Overwhelmed with your project? Start with an asset inventory

A reader recently asked: "My company has not had a digital asset management system.  We are overwhelmed with the thought of a transition to such a system.  We have assets on file servers throughout the organization, our agencies have many of our assets, as do our printers.  How do we begin a plan for corralling our assets and building an organizational structure for them?"

It's easy to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of a project at the start when things look so fragmented and chaotic.  How to get started?  Begin by surveying your content.  Where is it, what kind of shape is it in, who owns it, is it up to date, does it contain metadata, is it redundant?