As an Onboarding Manager, I work with a lot of teams in setting up their portals from the ground up. While we do make Onboarding as easy and even enjoyable as possible, it's also a collaborative effort between us and the client. As we always say--we will be the expert on all things Bynder, and your team will have to show up as the expert in all things related to your own assets, data, and restrictions.

After a couple of years of working with clients day in and day out, here's what I've learned about what they should know and prepare for even before their kick off call:

• Audit your assets. Even a quick audit of your assets would be helpful prior to starting your Onboarding process--just to give you an idea of what assets you have. This will later on help you determine what assets you want to keep in Bynder, and what assets could be stored elsewhere if needed. Knowing what assets you have will also give you a leg up in determining possible metadata and restrictions about your assets!

• Figure out your core team. Your core team will be meeting with your Bynder Onboarding Managers on a weekly basis---these typically comprise of a project manager and your future DAM admin at the very minimum. You will also want people who may be from your Marketing, Marketing Operations, and Creative Teams---generally, those who are familiar with how content is created, searched for, distributed, and archived.

• Know your Business SMEs. We've found that a small but might core team works most efficiently, but if other business units are also going to be using Bynder (Sales, Legal, HR, etc.),  you'll need their input, especially in the beginning when you're working through taxonomy metadata. They will likely not need to join meeting with Bynder, but it's good to know who to reach out to in those teams and give them a primer that Bynder is coming into the tech stack.

• Prepare to meet with your core team weekly prior to your weekly meetings with Bynder. We see the most success with clients who come to our weekly syncs prepared with use cases and questions that they've come across while discussing and working through topics related to the portal. Your Bynder Onboarding Manager will provide you with action items to guide these discussions. In larger implementations, you may want to plan out two working sessions per week---a 45 min to one hour session before your Bynder sync, and a short 15-30 min sync sometime after, just to make sure you are able to cover everything!

• Let us know any key dates. Big launch? Big campaigns? Sunsetting an old DAM? DAM Admin going on a leave? Let us know sooner than later, so we can plan! Tell us how you would like Bynder to be ready for that if it plays a crucial part in those initiatives/events.

• Expect that the work will continue. Building our your DAM is going to be an ongoing process, even post-Onboarding. The first 8-16 weeks (depending on your package) is really just there to give you the training wheels for Bynder. Once those are off, you're still going to continue to steer and pedal your way to a sleek and savvy Bynder portal.

There you have it--just a few things to consider and prepare for ahead of your implementation! Let us know if there’s anything else you would add to this list!