This chapter will point out the possible pitfalls when implementing a Digital Asset Management system to help you avoid these common mistakes. Likely you will run into some problems regardless of your precautions, but this guide will help you to handle them and find feasible solutions.

Implementing a Digital Asset Management system requires careful planning. The system and its implementation will impact everyone who touches it. If a DAM system is introduced too slowly or without a high degree of importance, you will have users still storing data in other places, making the data inconsistent. If it is introduced too quickly, without appropriate instructions for the users, problems may occur which force them to use workarounds (even such as not using the system!). Both cases can render your DAM useless from the user s perspective and you will have a hard time consolidating all data in the DAM. Good planning and well-structured implementation are therefore extremely important for the success of your DAM system. Don t try to introduce your new DAM piece by piece because you are not confident it will work your users will pick up on this and, besides, it will work!

In this chapter we will run through the most important things to take into account when implementing an asset management system: the planning, evaluation, training, and setup.