In 2 weeks starts the Fashion Week in Paris and as usual one of my favorite #brand and #photography event. Last week I was talking about how a DAM can support the full product creative lifecycle ? Now time to study how brands like L'Oréal, Channel, LVMH can create memorable #customer #experiences when deploying #marketing assets across all channels at the global, regional, and local levels.
Since the last 2 years we see more and more the word #DAM used with "enterprise" from different DAM experts and marketers but also from vendors just like to justify that a DAM system is something enterprise or because it has to connect with the enterprise. Wasn't it the case before ?
Of course in this new omnichannel marketing stacks the challenge of a modern DAM has definitely changed. Customers are not any more searching for a web portal with some thumbnails of pictures and some basic proprieties in order to be able to retrieve them for collaboration and sharing. They are searching first an outstanding customer experience, easy to use, responsive.. A DAM system is this unique single source of truth that now needs to support all the creation process from the ingest, the smart organisation with dynamic dashboard, the approval of the content between stockholders up to the syndication for various digital output, social and CMS. At the top KPI and even better B.I tolls are more than welcome to measure the performance of marketing campaigns. This is more or less the big picture now and something that we can call the DAM "enterprise". All this stack is super connected to different third part system, like PIM, CMS, Social…
A good example is the one provided by CELUM:
This infography is the clear representation of what has to be a modern DAM system. It is the backbone of any Content Supply Chain. Organizing, finding and sharing content as well as integrating it to other systems are the key success factors of the content lifecycle.
One other good example is the one of HubSpot one of the leader in marketing automation from #CRM to #CMS and content marketing. HubSpot is proving an integrated ecosystem for the customers tech stack that look like a collection of tools just because every client has now a collection of cloud-based apps to run nearly every facet of their business. HubSpot is like the hub to connect all this App in one single open platform. And I think this is the right path to take by all the vendors.
A real advanced workflow to map business processes is more than a nice to have today in order to follow and the approval of all stakeholders. You don't have so many vendors providing such capability ( Tenovos, Nuxeo, Mediabeacon, OpenText, Aprimo, DALIM…) where most of other vendors it looks like as a task management feature based on custom metadata ( Yes or No).
Then you need a project tool like visual Gantt charts to create task lists, dependencies and to allocate ressources to your project. When some vendors are trying to do it themselves I see this year a good solution like Wrike integrated in more and more systems like Workfront, Bynder, WoodWing Elvis etc….the same great experience with Screendragon. Vendors don't have to reinvent the wheel !!
DAM enterprise or just the evolution of the DAM integrated with the new omnichannel ecosystem ?
In the mean time since the last decade we had #ECM for Entreprise Content Management. According Wikipedia "ECM extends the concept of content management by adding a time line for each content item and possibly enforcing processes for the creation, approval and distribution of them. Enterprise content management, as a form of content management, combines the capture, search and networking of documents with digital archiving, document management and workflow." Something which is very similar as the DAM enterprise we just described before…I advise to read the Nuxeo post about ECM.
Yu can compare the Forester Wave ECM :
And the report form Real Story Group :
ECM is complex DAM ?
So what's next ? What best fits to large organizations ?
Customers need to organise, manage, personalize marketing content across all channels at web-scale driving their revenue and customer engagement within the best ROI. We need a solution that connects all the silos to unifie the enterprise view of digital content and agile teamwork management in one place with a great user experience powered by automation and AI/Machine Learning capabilities.
These DAM enterprise systems view is more and more at the center of this end-to-end content marketing capabilities. We see that DAM systems are also becoming more and more use-case specific: Brand Management, Packaging, Social Management,Creative operations, Governement and Museum in categories with their own specific tools creating is some how some new silos. I'm used yo see by customers 3,4 and up to 10 DAM systems inside the company…. Does it really make sense ?
Since the last 2 years we see a new approach by some enterprise vendors. Instead of trying to cook themselves they are trying first to deliver innovation and on-target customer experiences providing a modern web framework (React JS). Starting from that they are trying to bring some technologies regarding their expertise but the most important is that they will give the customers the choice of there tools through a marketplace. You can choose your DAM, your PIM, your project management tool etc that fits exactly your needs.
We are calling now GMSC for Global Marketing Supply Chain. One of the new leader is Tenovos. Their system True Cloud-Native platform delivers full elastic computing, end-to-end microservices for rapid iterations and web-scale technology that can automatically scale to any number of users, processes, content or queries. It’s a truly future-proof solution, built to deliver a level of marketing personalization and return on spend that can’t be achieved with traditional DAM and workflow applications.
Microservices is the new game to provide efficiency and flexibility. A microservices architecture consists of a collection of small, autonomous services. Each service is self-contained and should implement a single business capability. In some ways, microservices are the natural evolution of service oriented architectures (SOA), but there are differences between microservices and SOA. Here are some defining characteristics of a microservice. Follow the link for more information.
Fast integration is also the core of this new approach to enable a seamless user experience. Using SDK, Rest APIs, plug-ins you can now easily integrate your data and your external sources just by point and click setup.
Sitecore is also looking ahead this way and the last acquisition of Stylelabs is one more proof. Nuxeo is also pushing his ECM to content services. They enable content management as a cloud service to enable enterprise business & productivity applications. They have a strong AI integration to classify and predict based on the exact information that matters to customers. And just weeks ago Nuxeo unveiled a connector to Sitecore. I advise you to read the last post from Real Story and the Sitecore Paradox.
But this also the purpose of medium players like Bynder, Workfront or Wedia.
One other good examples since the last 3 years is Workfront with Workfront Fusion, customers can connect the Workfront platform to their business-critical applications.
We see that the marketing technology stacks has really changed since the last years and even if a DAM system is always the foundation of every projects to support the media every customer needs am awesome experience at the cutting-edge to enable word-class content management to adapt to the ever-changing needs.
Feel free to contact me to get more information about all these vendors, I have a strong background in these technologies by most of the vendors and can help you writing your RFP to improve your ROI. Please do not believe Powerpoint presentation, stamp the vendors with live demo based on scenarios with your own files.
Do not miss the next #DAM event with DAMCHI 2019 and the great organization of Henry Stewart.
DAM PIM CMS Expert
