Why Digital Asset Management Is Important For Your Business

What Is Digital Asset Management?

Digital Asset Management (DAM) software organizes, stores, retrieves and manages the rights of an organization’s rich media. The system works by assigning metadata to the asset in the form of a tag, containing the name of the file, its format, content, and usage. Companies are starting to adopt digital asset management systems to centralize and distribute media across stakeholders.

A digital asset is a file that provides value to the company and is typically stored with metadata attached, which allows you to search for it easily. Examples of digital assets include photos, audio files, logos, graphics, animations, illustrations, and screenshots.

Some uses for digital assets are social media advertisements, website banners, eCommerce materials, promotional videos, and even packaging images and designs.

DAM Solutions Features Include

• Central Asset Repository—a DAM works as a digital library, providing a single, secure system to find the up-to-date approved assets for their projects. For instance, you can develop a workflow where assets need to be tagged and attached metadata before uploading.

• Workflow Management—the DAM helps your marketing team to manage their works in progress (WIPs) by facilitating the assigning, reviewing and approving of tasks.

• Digital Asset Distribution—you can easily share and deliver digital assets to individuals and teams through external links. It also allows distributing directly to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Who Can use a Digital Asset Management Solution?

There are several users within the organization who can benefit from using a DAM solution. When implementing a DAM software, it is important to discern the different level of permissions required by the different personnel.

The marketing and creative teams, such as photographers, editors and omnichannel are the ones that can benefit most from the solution since they need to access digital assets on a permanent basis. Sales teams will need access to approved assets for sales presentations and pitches.

Aside from the obvious choices, you should also consider the benefits of DAM for other departments that are less directly associated with marketing campaigns. For example, the packaging can use the DAM as a repository for their design assets. Even the legal department is involved in a DAM strategy implementation, as they provide and update the information about the assets legal rights.

Moreover, there are users outside the company who may also need to access your digital assets, and who will require access permissions. These include partners, agencies and distributors.
Why You Need a DAM Solution for Your Business

Studies have shown that companies that use DAM can save over $120,000 on workflow efficiency. Moreover, managing digital assets effectively strengthens brand consistency, increasing the worth of the company up to 20%. Other benefits of implementing a DAM solution include:

#1. Sharing and Collaboration

A DAM software makes easier to share digital assets whether within your company or third-party vendors. Statistics show that employees without DAM software spend five times longer looking for assets. Modern DAM solutions include asset tracking and visibility features to avoid spending hours looking for the right asset to share.

#2. CMS Integrations

Digital asset management systems consist of a content repository and a metadata schema to organize and search the assets. A Content Management System (CMS), on the other hand, include document management and web-based publishing.

#3. Access to All of Your Content

Most modern DAM software solutions provide visibility into your marketing workflows. That way, all stakeholders involved can have a clear vision of where are the assets in the processing funnel. For example, a photography editor can check if the images he sent for approval are being used or need retouching.

#4. Control Access and Permissions

You can use a DAM to control access to your assets to ensure only the approved versions are used. In addition, the system allows you to control employees permissions to protect sensitive data and images. With a DAM system in place, there is no more doubt about if an image is allowed to use or if the rights are still up to date. The software controls the licensing and usage rights for digital assets.

#5. Faster time to Market

DAM shortens the time needed to find assets and create new formats, allowing the marketing team to focus on addressing customer demands and market trends. The overall time you need to launch a new campaign is thus considerably reduced.

#6. Trims Unnecessary Costs

Instead of wasting time creating or buying new assets, a DAM enables you to reuse the digital assets you have, deciding quickly which can be altered to form a new version. The system allows you to easily search and provide specific content to external partners. Companies catering to customers distributed across multiple regions can find a DAM useful for managing the different versions adapted to each market and language. When using managed DAM services, there is also a reduction in unplanned downtime and support ticket costs.

#7. Drives ROI

A DAM optimizes the marketing process, minimizing time wasted looking and requesting for assets, as well as managing versioning and approvals, for example. Since it encourages collaboration, reducing costs, ultimately contributes to increasing the company ROI. 

The Bottom Line

Installing DAM software can help you strengthen the image of your brand and increase brand consistency, as well as speed up the process of producing and sending marketing content. Since the data volume is ever-increasing, keeping the data updated and flowing smoothly will help satisfy your company’s demands for meaningful and engaging content. 

Ultimately, implementing a DAM will give you a competitive advantage, enabling your organization to work more efficiently and capitalize on new marketing trends.