Why you shouldn’t leave dealing with DAM governance ‘until later’
If your Digital Asset Management (DAM) only works at its best when one staff member isn’t on leave or working on other projects, you are not alone.
In too many marketing and brand teams, the DAM platform is implemented, some assets are uploaded, one person is assigned as the ‘owner,’ and then attention moves from DAM implementation onto other projects.
It’s often assumed the DAM will ‘just work,’ but the reality is this is unlikely, especially if governance hasn’t been considered and developed to support the DAM.
Even if you have a DAM that is functioning well, it's usually because of the efforts of one or two people and a few power users, using 'undocumented knowledge' to drive how the DAM operates.
When the ‘rules for your DAM’ live in people’s heads, the DAM system (the platform plus the workflows, standards, support, and decision-making around it) becomes fragile.
DAM governance is what replaces that fragility with clarity.
Don’t think about governance as creating bureaucracy for the DAM, and it’s also not about writing a mountain of rules.
It’s about documenting the details of your DAM so that everyone understands its purpose, goals, aims, decision-making processes, and WHY the permissions, taxonomy, and metadata structure have been configured the way they are.
This helps ensure the DAM remains usable, scalable, and trustworthy as the platform grows, staff/teams change, and new opportunities for the DAM arise (such as implementing AI).
“If your Digital Asset Management (DAM) only works at its best when the ‘right person’ is around, you need governance”
DAM Governance Guidelines
Dealing with governance and documenting your DAM can often feel overwhelming, and finding time to work on it can be a challenge.
Start by considering the high-level basics to remove the everyday uncertainty of using and managing the DAM, and once you have these documented, you can add more detail from there. This document won’t be set-and-forget; it will need to be reviewed and updated over time.
When writing Governance Guidelines, you need to document ‘why’ decisions have been made and ‘why' the platform has been configured the way it is, such as why a particular aspect of the taxonomy is structured the way it is.
What to include in your DAM Governance Guidelines
Purpose of the platform
Overarching goals and aims
DAM Manager and platform owner
If you also have a committee or similar, document the details and purpose of the committee
Who uses the DAM
Consider what your user groups need to achieve when using the DAM
What assets are (and aren’t) stored in the DAM and why
Structure of the taxonomy, what this structure aims to achieve, who manages this structure and ensures it remains relevant and supports user needs
Metadata schema
Naming conventions and controlled vocabularies
Access permissions
Asset approval workflows
Other DAM platform workflows
Upload processes
Including mandatory fields and what these aim to achieve
Minimum requirements, to ensure the asset is searchable AND provides the relevant contextual, provenance and digital rights* information to ensure the asset is correctly used in future
Asset lifecycle stages
At what point does an asset get uploaded, or a new version get uploaded, and how are new versions tracked
Expiry of assets
Archiving of assets
Asset review processes
Who will complete these reviews, and what is the review purpose, such as checking metadata accuracy, reviewing expired assets
Platform integrations
What other platforms does the DAM integrate with, and what is the integration’s purpose
Platform maintenance
Document your maintenance cycle, including what tasks need to be completed, when, by whom, and for what outcome. Don't forget to include a review of the Governance Guidelines on this list too.
Platform change procedures
Decision-making processes and who has final sign-off
If you are unsure where to start with change procedures, refer to the Change Decision-Making Framework for answers
Vendor and internal IT Team contacts and procedures
Document contact details and what each team is responsible for. Also consider here processes for when there are glitches, issues, platform outages, and upgrades.
Other stakeholders
Include a list of all other relevant stakeholders and their involvement in the DAM. Consider here high-level management and the requirement to provide reports and updates to them on a set basis; the records management/archiving team and their involvement in that aspect of the DAM; the organisation's legal, privacy and data management teams and their involvement in the DAM and asset management requirements.
Other legal requirements
-
Depending on your industry and even the location where your data is used, likely to be used, or housed, you may also need to ensure these are addressed and documented as part of your governance.
Consent
Privacy
Personal data
Data management
Information and cybersecurity
AI data processing and Generative AI
Asset provenance
Industry legal and legislative requirements
Anything else required for your industry
You may also wish to build a set of Administrator Guidelines to sit alongside your Governance. This can hold more of the technical details behind how the platform is configured to support these goals, processes, workflows and assets.
* What is contextual and digital rights information?
Contextual information – Consider the background details and context for how and the purpose for which this asset was originally created.
Digital Rights information – Consider asset licence information, copyright, consent, legislative requirements (for some industries), and internal or management preferences on how assets are used.
For both of these, you need to ensure that information is added to the asset metadata rather than being retained in someone’s head, emails, project notes, etc. This information and knowledge should be retained directly in the asset's metadata, and not run the risk of this information being lost if a person leaves the organisation or have it forgotten about 6 months later.
Defining the DAM Manager role
A DAM Manager is the steward of the DAM and not simply ‘the person who uploads assets’, although for some organisations this may also form part of their role.
A DAM Manager will typically:
Build and maintain the taxonomy and metadata
Maintain standards (naming, versioning, required fields)
Run training for users and support onboarding new staff or external partners to the platform
Coordinate asset lifecycle management and platform maintenance
Liaise with the vendor (and IT) and support change within the platform
Write and retain the governance documentation, including the ‘why’ behind how things are configured.
It should be obvious in the organisation who the DAM Manager is and how to contact them. Consider creating a generic email account for central DAM queries, and include the DAM Manager’s name and contact details in an easy-to-find location inside the DAM so users know who to contact.
If this article has you thinking about the state of your own DAM platform foundations and governance, you're not alone. It's a pattern I see regularly in my consulting work – organisations eager to move forward but needing to shore up the basics first.
Through Haelio Connect, I work with organisations to get their DAM foundations right – from strategy and taxonomy design through to governance, change management, and vendor management. Whether you're starting fresh or trying to get more from an existing platform, it starts with understanding what you actually need.
And if you're looking to build your own foundational DAM knowledge, DAM Essentials for Marketing Teams is an online, self-paced course designed to give you the confidence and understanding to manage, implement, or improve a DAM platform. Across eight modules, you'll cover everything from taxonomy and metadata through to governance, ROI, and ensuring you have the basics right in your DAM first, before implementing AI and automation.