DAM Stakeholders - Creatives

When you’re looking to implement a new system at your organization, it is important to consider the needs and wants of all departments that will be affected by it to make sure the solution effectively serves all involved teams. This article is one of 3 articles discussing the requirements of your DAM stakeholders when planning digital asset management implementation.

Previously we discussed requirements of your Marketing team and IT team. This article talks about the needs and wants of the third major group of DAM users – Creatives, which can include your photographers, designers, or external design and advertising agencies.

Why identifying DAM stakeholders is important?

First – what is a “stakeholder”? According to Cambridge Dictionary a “stakeholder is a person such, as an employee, who is involved with an organisation, and therefore has interest in its success”.

In our previous articles DAM Stakeholders – Marketing and DAM Stakeholders – IT, we discussed who are the typical DAM stakeholders, and while these usually come from the areas of marketing, brand, IT, and creative operations, it is important to realise that every organisation is unique and there might be other areas your DAM project stakeholders might sit.

And, while identifying your stakeholders might be difficult, it could make a big difference between a highly effective DAM system that helps everyone involved, and a headache that makes end-user’s lives more difficult.

Identifying DAM Stakeholders – Creatives and Agencies

Creatives department might be different at each organization and people that fit into this group could be photographers, videographers, designers, and other content creators. They might be part of the organization, or be employed as an outside agency/ group.

This group is responsible for creating marketing content to support the customer journey.

Who are these creative stakeholders of a DAM solution?

Creative Directors/ Managers – they oversee the overall creative strategy of an organisation and ensure DAM aligns with their goals.

Graphic Designers – they create visually appealing materials for different channels – print, media, digital.

Photographers and Videographers – they capture and edit visual content for marketing purposes.

Content creators – they develop engaging and compelling content, both written and visual to resonate with target audience.

Next to the marketing team, creatives are the primary users of a DAM system, and as such, the solution should be built around their needs.

What do Creatives and Agencies need to have in a DAM?

Easy metadata management
Fast and easy upload, search and retrieval
Integration with favourite creative tools
Seamless collaboration
Version control

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Easy metadata management

The ability to add and edit metadata is vital. Metadata aids in fast retrieval and organisation of assets. This includes details like copyright information, keywords, and descriptions, ensuring comprehensive asset information. Metadata is equally important to maintain consistency across the creative team ensuring everyone interprets and uses assets in standardised way, fostering collaboration and maintaining brand consistency.

Canto provides excellent metadata management capabilities – from customisable metadata fields, bulk metadata editing to embedded metadata support. In addition, metadata templates create standardised sets of metadata fields that can be applied to different projects, ensuring a uniform and organised approach to asset information.

The AI generated Smart Tags, Facial Recognition, as well as Character Recognition for text in images and videos is here to speed up the metadata input, saving valuable time for creatives.

All metadata is searchable in Canto.

Fast and easy upload, search, and retrieval

Creatives often have tight deadlines to finish projects. Efficient workflow is a must-have. In a collaborative environment, waiting for files to upload or search results to appear can be a creativity killer. Fast processes facilitate real-time collaboration, allowing creatives to work seamlessly together, and meet project deadlines without a hitch.

Fast upload, search, and retrieval allow creatives to focus on what they do best—being creative. It eliminates unnecessary delays, enabling them to stay in the flow and produce high-quality work.

Canto’s effortless drag & drop uploads ensure rapid uploads. Upload Links serve as a simple and easy way for external creatives to upload assets directly to the DAM, without requiring additional license.

AI-powered Visual Search makes finding assets a breeze using natural language input, and not relying on metadata.

With Canto’s Workspaces creatives can create personalised workspaces tailored to their projects. This ensures that relevant assets are organized and readily available, further enhancing the efficiency of search and retrieval.

Integration with favourite creative tools

There isn’t anything more desirable for a creative than to be able to work within their creative solution of choice, without the need to log in to multiple solutions. With DAM seamlessly integrated into their favourite tools, creatives can focus on what they do best—being creative. The technology works in the background, supporting artistic endeavours without causing unnecessary interruptions.

