Digital Asset Management is a relatively small industry but we are lucky enough to have a few independent organisations like the DAM Foundation and Real Story Group who seek to support and further DAM knowledge (in the case of the former) and give buyers detailed unbiased reviews of DAM vendors (the latter).
Real Story Digital Workplace and Marketing Technology Vendor Map
Towards the end of last year we got a chance to demo Asset Bank’s Digital Asset Management software to the Real Story Group. We were impressed by their thorough approach and the process helped us understand a lot more about our product and service. The review was published at the end of 2014 and Asset Bank is now included in Real Story’s Digital & Media Asset Management research report of 43 leading DAM vendors. The report is available to buy via Real Story’s website but here’s a summary of what they thought:
‘Asset Bank, the DAM product from UK-based Bright Interactive, is an on premise or an in-the-cloud, SaaS offering. Comparable to vendors such as Fotoware and Picturepark, Asset Bank comes at an appealingly low price. With the goal of keeping things simple, Asset Bank is not particularly feature-rich, and Bright interactive is slow to innovate when we compare it to other SMB or Workgroup DAM vendors. Some customers like it simple, and by keeping it that way, Bright Interactive takes the time to cultivate their customer service practice. With seemingly low feature demand and functionality added only when necessary, the complaints of slow and cumbersome development seen elsewhere in the industry don't surface as much here.’
Whilst talking to Real Story we were also checked against the DAM Foundation’s 10 Core Characteristics of a Quality DAM vendor, 2 for the price of 1! This is a new initiative from the DAM Foundation which seeks to simply define the core components of a DAM system, see below for the 10 characteristics. Asset Bank is one of the first DAM systems to be qualified via this criteria and we were delighted to be featured and to support this initiative.
A summary of DAM Foundation’s 10 characteristics of a quality DAM system
- Ingests assets individually or in mass sets, and allow for the manipulation of those assets.
- Secures the assets they contain including access control lists and user roles.
- Store assets as both binaries and metadata.
- Render/transform assets on ingest into new forms, such as thumbnails or proxy files.
- Enrich assets through the extension of metadata and metrics on their use throughout their lifecycles.
- Relate assets by tracking the relationships between an original asset and versions of the original.
- Regulates a structured process in the management, creation, and review of assets with workflow tools.
- Allows users to search and find assets using metadata, collections, workflows, or access control tools.
- Provides previews so users can view assets before downloading or opening files on their own device.
- Publish content by providing methods for assets to be shared, linked to, or otherwise distributed.
