Digital Asset Management System (DAM)

A digital asset management (DAM) system is software that allows businesses to organize, distribute, collaborate on, and securely store digital files that make up a digital asset library. It improves the productivity of marketing teams and increases the ROI of content and creative programs.

What is a Digital Asset?

While almost any digital file can be managed within a DAM, organizations typically use a DAM only to store their digital assets – the files that bring immediate and long-term value. The most common digital assets include:

What Are the Core Features of DAM Systems?

Effective DAM systems offer four major features:

• Support for asset lifecycles and user roles. DAM systems work well with various types of content from all users through a unified interface tuned to user tasks across workflows. Hence, you can automate file routing, personalize interfaces, and match functionality to user roles. A reporting capability enables business and IT managers to track activity and improve workflows.
• Support for multiple formats and devices. Given the constantly growing range of content sources, DAM systems offer broad support for various formats, devices, destinations, and consumer types. Examples are large, unstructured data, e.g., multimedia files, scanned documents, digitized images, and electronic forms.
• Third-party integration. Third-party tools include content-management systems, social networks, and cloud-based platforms. Plus, DAM systems’ open architecture and API support translate to centralized processes, through which you can handle various file types and media, not to mention new and legacy apps and repositories.
• Powerful infrastructure. This feature alludes to the capacity for file transfers and physical storage, which are key for high performance and asset protection. Of primal importance are flexibility, scalability, reliability, high availability, and redundancy.

What Are the Benefits of DAM?

DAM offers numerous benefits, of which the seven below are the most noteworthy.

Organization

DAM systems store assets according to an intuitive hierarchy, which eliminates duplicate files while preventing data loss. Thanks to that capability, which is the main advantage, heterogeneous teams can access all creative, on-brand content that has been approved. What’s more, users can access digital assets in the unified repository from any location in real time. Collaboration then becomes a cakewalk, reducing back-and-forth communications and boosting productivity.

Rich Metadata

In DAM systems, a description in the form of metadata is attached to each file, making it searchable. The more keywords are in the description, the easier the search.

Brand Consistency and Integrity

Centralization of content means that you can keep your visual content and marketing assets up-to-date and consistent, leading to uniform quality and styling and preventing the use of unapproved or outdated assets. As a result, your brand image becomes stronger, more harmonious, and more professional even across multiple agencies and systems. According to a Research and Markets report, companies that maintain brand consistency are worth 20% more than companies that don’t. That’s a stark margin.

Efficiency

DAM systems foster productivity and efficiency by saving design teams time spent on searching for or adjusting digital assets so that those folks can focus on creation tasks. Simultaneously, employee collaborations are more smooth and faster, particularly due to the elimination of time-consuming, one-off design requests.

Security

Security concerns render sharing files, such as images and videos, on email problematic. By setting up access permissions for assets in a DAM system, you can control with confidence who can access which files and how.

Asset Usage Analytics

With the insights on file performance provided by analytics, you can make informed decisions for media-oriented campaigns. You can also see which assets are in use the most across campaigns and which ones are performing well. On top of that, you can leverage DAM tools to aggregate, compare, and interpret data from multiple sources.

Scalability

Site growth due to an ever-increasing number and diversity of media assets, which accompanies business growth, is no issue for DAM systems due to two major factors:

• The ability to handle a large volume of assets and users.
• Impressive uptime of the overall system.

Who Uses Digital Asset Management?

Internal Users

• Sales and Marketing. DAM facilitates collaboration among sales reps and marketers by giving them access to a centralized source of the latest branded material for presentations and pitches. Conveniently, the brand or media portal enables search, browsing, and download of assets from within or outside the internal network.
• Designers and Creators. In-house content creators like photographers and graphic designers can upload new content and access branded assets. Creators also benefit from integrations with popular project-management and design tools, e.g., Adobe Creative Suite.
• Developers and IT Professionals. Technical teams need a streamlined path for accessing assets and asset data while breaking down silos and connecting solutions. Robust APIs and SDKs from DAM systems with which to integrate critical systems are a tremendous plus.
• Legal experts. DAM systems help ensure compliance of rules and regulations by organizing and classifying assets. For example, tagging assets with expiration dates prevents use of out-of-date items.

    External Users 

• Partners and Contractors. You might collaborate with external partners and contractors to develop products, as well as strategize and implement marketing campaigns and services. Also, DAM systems ensure security of company assets, brand consistency, and compliance of standards.
• Clients. Occasionally, clients must access digital assets for projects or services.
• Agencies. With DAM systems, agencies can easily store, share, access, and edit assets, let alone submit files for client review or approval.

How to Start a Digital Asset Management Project

Every digital asset management initiative is going to take a different path to their goals, but all successful DAM projects started with these three steps:

1. Audit your existing assets and pains

Before looking at any DAM vendors, it’s important to understand how your company is currently operating. Look at where your assets are stored (on hard-drives, personal storage, legacy systems, etc.), the sizes, formats and volumes of your assets, and any processes that are in need of improvement. This step is key in understanding the scope of your project, and how much storage you actually need. In addition to analyzing your current needs, also consider any potential growth in the near future that needs to be accounted for.

2.  Map out your needed structure

After understanding how you currently operate, it’s important to map out how you’ll need your DAM platform to function. Plan which divisions, departments and users will benefit from accessing the DAM, and consider the level of access they will require, and any integrations they could benefit from (such as Adobe Creative Suite or Office365). During this stage, also consider the onboarding and support needed for each team, to ensure your vendor can meet your unique requirements. This is also the best time to think through the taxonomy you’ll use for organizing your assets inside the DAM, as well as understand best practices around searching, tagging and sharing assets.

3. Create a project roadmap

Most successful DAM projects have a roadmap with multiple short and long-term milestones. These milestones usually include vendor demos, creating a vendor shortlist, starting legal reviews, and onboarding. Develop a plan with realistic dates and stick to them to keep your DAM project moving along smoothly, and avoid any potential bottlenecks.