So you’ve decided to purchase a DAM (digital asset management software). Congratulations!
Now for the big question: what’s the fastest – and best – way to deploy it? Getting value for your team as quickly as possible is essential.
There’s a lot to consider, and the extent of what is involved may depend on the current state of your digital asset management strategy. Are your current marketing images, videos and other content stored in multiple locations? Will you have multiple stakeholders and users in different locations? Are your assets tagged or do they contain existing metadata? Are integrations to other MarTech solutions needed?
The good news is there is a method to the madness. Even if your digital assets are currently a mess organizationally, IntelligenceBank has a proven implementation methodology to optimize the success of your DAM software rollout.
For clients who have their data ready to go, here’s a typical DAM software implementation and free DAM implementation project plan template with some pro tips on how to ensure it’s a success.
PHASE 1: Discovery & Planning (Week 1)
Objectives
- Define timeline goals, success metrics, and project phases
- Align teams: Marketing Ops, Brand, IT, Creative, Legal, and external vendors
Key Activities
- Stakeholder workshops (define key use cases & asset lifecycle)
- Audit of current systems and asset repositories
- Identify all 3rd-party tools requiring integration (e.g., CMS, Canva, Adobe CC)
- Confirm governance policies (naming conventions, metadata standards, folder taxonomy, brand restrictions and brand guidelines to be featured in a micro portal or full brand guidelines pages)
Deliverables
- Project timelines
- Governance plan
- Change management strategy
PHASE 2: Platform Setup & Technical Configuration (Week 2-3)
1. Platform Admin Configuration
- Set up custom permissions and users
- Create admin, contributor, reviewer, and external user groups
- Configure custom URL (e.g., assets.yourcompany.com) and single-sign-on (SSO)
- Set up branding, icons and other system settings.
2. Metadata & Taxonomy Setup
- Create metadata schema (file type, tags, usage rights, campaigns, etc.)
- Build folder structures taxonomy & collections
- Apply controlled vocabularies and filters and auto-tagging tools for auto tagging images and video keyword tags and also enable facial recognition.
3. Branding & Welcome Page
- Customize login and platform UI with brand fonts, colors, tone
- Design a Welcome Page based on one of the templates provided or create your own with:
- DAM Portal overview
- User guides and online tutorials can be made custom to your brand.
- Key links
- DAM Portal overview
4. Brand Guideline Pages Setup
- Create curated brand sections. If a micro portal that comes with the DAM this is a single page with the basics.
- If you upgrade to BrandHub you can showcase beautifully designed brand pages to keep your team on brand. For example:
- Logos
- Guidelines
- Templates
- Brand imagery
- Marketing kits by region or business unit
- Brand Voice
- Employer Branding
- Digital guides
- Accessibility guides
5. Photographer Intake Form
- Build a self-service upload form:
- Metadata capture (shoot location, usage rights, subject)
- Upload rules (resolution, file type)
- Tied to approval workflow
- Metadata capture (shoot location, usage rights, subject)
PHASE 3: Content Migration & Integration (Week 3-4)
1. Data Migration
- Prioritize “high value” assets first (e.g., brand, campaign, legal-required and approved content that is in market, including web assets)
- Perform test migration and metadata validation
- Cleanse and tag assets
- Migrate production assets in phases
2. Integrations
- CMS (e.g., Sitecore, Drupal, AEM, WordPress): Embed and publish assets directly.
- Adobe Creative Cloud: Enable asset library connector for InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and as options Adobe Express, Premier Pro and Acer Effects.
- Canva: Connect asset libraries to brand templates.
- Optional: CRM, PIM, MRM integrations as well as project management integrations with Monday.com, Asana and Jira.
PHASE 4: Workflow Automation (Week 5-6)
1. Approval Workflows
- Define routing logic for:
- Brand reviews
- Legal approvals
- Localization checks
- Brand reviews
- Set up notification rules and SLA tracking
2. AI Content Risk Reviews (if enabled)
Work with your implementation manager to start to set up AI brand and legal risk reviews to automatically detect brand, legal and regulatory risks while you are proofing creative, such as:
- Ad disclaimers
- Trigger words
- Brand tone of voice
- Greenwashing
- SPAM Rules
- Product and general spelling
- Promotions
- Industry specific compliance regulations.
This capability can be rolled out once each rule set is tested on an ongoing basis.
Some of these rules can be used to check websites and google AdWords as well.
3. Creative Templates (if enabled)
- Build dynamic templates with editable text/images for social, banners, brochures
- Set up dynamic data mapping so your team can build localized ads on the fly by pulling in pre approved data points.
PHASE 5: Enablement & Training (Week 7-8)
1. Online Tutorials & Onboarding
- Create role-based learning journeys:
- Creatives: Upload, search, and tag
- Marketers: Download, reuse, distribute
- Admins: Approvals, reporting, governance
- Creatives: Upload, search, and tag
- Include:
- Walkthrough videos
- Live webinars / workshops
- Quick-start guides / PDFs
2. Champions Program
- Identify and train power users or DAM champions
- Give them early access to test and provide feedback
PHASE 6: Initial Launch & Hypercare (Week 9-10)
1. Controlled Launch
- Roll out to select users (marketing, brand, agency)
- Monitor usage, gather feedback
- Fix issues before broader release
2. Full Launch
- Company-wide go-live with communications
- Launch toolkit:
- Email campaigns
- Internal newsletters
- Slack/Teams announcements
- Email campaigns
PHASE 7: Post-Launch Support & Optimization (Months 1–6)
1. Hypercare Period
- Weekly or bi-monthly check-ins with key stakeholders
- Dedicated support and rapid issue resolution with Chatbot capability available.
- Monitor:
- Upload success rates
- Search failures
- Workflow blockages
- Upload success rates
2. Usage Analytics & Health Monitoring
- Report on:
- Active users
- Top downloaded/viewed assets
- Workflow bottlenecks
- Permissions errors
- Active users
PHASE 8: User Survey & Strategic Deep Dive (End of Month 6)
1. User Satisfaction Survey
- Questions on ease of use, accessibility, trust in metadata
- Identify adoption blockers and feature requests
2. Data-Driven Usage Review
- Evaluate asset performance and gaps in content
- Audit of underused assets and user engagement trends
- Use insights to improve taxonomy, training, or workflows
Best Practices to Ensure Success
- Don’t boil the ocean: Avoid migrating everything at once and just migrate what you are currently using and what’s relevant to users to start. You can eventually migrate the archive.
- Invest in keyword tagging and folder taxonomy early: Poor metadata and structure = poor search and adoption. IntelligenceBank is here to help you make the hard decisions.
- Communicate frequently: Make the DAM central to brand and campaign work. ‘If it’s not in the DAM it doesn’t exist’.
- Involve end users early: Feedback during testing improves adoption.
- Treat it like a product, not a tool: Continually iterate, maintain, and improve.
