Believe it or not, some web-based DAM providers actually differentiate between the types of users and will charge you more for people who are able to make certain decisions or contribute content to your media library. Can you believe that some even limit the number of concurrent users? At Widen, we don’t want to limit your usage in any way.
We include a bunch of users (and they can all be online at the same time), storage is cheap, bandwidth is free and every customer has a 30-day out. That’s right! You get a lot and your commitment is very low. What’s more, the monthly subscription is easy to budget for, updates are free and support is included.
I know what you’re thinking: “WOW, that’s a great deal! How do they do that?”
The answer is simple. It’s a great product and we provide really awesome service. With that, customer loyalty and retention are high. We’ve been around for 65 years, so we know what we’re doing and where we’re going.
You need to know that not all web-based DAM solutions are created equal.
Back to our digital asset management user model where “a user is a user is user”.
Typical installations have user roles to include a few global administrators, some mid-level admin roles, and end-user roles representing the widest user base.
Here’s a breakdown of the types of users you might have. Again, they all cost the same:
Global Admins - You should only have a few of these. These are the key knowledge managers that have the ultimate rights to see and do everything with your content, your users and all the available features of the system. They administrate all of the user roles and asset groups, set up the metadata schema and taxonomies, and are in the know about all activity.
Mid-Level Admins - You can have as many of these types of users as you need. These are managers of specific roles and asset groups where they would have authority and hold the knowledge about the users and assets within specific groups under them.
Contributors - We don’t necessarily call these out specifically, but this group includes anyone with permission to upload content to your digital library. That means photographers, videographers, designers, agencies and other content creators along with marketing coordinators and assistants who help keep the workflow running smoothly and the asset lifecycle in check.
Editors - These would be anyone with permissions to add and edit metadata on your digital assets. These knowledge workers possess the details needed to keep your content organized, searchable and repurpose-able as they work with other systems and products that influence what they know and how they interact with DAM.
Publishers - You got it, we don’t differentiate for these types of users either, but these are the folks that embrace some of the publishing features of DAM to connect your content direct with the intended audiences. Features available include on-the-fly conversions for print and web channels, embed codes, social publishing, collections & galleries, and ad & brochure creation.
Auditors - We don’t break these out either, but these are the managers, validators and decision-makers that want access to the wealth of usage data that can be gleaned from your Widen cloud-based DAM system. These are the people that take advantage of the data exports and analytics tools to measure and assess user activity and asset consumption for future budgeting and resource planning.
End Users and Subscribers - These are the people who represent the largest groups of users. Often, these users are broken out across various roles such as field sales, distributors and dealers, media & press, etc. These users just want to get in, find the assets they need and download them in the appropriate formats for the task at hand, then get out to move on to the next thing.
With Widen, your digital asset management implementation can contain any combination of users and it’s typical for many of those mid-level users to have many overlapping roles and permissions. Users change over time and your user base will increase as new departments and constituents see the value of the system. Fortunately, Widen’s flexible governance model and pricing accommodations make growth very easy.
Request a DAM consultation to talk more about how you would structure your digital asset management user base.
For more reactions from Widen digital asset management users, check out some of the Widen reviews on Capterra or recommendations on LinkedIn.