Why Jan owes a promotion to the introduction of a DAM system

This is Jan, today. 35 years old, married and two children. He works as a marketing specialist in a wholesale company. There he is responsible for the production of the weekly advertising brochures. In the past, Jan's typical working day looked like this:

At half past eight, after a one-hour drive along the crowded highway, Jan's working day begins. The traffic jam cost him half an hour. He already knows what a hectic day ahead of him. The time could have been good. Now it has literally fallen by the wayside.  

Jan is in marketing and he is looking for product images throughout the company to fill the brochures and catalogues. He checks if all pictures are up-to-date, correspond to the products and the quality is right for printing. The problem that Jan has? Each department manages the images in their own way. There is no central tool.

Jan starts calling the individual departments as usual and typing e-mails to get the relevant pictures for the current advertising. In response he gets emails with individual images and references to collections that are on different drives in his company. He does not always have access to all these directories, so he often has to go back several times to get his material. Sometimes it even happens that individual departments burn their images onto a CD and Jan has to go to the departments to pick them up. Of course all this only after he has found the right contact person and reached him.

The effort is huge. It costs time, money and last but not least Jan's nerves... and those of his colleagues. Jan's tasks are always time-critical. Every week a new advertisement is produced and must always be ready for printing in time for production. It's not unusual that Jan is already sitting on the couch on Monday evening, burnt out. Looking back on his working day, he realizes that he has travelled several kilometres in the hunt for the files and is far from having them all together.

Jan thinks about how this process could be made more efficient and thus save time and money. During his research on the Internet, Jan comes across a so-called digital asset management system. The functions that are presented there would simplify his everyday work and that of many employees enormously.

The next morning Jan suggests to his boss Sandra that she should buy a DAM system. He explains the advantages it brings for the company's production processes. Sandra is quickly convinced of the return on investment and the two decide to implement a DAM system in the company.

At 8 o'clock Jan's working day begins after a half-hour drive. In the past, he would have sat down at his desk immediately. Every minute counted. Today he starts his working day with a cup of coffee and a short talk with his colleague.

Like a few weeks ago, Jan still has the task of compiling product images company-wide. To do this, Jan now logs into the new DAM system and navigates to the search. Since Jan's colleagues in the various departments have been importing all images into the DAM system in a finely structured manner for some time, Jan has no trouble at all collecting the appropriate images.  

The workflow is now standardized. That's great, because now everyone knows what to do and Jan no longer has to deal with the various individual solutions. His colleagues have already imported all pictures last week and tagged them with the keyword "Newsletter-KW12_2015", which is relevant for the current newsletter. Jan only has to search for this phrase and gets all the images he needs for the current newsletter. 

Jan now only downloads them in bundles and then makes them available for production. He now only has to supervise the process and can devote the rest of the week to other tasks - the design of the various brochures, for example, should be urgently revised.

He had been planning to optimize the structure of the brochures for a long time. Until now, however, he has always lacked the time to do this. But now he can fully rely on the fact that the material is always up-to-date and in the right print quality. He has already implemented the first optimizations. This has also had a positive effect on orders. Both Jan and Sandra are enthusiastic about the new DAM system and are already considering how they can integrate it into other processes. An automated connection to the production tool and the web shop is also already planned for the future. 

After work Jan sinks comfortably onto the couch and talks to his wife about the successful and productive working day. He is happy with his work and proud to have influenced the processes in his company so positively through his research. A few weeks later Jan's boss approaches him. The system, which was introduced on Jan's initiative, quickly improved the processes. Jan and his colleagues are relieved of administrative tasks and can now play an even better role strategically and creatively. In this way, they bring the entire company forward. In recognition of this and his personal success, Sandra Jan is offering a new position as production manager. Jan is delighted and gladly accepts the offer.