet manageable, controls for roles, privileges, and permissions on assets.  This ensures that access and functions match the participant’s role, and the whole security model can be administered easily by a single person.

User Interfaces must be easy to use. Because there is a diverse range of non-technical people who contribute to the digital media supply chain, a successful DAM service must be useable with little or no training with clear and complete online help. 

Open standards is a critical consideration for media service providers delivering specialized solutions. The DAM system must support customized workflows or readily integrate with other systems or tools as part of the solution.  A DAM designed from the ground up with a services oriented architecture (SOA) and open standards is critical for supporting rapid development of applications that support the business user’s workflow. 

Creative organizations launching DAM services to their customers need a system that is easy to administer and easy to support. For example, how many staff members will be required to deliver the SaaS and support the clients using it?  When initiating the DAM-as-a-service opportunity, consider DAM software from a vendor that has experience delivering software as a service and provides software that is scalable, reliable and easy to support.  Better yet, choose a vendor that can ease your way into the market by hosting your service for you.  In this model, you are only considering one or two staff members to manage and administer the system until your market adoption grows. 

ClearStory Systems is one such company.  Its DAM solution is already designed from the ground up to support a software-as-a-service business model.   ClearStory sees a larger global trend among companies to outsource their digital media needs with Web-based applications. ClearStory expects more and more companies in many markets to seek hosted solutions for their DAM needs, which presents outstanding opportunities for media service companies. Advertising, post-production, print and marketing services clients of ClearStory are asking the company about client-facing DAM solutions to help them create a competitive difference in a highly competitive market.  As a result, these graphics and digital media service providers are shifting from ClearStory “customer” to ClearStory “reseller.”

Grace & Wild Adds Value and New Revenue Stream

Grace & Wild, a leading provider of video production and post production services, implemented a digital asset management solution as a means of competitive differentiation for their company—to diversify their services, improve client service, and innovate their delivery model.  Through Grace & Wild’s fully web-based DAM solution, branded “FinishLine,” the company is able to shorten cycle times and meet client demand for faster time-to-market with multi-channel delivery of commercials and other projects. At the same time, Grace & Wild adds value and secures client relationships through web-based services such as an online client project library.  These services drive unexpected opportunities, typically leading to additional revenues. 

Creative organizations like Grace & Wild see a market opportunity for DAM SaaS, but have concerns about committing IT resources to support an on-premise system until they can prove the value of such an offering. Opting for the best of both worlds, G&W started with ClearStory’s ActiveMedia as a hosted service with the understanding that it can be installed on-premise at any point in time.

The solution can be customized for each Grace & Wild client to reflect their brand look and feel with robust security.  The DAM solution has brought even greater value to G&W’s agency clients by giving them the ability to extend the solution to their clients or outside to other third parties. When a client logs into FinishLine, they can see a historical library of projects, with all components of that project in one place.  The client can then securely distribute materials or portions of a project via the system to any 3rd party or internal team that needs the media in alternative formats.

“FinishLine provides a vehicle for direct interaction among project team members, whether they are our team members, our customer, or third party partners,” says Keith Neff, Grace & Wild’s chief technology officer.  “Regardless of the media type, we easily find, access, edit, share, reuse, distribute, and archive assets with the ability to support multi-channel distribution of all our projects,” continues Neff. 

 

Benefits to Grace & Wild include the ability to finish projects faster with shorter turnaround times than the competition.  Benefits to both G&W teams and their clients are the opportunities for closer collaboration, which result in an improved creative environment and streamlined production workflow.  With such services as online job libraries, review and approval solutions, media transformation and delivery, FinishLine has often been the deciding factor when Grace & Wild is competing for new business.  In addition, DAM SaaS has enough value that clients are willing to pay for the service, which offers a new revenue stream for Grace & Wild.  

ClearStory’s software as a service business model aims to solve a problem that many creative organizations are grappling with today.  ClearStory sees a larger global trend among companies to outsource their digital media needs with Web-based applications. Compared to the traditional practice of buying hardware and software and implementing everything internally on an enterprise platform, Web-based applications promise to be more efficient, affordable solution for organizations with limited IT bandwidth and resources.  ClearStory expects more and more companies like Grace & Wild to exploit this market opportunity with hosted digital media solutions for their clients.

"As time goes on, more opportunities will present themselves for digital asset management as an online service," says Susan Worthy, ClearStory Systems VP of Marketing, referring to the paradigm in which media management is outsourced as an online service. “ActiveMedia allows digital media and graphic service providers to take baby steps or giant leaps as their business models shift to more innovative, technology-based services.  Whether they are a large media service provider or a regional printer we can help them achieve their strategic vision.”