Creatives can access their entire Canto DAM library without leaving Adobe Creative Cloud applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier Pro, and InDesign. It's like having your DAM right at your fingertips.

Changes made in Adobe applications are reflected in real-time in Canto, and vice versa. This fosters seamless collaboration, allowing team members to work on the same project without worrying about version control.

Seamless collaboration

What creates impactful creative output? Collaboration. When team members seamlessly collaborate, ideas flow, merge, and evolve, resulting in innovative and amazing creative pieces.

Seamless collaboration eliminates bottlenecks in the creative process. Team members can work concurrently on different aspects of a project, accelerating the overall workflow and meeting tight deadlines with ease.

Quick and clear communication is vital. It ensures that feedback is instant, preventing misunderstandings and enabling creatives to make real-time adjustments to their work.

Canto’s commenting and annotation capability streamlines feedback processes. Creatives can leave comments and annotations on assets, facilitating communication within the platform. Tag whoever you’d like to be notified about a comment or annotation.

Workspaces create a private environment for creatives to work in before assets are ready for main library. Sharable branded Portals allow you to create shareable section of your library for external stakeholders. Clients, partners, or other collaborators can access curated sets of assets, streamlining the external collaboration process.

Version Control

Creatives often explore multiple variants of a project before settling on the final version. Version control ensures that every creative journey is documented, preserving the evolution of ideas and creative decisions.

Without version control, there's a risk of accidental overwrites or loss of previous work.

Most importantly - creative projects involve numerous assets, edits, and contributors. Version control eliminates confusion by providing clarity on which version is the latest, reducing the chances of using outdated or incorrect assets.

Canto’s automatic versioning creates versions every time an asset is updated or replaced. This ensures that creatives have a chronological history of changes, allowing them to track the evolution of their work effortlessly.

Side-by-side comparisons in Canto allow comparing two versions of the same asset in Detail View.

And when mistakes happen or creative direction changes, a previous version of an asset can be easily restored and reverted to.

In Canto, version control applies not only to individual assets but collections of assets as well.

What would Creatives love to have in a DAM?

Preview and zoom features
Duplicates management
Automated workflows

Preview and zoom features

How do you ensure a thorough assessment of the quality of an asset or viewing intricate design detail? By looking at it through a magnifying glass – or a preview with zoom feature in a DAM.

A quick preview helps creatives determine the relevance of an asset without opening it fully. This is especially handy when browsing through extensive libraries, saving time and ensuring that only relevant assets are explored further.

The preview features are not only for your office desktop, but Canto also lets you preview and inspect assets on mobile devices.

Duplicates management

As a creative, you want to be sure you’re working on the right assets, your workflow is uncluttered, and your search results are accurate. And not to be dismissed the fact that lots of duplicate assets would consume your valuable storage space.

How does Canto manage duplicates?

Canto allows you to scan the entire library for duplicates. Once duplicates are discovered, they are put in a separate album named Duplicates. You can then examine the duplicates and decide how to handle them.

An admin can set up duplication detection during upload, you will be notified if an asset is a duplicate of an existing asset in the library. You can then specify how you’d like Canto to handle the duplicate – add as a new version, add as a new file, or don’t import.

Automated workflows

Working with tight deadlines is a usual part of a creative team’s operations. The more creatives can rely on automating routine tasks, the better.

Canto offers a number of workflows creatives can utilise to streamline their content creation and distribution, including expediting content approval processes by setting up automated approval workflow, automate review cycles, and content publishing.

In summary

Creatives want to be creative, simplifying the way they work is what they would expect from a DAM solution. Ideally, a solution that makes the entire creative process easier, improves productivity and collaboration, and allows to repurpose assets. As one of the key stakeholders in a DAM selection process, next to marketing and IT, understanding their needs and wants above should help your organisation in choosing the right DAM solution.