Implementation services

How much time does onboarding take?
In short, you determine the timeline. An average onboarding is 16 weeks, but it depends on client readiness and responsiveness. The majority of time is spent on data migration, site configuration and metadata development. We recommend setting a launch date and backing out milestones from there.

What if I don’t have a DAM administrator for the system?
A full-time administrator is not required, but you should have someone willing to dedicate 50% or more of their time to onboarding and beyond. The administration responsibilities can also be divided among your team. If you want to add a full-time, part-time or contract DAM administrator, Widen's Professional Services can help.

How much time should DAM administrators commit to in the long-term?
DAM administration doesn’t need to be full-time to be successful, but it’s a good idea to have one qualified full-time person dedicate a good portion of their work to managing the system. The average Media Collective implementation is supported by 3-5 administrators. It’s best to have one champion to develop the DAM strategy in line with your other marketing / technology priorities.

It’s also a good idea to have 1 or 2 administrators responsible for ongoing asset uploads and metadata management. Last, we recommend involving IT for long-term opportunities of expansion, systems integration, user and data management and security process controls. 

Time allocation for DAM administration across Widen customers:

• 67% dedicate less than 25% of their time
• 18% dedicate 25-49% of their time
• 13% dedicate 50-75% 2% dedicate 75-100%

Source: 2015 Widen Customer Survey

How should I start gathering our assets?
We suggest you start by creating a governance document and migration plan, then collecting your assets on a single drive. We will send you a firewire drive to offload assets from existing servers, hard drives, tapes and other devices where you currently house assets. Our specialists can assist with the de-duplication efforts after we receive your drive(s). We also recommend auditing your files. Where are they located? (servers, hard drives, PCs, etc.) How far back do you want to gather to store and maintain? Are the assets high-resolution? Who will be using the assets?

What are your suggestions for metadata standards and naming conventions?
The Widen Collective can support metadata standards you currently have and is flexible and configurable enough for any combination of standard and custom metadata schemas you may need. Metadata mapping can be developed in your site to retain any naming convention you’ve already adopted or maintained long-term. Filename conventions are not necessary, but may prove beneficial for asset recognition, version control, duplicate reduction and data cleansing.

Does Widen have experience migrating digital assets / metadata from other DAM systems?
Yes, we’ve successfully migrated assets from a number of other systems, including: Canto Cumulus, Extensis Portfolio, MediaBin, MediaBeacon, Getty, MajorTom, Celum, OpenText, North Plains Telescope and SharePoint, as well as file sharing tools like Box, Dropbox, YouSendIt, Flickr, Picasa and more. Widen has many options for data migration and ingestion, including automation and Consulting and Professional Services.