In planning for a DAM project, ROI comes up early in the discussion ... it has to. The business owners in any organization will be challenged with the basics: How much does it cost? What are the savings? What are the operational benefits and new opportunities? What are the intangibles and the lost opportunity costs? What are the risks of not doing anything?
So, how do we empower these managers with the tools to present a winning argument for change?
I believe it has to begin by identifying and documenting the existing workflow, capturing each step, each process, each hand-off, each person, each repeated process, sneaker-net, unnecessary dubs, copies, etc. Get it all..everything. It can be at an enterprise level or at a departmental level. Document and define your world....map it out. It may not be pretty but it will help to find the pain points. Challenge yourself..how do you really do what you do? Who is involved? WHY? What are the timelines, obstacles, limitations, etc?
Next, gather and apply the known hard costs associated with all of the steps; labor, material costs, transportation, machine use, wear and tear, time and vendor costs, etc. Roll it all into an annual total. This, at its most basic, is the number to beat in the ROI discussion, but wait there's more. Now lets explore the lost opportunity factor to this argument. Don't kid yourself, doing nothing has real costs associated with it. Modest annual increases in basic costs (labor, supplies, vendors, etc)along with the liability of aging physical assets in almost obsolete formats will undermine the viability of your assets, you'll lose market share and new opportunities because you can't compete.
You've documented the workflow and captured the costs....lets put it all to good use. What are the obvious changes you can make (technology, process, cultural, etc) that can bring improvement and value back now? Do you really need to encode that tape 5 times? Can we do it once instead and manage the additional needs via transcodes and file delivery? This is just one example of the types of things that will become apparent in this process.
The corporate-wide big picture view is important for overall planning but I believe with the info from this start managers, division leaders, and business owners, can identify and execute small achievable projects that can bring significant value to the overall process at relatively low cost and move the entire group closer toward a optimized digital workflow. Simple things can start the process, help build momentum for larger charge and build a portfolio of successful changes that brings greater credibility to the bigger ROI discussion.
You have to start somewhere.
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