What are the levels of DAM experience?

What are the levels of experience in Digital Asset Management? How do you even rank experience? There are several levels of DAM experience from basic to increasing in complexity…

Posted by Henrik de Gyor on December 9, 2009

Before I mention DAM jobs descriptions themselves, many of these positions require experience, but what are the levels of experience in Digital Asset Management? How do you qualify the experience or even rank experience with DAM?

There are several levels of DAM experience from basic (1) to increasing in complexity (7). These levels include :

1. Simple DAM user (this is often the majority of DAM users)
   • Searching
   • Collaborating
   • Downloading
2. Power user (aka Super user)
   • Applying metadata to assets
   • Uploading (Import)
   • Downloading (Export)
3. Practitioner in DAM Operations
   • Establishing and evolving workflow
   • Training
   • Create documentation to be openly shared
   • Support
4. DAM Administrator
   • Possibly network maintenance
   • Possibly maintaining servers
   • Maintaining database(s)
   • Working with API
   • Running reports from DAM
5. Configuration
   • Understanding the relationship of DAM system options, implications of the decisions made and configuring those system options to best suit business/workflow needs
   • Testing configurations to make sure they work the way they are intended to
   • Setting up roles
   • Setting permissions per role
   • Setting users within those roles
6. Implementation
   • Roll out of the DAM solution
   • Train users
   • Support users
   • Document the best practices
   • Increase user adoption
7. Customization
   • Identify and understand what is missing from the system which your organization may need
   • Explaining what is missing from the system with written documentation
   • Explaining the value of adding the customization since it will cost extra (time and/or money)
   • Possibly draft a vision what the customization may look like and how it could work
   • Possibly even coding the solution
   • Thorough testing of solution

Ultimately, the best would be to have experience in all of these hands-on experience at one point or another. If this is not an option, try to experience the most number of levels available. This way, you have experienced what it is like to do this work, know what is involved and ultimately train others in future on how to do this work more efficiently and effectively. As a Digital Asset Manager, I have experienced all listed above at point or another over the years. This helps me when I need to write documentation for a specific role (audience) or when I give training so I know what is involved in what that user needs to do with DAM. I try to not over complicate any explanation to any particular person unless they really need more detail, so I try to keep information at a high enough level to minimize confusion.

Now, if you want to discern between individuals who have similar experience in many of these roles, then start by asking:

• How many different DAM solutions have they worked on?
• How many different organizations have they worked with using DAM solutions?
• How long did they use the DAM and how often?
• How many DAM solutions were successfully implemented and are still used today?
• How many users did the DAM solution serve?
• How many assets were managed?
• How do they measure ROI using DAM?

You could use these questions in a DAM job interview too. What levels of experience do you have with DAM?

There is plenty to learn.