Advances in Digital Asset Management

Digital assets continues to grow in importance as an enterprise asset, but it remains difficult to manage these assets from capture to distribution, as well as subsequent access to stored content.

Huge amount of digital asses are being created by marketing and communications teams that they’re being overwhelmed by the sheer number of media assets.

Many companies don’t have a central repository for their rich media assets. The files are typically scattered in multiple locations, including Dropbox, SharePoint or share drives.

Digital assets have multiple use cases such as training and education, marketing and corporate communication, and different departments have these functions.

Improving management of digital assets can have a rapid and significant return on investment, so organizations should be motivated to address the issue. Moreover, being able to find a particular video and also information within that video is growing in importance.

It is important to be able to find digital assets, re-purpose small parts of them, and keep track of the digital rights for the assets.

Digital Assets Management Systems (DAM) can greatly help to manage and use digital assets.

MediaValet

One of such system is MediaValet.

MediaValet is the Digital Assets Management System that is worth to consider. It is a cloud product and does not need any internal IT support. The system can be up and running very quickly. MediaValet company is very supportive of customers' needs. The system has flexibility both in finding and re-purposing digital assets. The entire user interface was redesigned in Version 3.0.

The latest version of MediaValet has a new menu feature that simplifies the metadata entry process by allowing users to check boxes for the desired metadata. A controlled vocabulary is used for keywords which is highly recommended to use.

The video can be put in a lightbox that allows to structure and sequence the final product. Music is also kept in MediaValet. It is possible to send a link to assets in the system for review by users.

MediaValet handles all media types, including HD video formats, and can manage file sizes up to 200 GB per asset.

There is a new feature that gives users the ability to search a dialog within videos. This allows users to find any spoken word within their video library with a keyword search. Once the word is found, the user is able to jump right to the sequence in a video where the searched word is spoken. The video will start a few seconds before the target word, and continue as long as the user wishes.

Videos Management

Video has been isolated from other enterprise content because it needs to be managed differently. By enabling videos to be checked into DAM systems, organizations can let users gain access to video content along with their other rich-media assets.

Enterprises can gain more if they begin to view video not as a separate entity, but as a knowledge asset just as they do documents, graphics and structured content. Video is a great way to capture tacit knowledge and integrate it with enterprise content.

Portals for knowledge management and training, certification, compliance and many other applications are fueling the need for more efficient management of these assets. Videos need to be as accessible as any other knowledge asset in an organization.

Mediasite

Video content management (VCM) for platforms designed for enterprise use is an emerging market. These platforms are intended not only for management of stored content but also for live streaming.

Mediasite by Sonic Foundry captures and distributes video both live and on demand. This is an extension from technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University, Mediasite is typically used for a presentation room or lecture hall.

Mediasite is a purpose-built family of hardware and software that creates a workflow from presentation to a URL. It provides software to organize and curate the video, creates metadata automatically and OCRs all the text on the screen. It also provides closed captioning by automatically uploading the video files to the customer’s captioning service provider. The product can operate on premises or in the cloud.

Many companies are using Mediasite for training and corporate communication. The system can support enterprise video initiative that enables employees to create user-generated content. In addition, numerous law schools and medical schools are recording lectures so that students can listen to them again or access the lecture if they missed it at the time it was presented.

University can place Mediasite technology in its classrooms, so every lecture can be recorded. Some have sophisticated tracking cameras or fixed cameras, while others use webcams in the laptop. All have screen capture for the presentations and microphones for audio.

Making video as useful as text in the enterprise has been a challenge. ,Because Mediasite indexes the videos, captures the screen presentations and makes them searchable, users can find topics of interest. By clicking on a slide below the video window, users can sync to the presenter’s spoken presentation.

Enhancing SharePoint Video Management

As a content management and collaboration platform, Microsoft SharePoint is a likely place to store videos, but it is limited in its ability to manage them, including searching for them.

Ramp Video Management for SharePoint

Ramp Video Management for SharePoint is a video content solution that stores, distributes, streams, and automatically creates metadata that facilitates search of video content. Ramp can manage video and audio content from virtually any source, including recordings generated by Web conferencing platforms such as WebEx.

