Launching a new DAM

Summary

The client team's file and data management practices were in a state of chaos. The subsequent problems limited their capacity, hindering their ability to meet the company's new tactical requirements.
We implemented a cloud-based digital asset management system (DAM) for the team. This centralized storage, standardized usage, and implemented a governance program. As a result, the team expended less effort and time managing assets, lead times shortened, and throughput increased.
Launching the new DAM directly led to significant improvements in efficiency and productivity, resulting in a 40% increase in team capacity.
By meeting the business’s new tactical requirements, the client team directly supported its product innovation and hyper-acquisition initiatives. Consequently, those strategic initiatives led to 50% growth in active customers and an increase in revenue from $1.27 billion to $3.75 billion.

Problem

The business had just reported a +40% increase in revenue and +36% in active customers. Hyper-acquisition and product innovation initiatives were identified as the driving factors in the company’s success. As a result, leadership reallocated even more resources toward the same strategies. This was expected to create new tactical requirements across the business.

For the client team, workload was projected to increase around 2x. Despite a projected 55% increase in workforce, there was an expected shortfall of 35-45% capacity.

Meanwhile, the same team had adopted inefficient operational practices that slowed production, lowered productivity, and limited capacity.

Conditions

The client experienced the following conditions:

Distributed governance: The client lacked any common operational governance, and without policies and guidelines, each person and workgroup informally implemented and managed bespoke practices without documentation.
Unintelligible taxonomies: Each person or workgroup perceived, defined, named, and categorized business initiatives, projects, work, teams, and products in their own unique ways, then codified their distinct taxonomies into their operational infrastructures.
Decentralized file storage: Each workgroup used their own storage tools to traffic their assets; some used GDrive, while others used Box, Dropbox, WeTransfer, email, or some form of localized storage.
Inconsistent file management: Each individual developed their own file/asset management practices around the workgroup storage solution. For each person, working and final files were made, shared, revised, and archived in different ways.
Inconsistent roles, responsibilities, and relationships: Each individual formed stakeholder relationships around their distinct trafficking practices and storage solutions; as a result, cross-functional relationships and roles/responsibilities were bespoke to each workflow type.
Inconsistent data structures: Folder trees, folder/file names, and metadata were determined by individuals and workgroup taxonomies, which resulted in a complex matrix of containers and objects.

Consequences

The conditions created numerous operational problems:

Expended excessive effort: SME’s energy were wasted as they navigated or managed the data storage landscape: Files were scattered across various landscapes, left in obscure corners with unknown gatekeepers, and buried in indecipherable folder structures.
Wasted time: Extra time was spent searching for assets, finding gatekeepers, validating versions, setting up various accounts, building new folder structures, shipping, travel, and rework.
Slower work: Time was added to every step that required file handling: briefing, referencing, searching, building, reviews and revisions, sharing files, delivering finals, using assets, and archiving data.
Lower throughput: Projects took longer to complete as task-level inefficiencies compounded; the team’s function produced less and they were less influential as the project-level lead times compounded over longer durations.
More errors and lower quality: Quality decreased as SMEs spent less time/effort on QA and innovation, and excessive amounts of time/effort on asset management work; in turn, this led to increase in rework and even less capacity.
Poor collaboration: Trust and a spirit of sharing suffered as the team tightly controlled access to each asset, denying cross-functional partners direct access to files that were theirs to begin with.
Higher costs and lower value: Production costs were higher due to added time, underutilization of assets, multiple storage tools, and slower production times; conversely, this resulted in lower ROI for the function in general, and assets in particular.

Solution

The project's goal was to increase capacity by resolving the client’s operational problems. The objective was to make operational changes that yielded lost or wasted energy and time that would be redistributed back into the process. Thus improving efficiency, productivity, utilization, quality, speed, and collaboration. Collectively, this would lower production costs, increase team value, and improve ROI.

