OpenAsset it tailored to the AEC industry, offering integration with Vantagepoint unlike most other options.
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I used OpenAsset at my last company and helped implement solutions that were not being utilized. These included setting up a PowerPoint template to automate the generation of slide presentations and setting up data sheet templates to automate the creation of project data sheets. I have served as an OpenAsset user, administrator, and instructor. One of the best use cases for OpenAsset has been integrating it with Deltek Vantagepoint so that the information from Vantagepoint automatically copies over to OpenAsset on a set schedule. In this way, both OpenAsset and Vantagepoint maintain the same project information and this information is, in turn, used to populate project information on the company website.
Pros
- Automated PowerPoint presentations
- Automated data sheet generation
- Searching for digital assets based on keywords, project types, location, and personnel
- Maintaining albums for quick access to the most used project digital assets.
Cons
- You can create an album to share with those outside of your firm, but the only way to do this is to download files into a zip file. This is antiquated thinking. It would be much better if you could create an album that would generate a temporary web page that anyone outside of the organization could view by clicking on a link.
- There are a number of legacy items that are no longer functional. OpenAsset needs to either make these functional or remove the options.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you tag your items with keywords correctly, it is a great resource for quickly finding the digital assets you want. I had meticulously gone through all of our digital assets adding keywords for several categories which made searching for specific items very quick and easy, as well as relevant. OpenAsset is also great for automating the creation of PowerPoint presentations and data sheets. It is a project-based software meaning it works best for those in the AEC industry that sort and store digital assets based on the projects to which they are associated. If you are in a marketing firm or other non-project-based business model then another DAM system would likely work better for you.