Ramp software ingests video and audio content and uses natural language processing to convert the audio to text, then automatically creates time-coded metadata for the video. That processing allows keyword searching of the content and easy identification of the segments of interest to a user.

Because many enterprise networks do not have wide area networks (WANs) that are adequate to reach outlying regional areas, Ramp has joined the Riverbed-Ready Technology Alliance program. Riverbed technology supports a private caching network within a company. When multiple users are accessing the same content, it is cached locally to relieve traffic on the WAN to improve performance.

With the phasing out of Microsoft’s Windows Media Server and Silverlight, companies are seeking alternatives for multi-casting video, long accepted as an efficient approach to stream video to multiple recipients.

Ramp introduced the Ramp Multicast Engine (RME), which uses a company’s existing WAN infrastructure to support live video delivery of HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) video to iPhones, iPads and other mobile devices, which standard multicast solutions cannot do.

Digital Asset Management technology helps organizations leverage their existing investment, whether that is their network, their document management system or other resource. On the customer side, understanding the different use cases and the resulting implications for technology requirements should be a priority.

Galaxy Consulting has over 17 years experience in digital asset management. Please contact us for a free consultation.

Successful Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management (KM) main goal is to improve the internal processes of the organization so that it operates better, faster, cheaper, safer or cleaner. 

It is important to create KM strategy. KM strategy is about ensuring that KM processes are as good as they can be throughout the organization. 

Regardless of what industry your organization operates in, it is likely that you are concerned about operational efficiency and effectiveness, which means that operational excellence is a cornerstone of your KM strategy.

The KM strategy should include development and deployment of continually improving KM practices, process innovation, the use of communities of practice and knowledge base, and standardization of process wherever possible.

In a customer service organizations, KM aims to improve the delivery of knowledge to the customers and the people who work with the customers on a day-to-day basis so that customer relationships are maintained, service levels are high and sales volumes are increased. 

In a not-for-profit or non-governmental organization, your customers are the beneficiaries of your KM programs. Similar ideas apply in this circumstance as in a for-profit organization.

The crucial knowledge of an organization is that of the products or services that the organization offers, as well as knowledge about the customers themselves, the market, competitors and other participants in the sector. The majority of this knowledge will be internal with some external knowledge (knowledge from outside the organization) which is needed to fully understand the client, the market/environment, the competitors, etc.

Your KM strategy should include the creation of a reliable knowledge base of products or services for use by your sales force, your service force or your call center or your employees, allied with close attention to customer relationship management (CRM). 

There may also be elements of your strategy focused on the processes of selling and bidding, as even the best product or service will not make money if you can’t sell it. If your organization is in the service sector or is largely concerned with marketing and selling, customer knowledge is likely to be the cornerstone of your KM strategy.

Customer knowledge also applies to internal customers, for example, the IT department’s help desk for internal use. The help desk will need to be able to address employee technology issues based on what services and equipment an employee is using. There is less focus on sales and marketing in working with internal customer knowledge, but the other issues and concerns exist in this case also.

An innovation focus for KM involves the creation of new knowledge in order to create new products and services. The crucial knowledge is knowledge of the technology and of the marketplace. Much of this knowledge will be external, which is what primarily differentiates an innovation strategy from other KM strategies.

The strategy should include knowledge-creating activities such as business-driven action learning, think tanks, deep dives and other creativity processes, as well as knowledge-gathering activities such as technology watch and market research. 

There may also be elements of your strategy focused on reducing the cycle time for new products, as even the best product will not make money if takes too long to get it to the market. If your company is in the high-tech, bio-tech or pharmaceutical sectors, or any other sector with a focus on research and development and/or new products, then innovation is likely to be the cornerstone of your KM strategy.

A growth and change focus for KM involves replicating existing success in new markets or with new staff. It is critical to identify lessons learned and successful practices, so that good practices can be duplicated and mistakes learned from, and to transfer existing knowledge to new staff. 

