What are the ways of digital resources management "money"?

The future of digital asset management (DAM) is very bright. However, in order to play the role of DAM, new sales techniques and keen observation of internal costs are also needed.

Today's digital resource management system has become a must-have tool for large and medium-sized prepress centers, printing companies, corporate customers, and larger advertising agencies. The DAM system provides a centralized management method for digital resources and workflows that simplifies the management of customer storage information, core product and brand information, and access to content and personalized publications.

The DAM system should also have the ability to manage data other than images. The high-level DAM system can not only manage photo files, facilitate storage, reading, and recovery, but also exchange information with the original system of the public site, and the price information and inventory of the products. Catalog control and financial data are automatically processed.

DAM System Improves Workflow The DAM system greatly improves the production process. They use computer template software to organize photos, texts, and multimedia so that the traditional paste process can be automated.
The DAM system can also collect information, provide financial statements and payment information, manage and control documents exchanged between employees, and perform system login, which helps to unify the company's internal image standards.
With the continuous complication of system requirements, it may take several years to spend several million dollars to develop a dedicated software system. Therefore, some people think that customizing general-purpose software according to customer requirements to promote DAM systems is better than tailoring their own programs for customers.

Training: The Best Way to Overcome Old Ideas When marketing DAM systems, the company’s sales staff should be trained, encouraged, and mentored.
The main marketing focus of a DAM company is to train and educate their sales team. The company has a lot of salespeople, and most people can easily switch from the traditional prepress business to DAM sales. There are also a small number of salespeople who are hard to change, so they have to work harder to train them.
Those who already have good sales performance and believe that as long as they continue to work hard, salespeople who do not need to switch the environment at all will often bring some resistance to the application of DAM. Their work is very comfortable and they also want to continue their original status. They worry that the introduction of new ingredients will undermine the balance. Unfortunately, if this view is allowed to exist, competitors will take the business away. In today's environment, satisfying the status quo is tantamount to death.

Creating training frameworks In order to efficiently train salespeople, it is necessary to develop a sales system and establish guidelines. A company has developed a set of forecasting tools for sales staff that can help employees organize new tasks and collect specific customer-related information, such as financial data, including taxes, profit-to-income ratios, and budgets; it can also list the number of departments, Information on the number of employees, company history, and business year. Ideally, the tool should also include information on the company's workflow, network and telecommunications capabilities, company goals, current issues, and direction of development.
Before starting sales, the information summarized in the forecasting tool should be submitted to the Approval Committee for review. Although the sales staff may be satisfied with this sales plan, it is the committee's responsibility to comment on this information and determine if the plan is feasible.
Compared to other prepress products, DAM sales require different methods and sales techniques. First, the sales cycle of larger product solutions must be at least one year. Second, the customer base is no longer the current customer base. Salespeople face “top-to-bottom” sales from CEOs, CFOs, or CIOs of companies, because this investment will cost millions of dollars, requiring company group approval, or at least executive committee approval before investing.
Third, companies that sell high-end DAM services or systems also need to obtain additional information about the company that provides the product solution. The top-to-bottom sales technology works well because the company’s top officials decide to invest and will allow employees to participate in the purchase, commissioning, and use of the system.
Although many prepress salespeople are well trained in prepress technology, prospective customers of the new service do not care about dot shape or related color saturation. They only hope that the technology involved in the system can reach perfection, hoping to bring better returns to shareholders, and increase net yield by saving costs or increasing sales. The supplier of DAM technical services must prove the value of the DAM system from the perspective of the customer, instead of using prepress terms. Successful suppliers must understand the real needs of customers. In addition, we also need to know in detail which market segment the customer wants to apply the system to, what the customer's buying cycle is, what the sales and marketing goals are, what challenges and competitive threats are the challenges, and what are the growth goals of the customer company? and many more.
In the initial stage of installing the DAM system, many companies sent a team of professionals to work on the site for 30 to 60 days. After this professional team will continue to be responsible for this product program for a year or more in order to more accurately plan the system, workflow, process control, standard operating procedures and management of other details and so on. Essentially every DAM/enterprise management system is customized to customer requirements.
At the beginning, it should be noted that the expected ROI value of the product solution, the impact of the DAM/enterprise management system on the company's sales cycle, the length of the product promotion cycle, and the impact of the new equipment on the overall economic goals of the product plan. These areas are not conventional prepress content.