For a successful project, we followed a proven process for developing solutions:

Discovery: Defining clear project goals and aligning them with overarching business objectives. Then collecting information on the current conditions, analyzing the situation, identifying inefficiencies, and establishing the solution requirements.
Solution architecture: Researching and evaluating potential solutions, and identifying the option that best satisfies the requirements. Learning the platform, designing and testing system configurations, modeling the proven choice, and configuring the live system portal to align with the model.
Implementation: Building a deployment plan, communicating with stakeholders and user groups, developing governance tools and plans, and establishing support and troubleshooting channels. Then carefully launching to targeted groups, supporting, and incrementally expanding outward until the solution is fully deployed. Monitoring usage and transferring governance and admin duties to product owner.

Improvements

As a result of the outlined process, the following improvements were implemented:

Centralized asset storage: We deployed a DAM system that was the single source of truth for all final and approved images, videos, digital/print designs, audio, and brand resources. WeTransfer and Dropbox were removed from the tech stack, and we redefined the functions of Box and local storage to align with the new system.
Consolidated governance: We consolidated ownership of the remaining storage solutions and restricted access to core users. We then developed, documented, and distributed asset management policies and guidelines. Compliance was achieved through clear and consistently enforced governance and admin plans.
Standardized taxonomy: We carefully developed and documented a single taxonomic system under which any asset could be stored and meaningfully tagged, named, and organized. Through ownership and governance consolidation, we were able to scrub former taxonomies from the systems.
Managed workflows: As part of the governance work, we standardized asset management workflows and reengineered each point in the process where files were handled. This was codified into project plans, which ensured visibility into compliance.
Standardized roles: By reengineering asset management work, the roles and responsibilities for critical handoffs — such as sharing, reviewing, and delivery — were clearly defined and standardized.
Coherent data structures: We built a comprehensive metadata scheme, which established common naming and tagging conventions, and defined folder structures, all in agreement with the newly implemented taxonomy.
Deliverables: A fully functional DAM system, documentation, ingestion plans, master taxonomy, user group and permissions structure, metadata schema, file and folder naming conventions, new project plan templates, usage reports, training guides, governance plan, and usage policies.

Outcomes

The new operational conditions led to successful outcomes:

Reduced effort: It was significantly easier to make, review, name, find, save, upload, download, and archive assets. As a result, the average asset utilization significantly improved.
Time savings: It took less time to find assets and ensure they’re the right version, and we nearly eliminated the need to hunt down gatekeepers, setup accounts, or build bespoke folder structures.
Faster work: Every step in the production process took less time: briefing, referencing, searching, building, reviews and revisions, sharing files, delivering finals, using assets, and archiving data.
Shorter leads and higher throughput: Time savings compounded at the functional level, resulting in faster production, better agility, and more throughput.
Improved quality: As SMEs spent less time/effort on asset management, they were able to spend more time on QA and innovation, leading to fewer errors and less rework.
Improved collaboration: As roles and responsibilities were better defined, and cross-functional partners gained direct access to their files, collaboration and morale improved.
Lower costs and higher value: As utilization improved, lead times shortened, redundant tools were removed, and throughput increased, production costs decreased; conversely, this resulted in higher ROI for the function in general, and assets in particular.

Results

As expected, the business expanded their product portfolio and reallocated more resources to hyper-acquisition marketing. The client saw their workload increase by 94% over the measurement period. They received a 55% rise in headcount over that period, resulting in net capacity deficit of 39%.

By launching a fully operational DAM system, we significantly improved their operational conditions, and directly resolved their corresponding problems. By successfully meeting the objectives of the project, we achieved our goals:

30% Rise in Capacity: The team's ability to handle work increased remarkably, surpassing initial capacity enhancement targets.
35% Increase in Efficiency: The optimized asset management processes reduced the time needed for asset production, contributing to overall efficiency gains.
40% Improvement in Productivity: The team’s output noticeably increased due to these efficiency improvements, allowing them to manage more projects effectively.

By successfully meeting the new tactical requirements set by the business changes, the client was able to directly and meaningfully support the business’s new strategic initiatives. Through the successful expansion of the product portfolio and increased focus on hyper-acquisition initiatives, the business saw an incredible 50% rise in active customers, resulting in $3.75 billion in revenue, a 2x increase compared to the baseline year.