We evaluate two dozen vendors of different hues (large, mid-sized and specialist) in our Digital and Media Asset Management Report. In addition to vendor intangibles like professional services & support, we analyze the product itself along three categories, namely asset creation & management, asset assembly & delivery and product architecture. Each category in turn has more granular criteria for product evaluation. In all, there are 26 criteria grouped in the above 3 categories. In addition to detailed descriptions, we also rate the product on a scale of 1 to 4 (a higher score is better). 

With the caveat that you cannot (and should not) rely on numerical ratings alone for your product selection, these ratings do tell an interesting story about the DAM products in the marketplace.  We consolidated the ratings of the large and mid-sized vendors in our report to arrive at the overall market average. As we cover all the leading products in the market, this can be thought of as a proxy for how well the DAM market itself supports a particular product feature / criterion. 

With this background, let us look at which are the criteria with the highest average scores - the Top 5 are presented in the below heat map. The green portion represents the average score of all the products for a given criteria and the red region represents the “average gap to perfection”. Naturally, green is good and more greens are better. 

Ratings heat map - top scoring criteria across products

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Ingestion, Asset Manager User Interface, Scalability, App Development and Product configuration score the highest among the criteria we consider. It suggests that the marketplace as a whole does a decent job when it comes to these features. As a technology buyer, what this means is that you can quickly complete your due diligence on these and spend more time and do deep dives of the other criteria instead. (there are always exceptions to this notion, of course). 

We don’t offer advice to vendors but in the spirit of the new year,  here is  a tip to the vendors as well - when the majority of the products do a decent job of a particular feature / function, there is limited scope for differentiation and as a vendor you should be focusing on solving other remaining problems to stand out. 

Now, let us turn our attention to the weak spots of the products. Below is the ratings heat map for the criteria with the lowest average scores. These are media processing, workflow (linear, task driven), collaboration (unstructured), analytics and rights management. 

Ratings heat map - low scoring criteria across products

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Essentially, we’re saying that the vendors and products flunk the test when it comes to these. The market as a whole is not very mature when it comes to these features - that’s why the chart is bleeding red. These offer potential differentiation opportunities for vendors and we encourage vendors to solve these “unsolved” problems of the clients. 

As a technology buyer, should your use cases require extensive support for these features, then you should pay greater attention and test very thoroughly. 

Of course, when it comes to vendor selection you are more concerned about the fit with your usage scenarios and relative strengths of the vendors rather than the overall maturity of the market. The standard deviation statistic can come in handy here. A high standard deviation for a given criterion indicates that the different products vary greatly in how well they support a particular feature. 

Chart - High standard deviations of ratings

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Here is the standard deviation story then - workflow, product extensibility, media processing, storage & archival, localization & internationalization have standard deviations. This means that the scores of different products vary a great deal when it comes to these criteria. This should alert you of the need to test thoroughly. 

In sum, while product selection should be driven by the specific use cases and usage scenarios to assess the best-fit product for your specific situation you can use the knowledge of where the marketplace is going, to focus and optimize your efforts.