Voyage of the DAMed

DAM Explained

Chanakya, known as the Indian Machiavelli, once said, "Never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you." This is particularly true in corporate communications. Security is of the utmost importance when a company is trying to communicate technical or financial information, and the free-for-all that the internet so often represents can make it difficult to put video online without someone else finding it and viewing it. That's not a problem most of the time, but it can be disastrous if the wrong company secrets are leaked.

"For a pharmaceutical company or a financial  services company to roll out confidential information without a framework for protecting that content or authenticating who's viewing it-it's just not going to happen," says Mike Newman, co-founder, president, and CEO of Accordent Technologies.

For companies whose information is behind a paywall, security can be just as important. In 1985, Rick Gilbert founded PowerSpeaking, Inc., a speech communication training company. Originally, the company's seminars were hosted live over 2 days, and they relied heavily on video. In order to put instructional videos online, Gilbert had to be sure that his videos would remain in his control. PowerSpeaking relies on Fordela for its DAM needs and now operates with heavy emphasis on online video.

"[Fordela was] able to put our stuff online, and it allowed our clients to buy our product online," Gilbert says. "[Clients] could look at it on their own time, they could look at just a part of it, [and] they could buy, perhaps, just one section
they needed, which would be a cost-savings."

Ease of use is very important when a company is choosing a DAM provider. Jensen cites simplicity as a reason his company uses Ignite Delivery Manager. 

"Obviously, the system has to work. It works as close to flawlessly as technology can," Jensen says. "We are not technology people, per se, and so we need good customer service, and Ignite's customer service is spectacular."

According to Ignite's Janicki, ease of use and customizability are paramount considerations for his company. 

"It's absolutely designed for a non-IT person to be involved in this," Janicki says. "You can do the simple wizard, [point and] click or you can ask for more detail and get the expanded menu with the hundreds of options-you can use it in expert mode or in simple user mode."

With a specific enterprise video management system, users can chart metadata, track viewership, and manage their content easily. But one of the biggest upsides to DAM systems is that content creators can see if anyone is actually paying attention.

"One of the biggest frustrations of content creators is that they'd create the content, lob it over a fence, ask a survey question, then conjecture on whether the content was achieving its intended purpose," Newman says.

Most DAM systems keep detailed viewership records. While the view counter on YouTube only shows how many times the video was loaded, a corporate tool shows much more. Fordela, for instance, not only counts views but also shows who watched the video, for how long, and even if it was viewed in full-screen mode.

“We initially assumed that a bunch of our customers would want more traditional learning management tools because in a traditional LMS [learning management system], there is limited capability for video—tracking scores and quizzes, usually deploying Flash animation,” Deadrich says. “But when it gets sort of in-depth … what kind of engagement does a user have with a video? A traditional LMS doesn’t have that kind of support.”

Not only is using DAM advantageous to managers who want to check up on their employees, but those employees are aware, in no uncertain terms, of what they need to watch and where they can find it.

“The benefits are sort of bidirectional. As you talk about tracking and reporting, people assume that the only benefit is enjoyed by the administrator,” Newman says. “But I, as a DRM lawyer or employee, can see exactly what I’ve watched, what I need to watch by the end of the quarter.”

Being able to place the content in a secure area and track viewers are certainly major selling points. But for large, geographically diverse companies, the biggest roadblock to online video (and the reason they need DAM so badly) is bandwidth.