7 Steps to Ensure IT Sign-off on Your New DAM System

When implementing a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution, ensuring your IT team’s buy-in is crucial for success. While creative and marketing teams may be eager to streamline workflows and manage digital assets, IT professionals prioritize system compatibility, security, scalability, and long-term maintenance. Ensuring your DAM selection aligns with their technical requirements will not only gain their approval but also set the stage for a smoother deployment and a better user experience.

Below are strategic steps to ensure your selected digital asset management (DAM) system gets the thumbs-up from your IT team.

1. Confirm it’s a fit with Core IT Ecosystem/Tech Stack

IT teams need confidence that the DAM platform will integrate smoothly with existing systems like content management systems (CMS), project management tools, CRM platforms, cloud providers, and more. Access data through a robust API offering is critical for enabling seamless data exchange and ensuring long-term compatibility with future upgrades. Additionally, the DAM should offer opportunities to replace redundant tools, allowing IT to consolidate the tech stack and reduce the number of systems they need to manage.

Actionable Tip: Share case studies and use cases where IT teams have successfully integrated the digital asset management solution and even replaced other tools, leading to cost savings and a simplified tech stack. Provide access to the vendor’s API documentation to demonstrate the DAM’s flexibility and ease of integration with both current and future systems.

2. Ensure Strong Security and Governance Features

IT teams are responsible for ensuring security across all platforms, so your digital asset management platform meets high security standards, including encryption, role-based access controls, and automated audit trails. Security certifications like ISO 27001 or SOC 2. These are critical to gaining IT’s trust and sometimes a deal breaker to getting vendor approved.

Actionable Tip: Present the DAM’s security features in detail, including access controls and governance policies. Highlight its compliance with necessary security certifications to ensure information technology alignment.

3. Prove Scalability and Performance Efficiency
Your IT team will want assurance that the DAM can scale as your digital marketing team grows. This includes the ability to support exponential growth in users, file sizes, daily uploads and downloads, the number of API calls and more. The ability to scale and support  global teams, and maintain performance is essential to gaining their approval.

Actionable Tip: Request performance benchmarks and scalability reports from the DAM vendor, especially for global, high-volume environments. Highlight how the DAM platform can scale efficiently without compromising system performance, ensuring long-term support for your organization’s needs.

4. Address Data Migration Concerns Early
Data migration from legacy systems can be a sticking point for IT teams. Ensuring that the selected DAM can handle the migration efficiently without risking data loss or corruption is crucial to gaining their approval.

Actionable Tip: Work with the vendor to develop a detailed migration plan that includes testing and validation phases. Present this plan to your IT team, showing them that you’ve considered potential risks and how the migration process will preserve asset integrity, such as version control and digital file structure. Provide any references to customers who have performed similar migrations.

5. Set Up Monitoring, Support, Reporting, and Uptime Expectations
IT teams are often responsible for ensuring system uptime and responding to technical issues. Make sure your selected digital asset management solution comes with performance monitoring tools and strong support options that align with your IT team’s expectations.

Actionable Tip: Review service level agreements (SLAs) with your vendor to ensure uptime guarantees meet IT’s requirements. Provide documentation on monitoring tools and 24/7 support availability, giving IT confidence that any issues can be resolved quickly.

6. Plan for Ongoing IT Involvement
Your IT team will need to be involved in the long-term maintenance and updates of the DAM system as it's a key piece of your tech stack. A detailed governance framework that includes system audits and scalability planning is necessary to show IT you’ve thought beyond the initial deployment.

Actionable Tip: Work with IT to establish a plan for long-term management, including scheduled updates and audits. Ensure the vendor’s support team is available for future scaling and feature rollouts, so IT isn’t left handling everything alone.

7. Foster a Strong Vendor Partnership
Finally, your IT team will want assurance that the vendor is a reliable partner for long-term success. Regular communication and a commitment to system improvements will ensure your digital asset management platform stays up to date and evolves with your business needs, from marketing campaigns to web development initiatives.

Actionable Tip: Present a plan for regular vendor check-ins and updates. Choose a vendor that assigns a dedicated customer support manager. Show how the vendor is committed to evolving their DAM platform with new features and industry advancements that will benefit both IT and the business, including areas like brand management, content distribution, and software development.

Conclusion
By addressing IT’s technical concerns and aligning your selected DAM with their priorities—security, scalability, integration, and long-term maintenance—you can gain their approval and set the stage for a successful implementation. With the right DAM solution, your marketing, creative, and IT teams can work together more efficiently, streamlining workflows, enhancing customer experience, and driving future growth. Schedule a call to learn how Orange Logic can help you manage assets effectively!