Old school, locally installed, database-like legacy DAM software, is dead.
I feel that digital asset management software should be developed with the needs of brand and marketing managers in mind. The philosophy behind them should be that they become the invisible binding force that connects DAM and other marketing software tools - i.e. perfectly integrated and designed around the end user.
Bynder has gone from a simple, handy tool that solved our own development agency’s problems, to one of the fastest growing tech companies in Europe. We currently help over 250 global brands (more than 20 of them are Fortune 500 companies) manage their marketing materials and branding more effectively, in less time, and with less headaches along the way.
Our DAM (Digital Asset Management) features have become beloved by our clients in spite of (or thanks to?) the fact that neither I nor our developers even knew what a DAM was when we first came up with the idea for Bynder in 2009.
For me personally it’s always been about the product, about the end user, and about making our entire proposition better and better. It’s never been a “features game”. This is why it’s difficult for us to place ourselves in the current vendor landscape where acronyms such as MRM and MAM are both too generic, and difficult to explain.
I still feel that digital asset management is too confining a description for our features. Why? DAM to me is a very technical category, understood fully only by expert users and people in the know. Most of our end users, on the other hand, rarely even know what “DAM” stands for.
The core function of a digital asset management solution is to be an archive or database for digital assets and I feel that, much like databases are becoming more of a commodity, so are DAM solutions. A good DAM is an invisible one, seamlessly integrated with other marketing tools. Ultimately, it should be a commodity. There’s simply not that much sex appeal in buying a database - there’s very little tangible ROI on databases - even Oracle focuses on solutions built on top of its databases. Our customers, however, are actively looking for solutions and return on investment.
So, that’s the direction in which I think digital asset management should be heading. Solutions shouldn’t simply be about DAM any more - they should be about the features and functionalities built on top of a (preferably invisible) DAM. We’ve been focusing more and more on solutions and tools for branding and marketing, leveraging assets and making everyday tasks that much easier by using digital asset management as a solid foundation.
Digital asset management as an end-user category or a solution, I think, is dead. But not to worry - there’s plenty of new, exciting and useful branding tools coming to life every day!
Read more about Chris' views on the topic in this CMSWire article by Jeff Lawrence.
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