When you’re looking for a new spot to eat, you likely turn to review sites like Yelp or check out the restaurant’s Google reviews.

People use review sites like Yelp because they’re better than the alternative — which is just choosing a place at random and hoping everything turns out well. By checking out a review site or a Google review, you can gain insight into the food quality, atmosphere, service, pricing, and more.

However, the problem with these reviews is that they are highly opinionated. What someone considers mediocre food, you may think it is quite delicious. What someone deems as slow service, you may deem as fast.

The good news with restaurants is that even if you didn’t make the right choice on where to eat, the worst that happens is maybe you leave a little dissatisfied.

But — for decisions that have a little more weight — it’s essential that you do more research than only looking at Yelp.

Today, we’ll focus on one of those decisions — finding the right digital asset management (DAM) system for your company. When it comes to DAM software, there are a couple different types of resources to help start your evaluation.

First, there are professional research companies that put out reports on which DAMs are the best of the best.

Second, you can look at review sites that list reviews from actual users of each DAM software.

Let’s break down how to best sift through each of these resources to ensure that you’re finding a digital asset management system that works for you and your team.

Diving into the Reports

When it comes to using 3rd party research reports for your DAM search, it’s a good rule of thumb to use these reports to help begin your search. However, you shouldn’t solely rely on them and you should make sure they are relevant to your industry and needs.

This is because many of these research companies use a “pay to play” format. In short, this means that DAM providers will pay these research firms to be in their report. This means there is a risk of bias being present. So, tread lightly.

Digital asset management is also extremely specific to each organization. These reports are typically very general and not specific to the use cases for your company.

Furthermore, Some research companies focus on specific industries when creating their reports (for example, food and beverage, consumer packaged goods, etc.). So, make sure to keep that in mind because the importance of different features of a DAM system can differ based on your industry.

Some of the most common DAM reports providers are:

• Constellation Shortlist Digital Asset Management for Digital Experience
• The Forrester Wave
• Gartner Market Guide for Digital Asset Management
• Digital Marketing Depot Vendor Landscape: Digital Asset Management

Before making any decisions, make sure to reach out to the actual DAM vendors to ask them questions about their product and whether or not they can fulfill all your organization’s needs.