The DAM leadership challenge: Transitioning from project to operations

Much is said and written about the various elements of successful digital asset management (DAM) — metadata and nomenclature, product selection, running a DAM project, etc — and appropriately so, as all are critical in their own right. But a question that is being asked more and more is: ‘what next?’. It was quite a journey to get the DAM project defined, understood, approved and funded. The next adventure was choosing the best asset management product(s), with all the right stakeholders on board as that decision was made, but that major milestone too has passed. Now the asset management platform is being installed and integrated — perhaps even now being rolled out to users — and it is time to face the next big question … how should DAM be led and run for the organisation? And run successfully. Is there an executive leader dedicated to DAM? Should there be a specific DAM team? Where in the organisational structure would they report? What are the longer-term goals for asset management? How is DAM kept tightly aligned with the business (where the business finds itself today as well as where it is headed in the future)? How is ‘success’ defined and (perhaps even more critical) how is that measured? And what about that bothersome thing called ‘governance’?