Serving a Client's Mission
We have the privilege of working with organizations that make our world safer, more connected, and better informed. One such company is a leader in geographic information system software, which means, in simple terms, connecting data to mapping. The company serves organizations around the world, and it goes without saying that digital asset management is critical to this client.
Making it work
Aldis has been part of their DAM solution since 2020. They had invested in a CatDV system for their internal video team — and realized they needed help. The client: “A DAM integrator helped us choose and build the video platform, but it wasn’t within their scope to help us figure out how we would use it. So we found Aldis and brought them in.”
“The company that set up the DAM actually handed it off to us — it wasn’t competitive or contentious,” said Phil Seibel, Aldis Librarian, MLIS. “They aren’t really wired to make changes to a system after the initial build – but that’s our sweet spot: digging into taxonomy and ontological research.”
In other words, Aldis jumped in to identify and understand the internal language the client uses, and then used that knowledge to establish a template for how to categorize and tag digital assets, cultivating useful metadata for DAM, so everything is easily searchable and findable by the internal team.
The client again: “They listened and listened. The amount of listening Aldis does is incredible — and then they really understand how to respond to all that listening.”
What Aldis Brings to the Relationship
There are just a handful of good DAM solution integrators and consultants out there. Some will install a system, give you a top-level run-down, and hand you the keys. For Aldis, choosing a system and installing it is often just the first step. In fact, that’s when the work we really love begins, digging into taxonomy and ontological research, discovering the unique language of an organization, and tailoring the system to that knowledge, all with a passionate commitment to digital asset management best practices.
This means understanding what your organization will search for within the DAM and how your people will formulate those searches, aimed at making the process as intuitive as it can be for your end-users. Once this framework is established, the fine-toothed-comb work of tagging begins. Every individual asset must be tagged with labels (i.e., metadata fields) that align with your organization’s language and priorities.
Organizations know their media, but our library scientists know how to create the structure that will maximize that media’s value.
It's Symbiotic
Aldis librarians communicate fluidly with your organization, not only to improve our work, but to train your teams in the functionality of the system. We measure success not just in terms of our contracted ‘scope of work’; we consider a project a success only if your digital asset management solution works for you, now and for the foreseeable future.
Our client said it better than we can: “I look at it like we’re all tending a garden together. It’s getting bigger and producing more good stuff, and every season is a little bit different. We’re learning from each other, mentoring each other. It’s way more than just a vendor-client relationship.”