Who are you selling?
When it is clear whether the sales target is the entire company or a department, although some companies successfully sell the products to the entire company at one time, the overall situation should be sold to the marketing department first, and then to the other departments of the company.
There are also companies that rent DAM systems on a monthly basis, with rents ranging from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. According to a sales company using this method, this method shortens the sales cycle compared to direct sales of the entire system. In addition, renting sales on a monthly basis is much easier than selling the system directly to the company.

The fickle advertising agencies have special needs in every market, especially for advertising companies. They are particularly interested in certain special areas, such as intellectual property rights, etc., which must be specified in written contracts in order to avoid contradictions in issues such as ownership of basic resources and use of resources. Another major difference between advertising companies and other market sectors is the maintenance of customer relationships. In some retail industries, the life span of advertising company and customer relationship is only two to three years, so a business model that satisfies this cycle must be constructed.

Understanding cost-guided profitability Among survey respondents, each successful DAM supplier is careful to point out that they are familiar with the company's internal cost-cost items, including general corporate management costs, increased costs, investment costs, inventory costs, and other Various special areas.
One DAM company has developed an operation management system, and it has been installed and used within the company for two years. The system can produce sophisticated and sophisticated cost reports. The company uses the system to control costs and target profit levels, and to achieve or exceed variable profits by adjusting business processes.

Can small businesses also operate?
A prepress manager said frankly: "No. They don't have technical resources. They can't afford to manage the expensive salaries of the process. They can't spend $500,000 on hardware and software, and they can't follow the company's Progress continues to invest in the system."
Another manager suggested a way for small and medium-sized companies to enter the DAM market. Initially, do not include substantive services. Instead, it should be used as a consultant to reduce the company's investment risk. For the customer, you may be the advocate, provide the expert opinion that they need to operate, and other external suppliers provide the installation of the DAM system. ”

It is necessary to gradually deepen other respondents to provide some useful suggestions for the first time suppliers of DAM services. First of all, do not easily decide to get involved in this area before making a decision. It is necessary to prove to the company and the company that the company's customers and development prospects need such a system, and that they can make money through the system, and then make a decision.
If you have no experience in a field, then you must have a victim. Choosing an understanding of customer cooperation in this area is a new experience for both of you. It is also an adventure. Only nominal investment, so even if it fails, it will not affect the company's prospects. Then follow them into the entire process. You may not have obtained much profit, and perhaps some losses, but this is the most economical way to train employees and conduct tests.
This basic service allows customers to use a dial-up connection or read system information over the Internet. By using passwords and user IDs, customers can remotely read the system and manage files.
Payments for this entry-level DAM system are usually paid monthly, including basic amounts of clicks and transactions. Once this basic amount has been exceeded, additional charges will be applied to each additional processing. It provides customers with the required data access capabilities and some management tools, but does not have to pay for the cost of purchasing more powerful systems.
Second level: This type of DAM system is typically used for larger organizations that want to create DAM systems but do not need tool management services. In this case, the prepress company negotiates with the customer to determine the function of the DAM system. From the initial workflow to the type of system, the hardware and software required, the company designs the entire work process, determines the equipment, and describes the training program in general. Once the required ingredients have been identified, the company helps customers acquire, monitor, install, and test equipment. In some cases, the prepress company will assign personnel management systems in the first year, or continue to manage the system.
Third level: The third mode is somewhat similar to the second mode, but contains the contents of tool management. The company installs a miniature prepress tool at the customer site and arranges distribution tools based on the established process and financial model. This system usually includes content management, scanning, proofing, output, and other services that special customers need. In this special case, the company has a brand-specific product that controls the content and automates the production of forms and workflows without standard inserts. But these same services can be implemented using non-privatized software. In this level of products, the two parties usually have to sign a two-to-three-year agreement based on the required profits and capital equipment costs, staff costs, and the single-page guarantee fees that are printed before printing. Pricing for DAM Systems Many companies surveyed for pricing issues have stated that digital asset management pricing must be localized. In some parts of the country, management is better based on the number of megabytes stored in the DAM system. In other places, the method of managing the number of system information reads is common. The final way of pricing also depends on local trade tariffs. A surveyed company believes that in order to guarantee competition, the actual situation of local pricing must be flexible and can adjust policies. Although this may lead to some internal problems, such as maintaining a stable profit margin in different systems, this method is very necessary for sales.
According to a survey conducted by the company Gistics and Frost & Sullivan Market Research, people processing media files spend an average of 2.9 hours per week managing these files. The file transfer process again takes 3.97 hours each week. We look for documents 2,500 times a year, and we find no documents on average for 35% of the time.