DIGITAL ARCHIVIST

January 9, 2013

This article was collaboratively written by both Ralph Windsor and Naresh Sarwan of DAM News

“The ‘Digital Asset Management problem’ is getting bigger and will become harder to solve via a single software application – whether you access it via the Cloud or installed internally on your organisation’s own servers. In our view, what is required is a more modular and process oriented approach, i.e. a Digital Asset Management Value Chain where end users can mix and match all the elements that contribute value to their Digital Asset Management strategy.”

In 2011 and 2012, we assessed the prospects for the DAM sector with reference to the technology and business aspects of the industry. This year, we have elected to handle things slightly differently.

DAM gives the impression of a fast-moving sector, but many of the trends take place over a longer period that lasts many years and the pace of change in the industry is not quite as rapid as many of the participants would like to think. A number of the problems have been present for not just years but decades now – still without plausible solutions in many cases.

Although it might make good copy to write some pithy one-liners about what will happen over the forthcoming year, in reality it is rarely that straightforward and many of the predictions for 2013 look like re-statements of trends that are already taking place. The question with most is whether they will be more or less significant at the end of the year than the start, often they are not really very new developments.

With all that in mind, this year we have decided to drop the 2013 predictions and examine how the wider trends might develop over a longer period. Some of this might manifest itself in 2013 (and has even started already in some cases) but you might be waiting a number of years for them to become more obvious – and the other distinct possibility is that we just got it plain wrong!

The Digital Asset Management Value Chain Defined

If there is one big idea in this article, it’s what we are calling: “The Digital Asset Management Value Chain”. This sounds like a phrase we borrowed from a management consulting textbook and the sort of meaningless business jargon which we regularly take people to task with on these pages. However, after reading through our explanation, we hope you might agree that is an accurate description that does describe what DAM users are increasingly looking for and how the industry may develop as a result.

So what is the Digital Asset Management Value Chain? To understand this concept, you need to agree with two important principles:

1. Digital assets means more than just digital files. While files are the core essence of an asset, it is the other DAM related activities, for example, cataloguing them with metadata, which transform a binary object (file) and add value so it can become an asset.
2. The second principle is that DAM doesn’t describe a single unit of activity but groups together a variety of related tasks. Some of these need to be performed in close proximity to each other (both in time and physical space) but others may be carried out entirely independently by different individuals.

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