In the last couple of month I've attended to a few workshops related to the new tools we are going to use in our marketing departments. Let me share my thoughts about why workshops are important.

The two main tools I'm talking of is the DAM (digital asset management) and a translation management and approval system based on a indesign workflow (very handy if you manage publications in 32 languages). I know both systems already because I was one of the initiators of the group wide projects and because I tested them before choosing the solutions. This enables me to have quite some notion of "how to do things" with the software. But this does not mean that I already now the fastest way, or the most effective or future proof way to do it.

It's much like when you learn Photoshop or Indesign. There are many ways to get results, but you might not figure out the best way by yourself. I've expected to get from the software vendors some advice, some "best practices" as they are called, what is the most effective way to get your taxonomy (keywords and structures) right and what are good workflows to follow. They should know as they see what theyre clients are doing and what works well and what not. But this was obviously not the case. You get the usual "Every firm has it's own way to do things." and "Our system is so flexible that it can be customized and setup to your needs." This might be true, but if I just match my current workflow I could miss some great improvements or even worse, I discover later on, that if I structured the system or prepared the documents a little bit different in the first place I would get much more out of it. Nobody starts over such a project without a bad need. I hope, that with the spreading of this kind of systems there will be more user groups and tutorials to help firms setup their DAMs, in the meantime I will stick to this subject and bring my experiences.

Foto by foreverdigital