Executive guide to success with Adobe Experience Manager Assets

Assemble the Team

Assemble the Team

Adobe's most successful customers follow our industry-proven governance and staffing models. They begin by staffing a Product Owner and DAM Librarian, who will drive business value by unleashing the flexibility that AEM offers.

Product Owner

Why You Need One:

• They will own the delivery, maintenance, and value realization of your DAM. They push transformation forward at your organization and will work with stakeholders to take full advantage of new features that can drive maximum value and time savings.

Skills & Expertise:

• The Product Owner requires expertise and understanding of AEM core functionality, and how DAM modeling fits your organization's strategic goals. They often have years of experience managing process flow and honing and clarifying metadata requirements and the associated applications across your asset suite.

Responsibilities:

• With their excellent communication and organizational skills, the Product Owner will act as a facilitator and mediator, as well as define scope and objectives. They will map out the processes of all stakeholders and how they fit into this powerful enterprise-level solution.

DAM Librarian

Why You Need One:

• This role is critical to delivery and long-term operationalization. DAM is the single source of truth for all assets within an organization and must be supported by effective metadata, taxonomy, and robust search. A DAM Librarian creates a structured framework to ensure program goals are met during implementation and in the future.

Skills & Expertise:

• The Librarian must have a deep understanding of the AEM platform and have scientific knowledge of what a strong and sustainable library should be.

Responsibilities:

• Along with the Product Owner, this person will align with business requirements and formulate an Asset Strategy which includes asset ingestion, content hierarchy, taxonomy, permissions, and workflows.

Other key roles for the duration of the project are:

• Project Manager-manages financial and executive reporting
• Technical Architect- oversees the infrastructure and security
• Power Users- experienced AEM content users
• Front-End Developer, Back-End Developer & Quality Assurance Leads- coordinate and guide the development and testing efforts

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ACTION: Staff the roles of Product Owner and DAM Librarian with members of your team and provide them with access to Adobe training classes and materials. Review a more in-depth guide to role archetypes, role responsibilities, sample operating and staffing models and resources for skilling up the team.

Resource: Building your Team for AEM Assets

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The Importance of Governance

The Importance of Governance

By its very nature, a DAM has a multitude of users, stakeholders, and business processes that operate within an interwoven framework of requirements and needs, so governance is key. Without it, there may be potentially conflicting requests and requirements from disparate groups. Proper governance has the benefit of mitigating risk while also safeguarding future success.

Governance can begin with a roadmap to ensure the success of your initial implementation and may then grow to become formalized into an Operating Model for the business and the foundation for proper measurement of success. It's important that all the users of the DAM feel an investment and ownership in its success. Allowing a vehicle for feedback and collaborative process iteration will increase buy-in and adoption.

A mature governance committee will include subject matter experts from across the content ecosystem. They will help oversee key practices such as communication, education, process improvement and reporting.

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ACTION: The Product Owner is critical as a central voice for DAM governance. Verify that they have created a governance framework and included all the necessary stakeholders across the organization.

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Build a Successful DAM Strategy

Build a Successful DAM Strategy

To protect the health of their AEM Assets investment in both the short and long-term, successful executives are always looking for ways to mature and expand their DAM strategy. This ensures your newly launched AEM Assets platform moves from the early deployment stages to an ever-evolving state with integration into every aspect of your asset management lifecycle.

The four core areas of a strategy should be:

1. DEPLOY:  Setup, configuration, and integration of AEM Assets into existing business systems. This is an evergreen approach, incorporating new AEM Assets features as they become available.

2. ADOPT: Enable users on effectively leveraging the DAM and incorporate it into existing operational workflows.

3. SCALE: Expand the number of integrations and usage of AEM Assets across your organization.

4. TRANSFORM: Evolve DAM functionality via continuous upgrades to the platform as well as optimized operational workflows.

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ACTION: Every six months, sync with your Product Owner and DAM Librarian to take stock of the progress you've made in your journey. Identify which areas of maturity you need to prioritize in the following six months.

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Maximize the Return on Investment (ROI)

Maximize the Return on Investment (ROI)

AEM Assets will provide value to your business in a variety of ways depending on your organization's goals and objectives. The most impactful benefits fall into the following categories:

• Productivity of teams that are managing and delivering digital assets
  • MEASURE: speed to collect assets, speed to launch campaigns, etc.
• Efficiency of managing risk related to the use of digital assets
  • MEASURE: faster ability to meet compliance standards or update assets based on new compliance regulations
• Time savings to maintain and manage a digital asset repository
  • MEASURE: compare the amount of time needed to complete similar tasks in Adobe AEM versus your previous DAM
• Brand consistency & integrity by having your DAM as the one source of truth
  • MEASURE: consistent and optimized assets across the customer journey

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ACTION: Set benchmarks now before you launch Adobe AEM at your organization so that you can easily compare efficiencies and generate savings calculations.

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