I was assigned to find the best Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution (no pun intended) for the Crown & Champa Resorts collection. Being the lead for the project, my team consisted of the senior content creation team, the Director of E-commerce and the Group IT manager. Together we went over tens, if not hundreds, of calls/ demos/ trials and talked with the team members from each vendor.

To save time, we made a quick introduction video explaining our requirements, which was later shared with the DAM vendors. This helped us to skip the initial introduction video and jump straight into the demo, which not only saved us a lot of time but also helped us to understand the market offerings within the first week of the project.

A big concern for us was the pricing, so we made sure to have a ballpark figure of the pricing during the initial call and kept eliminating vendors based on the overall features and pricing until we reached the top 10 vendors with whom we arranged calls to further understand their product, and how it can be applied to the collection. This helped us further narrow down our options, and was left with the top 5 vendors, which were well within our budget and had all the features we needed.

Then, I made a spreadsheet with a checklist of all the features needed and started to trial the platforms with my team. In the sheet, we updated any new features we found or any difficulties we had while testing the platform. This not only helped the broader team to understand the DAM better but also sped up the process, and we were able to reach a verdict sooner.

When selecting a DAM or any other kind of SaaS solution, it boils down to the specific use cases and the budget. While this project acted as a huge education for me on the inner workings of a DAM, managing digital assets (a top priority by almost all businesses today), I was also able to get hands-on experience with the products on the market.