Due to this shift, one of the significant challenges for an organization today is to manage its digital assets. Digital support, in simple words, is a media collection meant for various purposes like PDF, graphics, spreadsheets, infographics, video files, presentations, and many other media formats.
The technology that seamlessly manages and organizes digital assets is Digital Asset Management (DAM). DAM makes digital assets easily accessible for all employees to research, implement, analyze and even learn new methods within the industry.
Digital Asset Management is a systematic approach to efficiently organizing, managing, storing, retrieving, and distributing an organization’s digital assets. DAM helps any organization create a centralized place from where they can access their media assets.
There are many industries and areas where digital asset management plays a vital role. Some of them are:
Tech Companies
Computing professionals
Fashion
Hospitality
Healthcare
FMCG
Educational institutes
Each of the industries has different purposes for managing digital assets that help businesses within the industry scale up to the next level using the most simplified and creative digital assets available to them.
How do DAM Systems work?
A DAM system can be implemented in the cloud, on-premises, or a hybrid setting. Let us understand the several steps which are involved in the use of a DAM solution:
1. Asset Creation
To improve document search and retrieval ease, standardized file formats and templates prepare the digital files for encoding. This happens even before the digital files are created.
2. Encoding and Indexing
The digital content is given attributes such as asset type, version, media type, and technology used to enable its identification. These attributes create an index that groups assets having common tags, which improves their searchability.
3. Workflows
The index that has been created can now be leveraged for rule-driven workflows. This enables process and task automation.
4. Version control
Workflow automation is critical to ensure that the most current asset is being utilized within an existing one. Version control ensures this as new workflows are established.
5. Governance through permissions
To protect the digital assets from theft, erasure, and accidental corruption, governance through permissions ensures that only those who have been granted access are able to use the asset in the way assigned to them.
6. Auditing
An internal audit to evaluate the effectiveness of DAM and to suggest areas of improvement is conducted regularly.
Why Does Your Tech Organization Need a Digital Asset Management Solution?
There are many requirements for DAM within a Tech organization in many departments and across multiple locations. Functional areas within a Tech company may have use for DAM for other purposes. Some of them are:
The development team may need DAM to store development plans, proprietary product designs, images, and planning materials.
The procurement team may use DAM to store information such as preferred vendor contact details, specifications, invoices, etc.
Branding teams utilize DAM to maintain and use assets within the organization and branding requirements.
The Human Resources team can rely heavily on DAM to manage employee records, payroll receipts, hiring requisitions, etc.
DAM Systems: Core Features and Functionality
Let us now delve into a typical DAM system’s core features and functionalities.
1. File Management
You can share media files anytime and anywhere on remote servers without worrying about the servers’ response time and overall performance. All the cloud servers used are budget-friendly and easy to manage, with DAM systems to share all media format files within the organization.
The time to search for various files is also lesser and gives you instant results. DAM systems have an amazingly structured file system, making it easy to access files and manage them in folders within a single library.
2. Automated Workflow
There are times when you are messed up with a bunch of files, wondering where to start searching for the most recent one. With DAM systems, you can now straightforwardly streamline the workflow.
Using an automated workflow feature, your team can monitor all the tasks simultaneously and prioritize them based on the project deadline and budget. As a result, you have the complete flow of each assignment your team handles efficiently.
3. Remote Proofing and Approvals
Each time your team prepares content, you need consistency with proofing and approving them. We all know that today the world is wholly digitized, and employees work from different parts of the country.
In such a scenario, it is necessary to have a seamless feature to manage proofing and approval work all at once. Therefore, the DAM system can control the edits and approval process within the team to avoid any miscommunication.
4. Digital Publishing
Another essential feature of a DAM system is digital publishing. When you have placed all the materials at one centralized location, it becomes convenient for the team to publish them at multiple sites using publishing tools stored in the same place.
Surprisingly, DAM systems can maintain all files in one place; you can take maximum advantage of their features and functionalities, such as digital publishing.
5. Security and Authenticated User Access
When your team works on different projects, there are data security concerns. If that data is lost or compromised, the consequences of such situations can be disastrous.
DAM systems have a secure storage capacity that protects all files from unauthorized access. As a result, DAM systems are secure to keep all your data loss and cybersecurity issues at bay.
6. Collaboration
One of the most impressive features of DAM systems is its collaboration feature. Multiple team members can access files simultaneously to accomplish each assignment on time without waiting for their turn. In addition, it helps users access digital content and share it among the team members to work on a single project.
This is all due to the files available in a centralized environment accessible for each user.
7. Brand Management
The key to success for a brand is its consistency over the online platforms. With the help of digital asset management, you can manage and retain your brand identity using efficient workflow and easy digital content access.
8. Media Asset Management
This is helpful to monitor how each media file is used each day. Here, you can also enable a user to get a more extensive preview of the enormous file size.
This readily helps over version control and avoids the loss of campaigns from the mainstream as soon as the new drive is created.
Digital Asset Management Systems: What Are the Options?
There are plenty of DAM systems available with different features & functionalities to select that suits your business. Let us list down some of the most prominently used:
Brandfolder
Canto
Digizuite
Bynder
Widen Collective
Adobe Experience Manager Assets
Image Relay
Conclusion
Tech companies have a lot of use for digital data that are required daily across business units, functional departments, and role-wise.
The DAM system comes to the rescue to ensure effective and efficient management of its digital assets. It is beneficial to manage all digital assets in a single place, from where all employees can access and use them for their various needs.
This centralization of assets enables organizations to find and reuse assets, duplicate workstreams and reduce production costs. In addition, a DAM system elevates automated business operations, ensuring lesser error and higher outcomes.
Whether your organization has a smaller or larger team size, digital asset management systems positively influence your productivity and digital content management within your organization.
But before moving with any of the DAM systems, make sure that it meets the required features, functionalities, and outcomes that you expect. This will simplify getting started with a plan and managing the critical digital asset for years to come.
About the Writer
Tim Ferguson is a writer and editor of MarketingDigest. He helps agencies with SEO, link building, content, online reputation management, and blogger outreach. He spends time learning more about digital businesses and getting better at them when not working.
Soon after Covid-19 struck the world, most organizations
Tim Ferguson is a writer and editor of MarketingDigest. He helps agencies with SEO, link building, content, online reputation management, and blogger outreach. He spends time learning more about digital businesses and getting better at them when not working.
