When talking to customers and prospects in marketing departments about possible configurations for their Digital Asset Management (DAM) I often find a situation where a global company, operating in several areas of the globe, has different solutions in place to serve the distinct needs of the markets they cover.

To take an example we often encounter here in Europe : a multinational company with headquarters in the US and EMEA operations in Brussels. Whether they operate in a B2C market or in highly specialized technical B2B environment makes little difference. Each time, having up-to-date and validated digital assets available in a variety of formats for advertisement and colateral production is a key element in their marketing operations. Since this is recognized as an essential contributor to an efficient go-to-market strategy, you would think the company would have organized their operational marketing function to enable this, right?

Well … yes, sometimes. But very often we see ‘one size fits all’ DAM systems being implemented and forced down the marketing pipeline with little or no difference being made to adapt to the specifics of a region or market. And so, after a few attempts to adapt the global solution, the regional marketing function starts to organize their digital assets in a way that is better suited to the needs of their own customers and users. Eventually, by responding to their user’s needs, they’ll find themselves coping with a recurring workload to convert and distribute their digital assets. So in turn, they might turn to a solution or SaaS provider in the DAM marketplace to help them.

Continues @ http://blog.artoos.be

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