New staff needs to be integrated efficiently and effectively with adequate training and knowledge transfer so that they become valuable members of the team as quickly as possible. Regardless of what industry you are in, growth and dealing with changing market and organization conditions are often considerations in your KM strategy.

Strategic Focus

In reality, companies may have elements of all four focus areas. They may be concerned about operating their companies efficiently, while also developing customer knowledge and retaining a focus on creating new products. 

However, the KM strategy should primarily address the most important of these four. Don’t spread yourself too thin; don’t try to do everything all at once. Instead, pick the most important driver, and devote your attention to developing an effective KM solution that addresses this focus area.

Doers vs. makers vs. sellers

Some companies do things, some make things, and some sell things. Different organizational focus, different approach to KM. The doers are concerned with operational efficiency, the makers are concerned either with operational efficiency or product innovation (depending on the product and the market they are in), and the sellers are concerned with customer knowledge.

Most organizations are a mix of doing and making, and all sell something, but the point is that depending on the market you are in and the type of product or service you have, you will have a different focus to your KM strategy. One of the main differences in KM strategies is the amount of attention placed on practice knowledge vs. product knowledge.

If an organization does things, its KM approach is all about the development and improvement of practice. The strategy would be to develop policies and procedures, develop communities of practice, and focus on operational excellence and continual practice improvement.

The same is true for the professional services sector and the oil and gas sector. In the case of the oil companies, selling the product requires little knowledge about oil (except for those few specialists concerned with selling crude oil to refineries), and the main focus for KM is on practice improvement. The KM framework involves communities of practice, best practices, practice owners, and practice improvement.

A typical product-based maker organization would be an aircraft or car manufacturer. They make things. Their KM approach is all about the development and improvement of product. They develop product guidelines for their engineers, their sales staff and their service staff. For example, Electronic Book of Knowledge would be a wonderful source to contain information about automobile components, Tech Clubs would be communities of practice.

In a maker organization, the experts are more likely to be experts on a product than on a practice area. With the more complex products, where design knowledge is critical, KM can become knowledge-based engineering, with design rationale embedded into CAD files and other design products.

If an organization is focused primarily on product learning, much of which learning is shared with the product manufacturer. For a product-based organization, the entire focus is on knowledge of product and product improvement.

The danger in KM comes when you try to impose a solution where it doesn’t apply. For example, imposing a maker KM solution onto a doer business, or an operational excellence KM solution onto an innovation business. This is why the best practice is to choose one area of focus for your KM strategy, and work with the parts of the business where that focus area is important.

Workforce demographics

Another factor that can influence your KM strategy is the demographic composition of your workforce. In a Western engineering-based organization, for example, the economy is static, and the population growth is stable. The workforce is largely made up of baby boomers. A large proportion of the workforce is over 50, with many staff approaching retirement. Within a company, very high levels of knowledge are dispersed around the organization, scattered around many teams and locations.

Communities of practice are important in a situation like this, so that employees can ask each other for advice, and receive advice from anywhere. Experienced staff collaborate with each other to create new knowledge out of their shared expertise. The biggest risk to many in an engineering-based organizations is knowledge loss, as so many of the workforce will retire soon.

In a Far Eastern engineering-based organization, the economy is growing, the population is growing, there is a hunger for prosperity, and engineering is also a growth area. The workforce is predominantly young with many of them employed less than two years in the company. There are only very few real experts and a host of inexperienced staff. 

Experience is a rare commodity, and is centralized within the company, retained within the centers of excellence and the small expert groups. Here the issue is not collaboration, but rapid integration and enhanced training. The risk is not retention of knowledge, it is deployment of knowledge.

These two demographic profiles would lead you to take two different approaches to your KM strategy. It is possible to combine the demographic view with the focus areas described previously.

Create your KM strategy based on a combination of the four focus areas and the two demographic types, with the addition of another demographic type, a balanced workforce with a good spread of young and experienced staff.

Galaxy Consulting has over 17 years experience creating and implementing KM strategy. Please contact us for a free consultation!