Dec. 16, 2024
Every organization produces a lot of content every day to sell or market its products or services. The proliferation of content creates some serious issues if you don&#;t have the right system in place to manage the related media assets like images, audios, videos, etc.
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Without the right Digital Asset Management solution, it becomes difficult for you to share the assets with internal and external users of the company. Also, you cannot help users to locate and access the exact assets whenever they need them.
By considering a Digital Asset Management platform, you can start managing the media assets from the moment they are created, and throughout the asset lifecycle. Ensuring the secured and structured management of your critical digital assets, DAM allows businesses to save time, effort, and resources to recreate, search, distribute, and retrieve the assets.
Before making your mind about any DAM solution, it is very important to get clarity on your business requirements. Every company has different customer demands, content needs, and feature set requirements. So, to pick the right DAM, you require a proper evaluation, planning, and guidance.
This post is a must-read for you if you want to know about how to select the right DAM for your company and what aspects you should take care of during the platform selection process.
Table of content
Let&#;s first focus on whether you require a DAM solution or not. Here&#;re the top challenges that you might have been facing in your day-to-day operations without a DAM system.
7 Signs that proves your organization needs a Digital Asset Management solutionHow do you manage your media assets presently? There are three most common ways to manage digital assets. Here you go.
If you are managing your assets through any of these methods, then it becomes a time-consuming task to find a single asset from such a huge data. There is no single way for your internal and external users to find the asset quickly, download them, and use them as per their specific requirements.
How DAM makes a difference?
DAM allows you to store, manage, and catalog all the data in a single place. So, it becomes easier for your teams and partners to find, download, share, and use the assets they want in a matter of seconds.
Say sayonara to myriads of long threads and file-sharing apps.
If everyone across your organization can access your digital assets, then it&#;s not the right way to manage indispensable assets. This causes you some serious issues like damaged and missing files.
To address this inefficiency, you need to define the access rights for your internal and external users to ensure only limited users can access your digital assets.
How DAM makes a difference?
Digital Asset Management solution enables you with features like user role and permission that allows you to define access rights for each user for digital assets.
For example; you have uploaded an image of a red background in your cloud storage. How could you search for that image? You probably save the image with the file name &#;21st January red background for a marketing campaign&#;.
Are you able to remember this file name after a couple of months? Or in your absence, will any other user be able to find it?
Of course, not.
Storage of digital assets in the cloud server, intranet, internet, and individual computer makes asset finding difficult and time-consuming.
How DAM makes a difference?
A renowned DAM platform allows you to manage, organize, and sort needed assets through thousands of files in seconds. It allows you to create a good metadata structure for your digital assets to find the assets even when you don&#;t know what exactly you&#;re looking for. Additionally, to simplify the asset searching, you can apply filters by author, category, date, type, and more.
Most of the time, only selective individuals have access to specific files. So, those individuals need to invest considerable time in sharing the asset files with others who need the assets but don&#;t have access to them.
How DAM makes a difference?
Why pass-through this pain when you have a more sophisticated way to share the asset quickly. Yes. I am talking about Digital Asset Management governance that allows you to define who can access what. DAM solution comes with built-in governance systems that allow you to define specific user groups with specific rights and provide granular control over file permissions.
You can share the digital assets with anyone regardless of your customers, external vendors, or internal teams with greater security.
The content creation process involves many steps including briefing, creation, storage, validation, enrichment, conversion, and distribution. During this process, you never know who needs to do what to which asset file.
How DAM makes a difference?
Implementation of Digital Asset Management enables you with the history feature that allows you to access the history of all your assets. This feature also helps you keep workflows under control and manage media files with precision.
Your team needs to work remotely in four scenarios.
1 &#; You are a multinational organization that has offices and employees across the world
2 &#; Your team members travel often
3 &#; You work with remote contractors and third party companies
4 &#; You might have other reasons for your employees work outside of your office
In all the above-listed cases, when it comes to sharing digital assets, it becomes an arduous task. To share digital assets, employees need to send several emails and wait until they receive a response from another party. This impacts negatively on their productivity, especially when your team needs to work in a different time zone.
How DAM makes a difference?
DAM eliminates this back and forth. It allows every authentic user of the solution who is working remotely to retrieve the assets quickly whenever and wherever needed, on any device.
Usually, graphic designers, photographers, marketing and sales teams, copywriters, content creators, etc. participate in the asset creation process. This list can be longer for you as per your content creation process. To manage digital assets effectively, you need a good process for collaboration.
How DAM makes a difference?
DAM solution allows you to annotate, tag a specific group or user, and store comments on what is required to be changed. This makes you sure that you are always using and working on the latest version of the digital asset as well as you can collaborate with the different stockholders in real-time remotely.
There are many more signs that you might be experiencing when it comes to digital asset management. Above I have covered the most common ones.
If you are dealing with any or many or all the challenges listed above or facing other issues related to Digital Asset Management, feel free to connect with our DAM experts.
Let&#;s discussDigital Asset Management is a process for storing, managing, organizing, and sharing digital assets securely and efficiently. Using a reliable DAM platform, you can perform this process seamlessly along with managing the user rights to ensure only users with permission can access the assets.
To get detailed insights about Digital Asset Management, read An Ultimate Guide to Digital Asset Management (DAM)
Know your objectives for Digital Asset Management implementationRather than selecting a Digital Asset Management platform randomly, I would suggest to make a well-planned decision by
In turn, the users and stakeholders help you in deciding the capabilities and components that are required to streamline and simplify your asset management processes.
Here&#;re some goals related to Digital Asset Management that you want or achieve for your organizations knowingly or unknowingly.
Are you trying to achieve the same business objectives? Let us help you understand how a Digital Asset Management solution meets your business goals.
Get in touchDigital assets, managed in a scattered way in different systems, won&#;t help companies to achieve efficiency. Implementation of a system where every individual has their own stash of images and/or documents will result in inefficiency, chaos, and waste.
Thus, every organization must have a centralized repository where they can manage and control all the digital assets with next-level security. This is what Digital Asset Management helps you with.
Using the built-in workflow management tools, Digital Asset Management helps organizations in the asset creation process. You might be thinking not to consider these tools as according to you they might be nice-to-have solutions.
If you have multiple agencies and/or departments working together, workflow management tools make the review, approval, and revision process faster and easier. It also simplifies the asset creation process by
Consideration of the workflow management tools enables you with more efficient and faster asset creation that eventually saves a significant amount of money.
The main objective of any organization for DAM implementation is to provide a way for its users to search and download the required digital assets on their own. Rather than wasting the time in responding to the asset-related requirements of marketers and creatives separately, DAM allows everyone to get the required assets on their own.
DAM saves time for the individuals who spend half of their time distributing and sharing digital assets with different departments, agencies, and partners. They focus more on productive tasks. This ultimately contributes to your ROI.
Along with managing the brand consistency, DAM allows employees to work independently by finding what they want, ensuring what they are using is the latest version, and promising that they are using the approved assets only.
An advanced DAM supports all the latest technologies. It not only allows you to store and manage the assets but also distributes and displays them attractively on any device regardless of screen size. To achieve this, the DAM contains the capabilities like intelligent resizing, adjusting, and cropping of assets on the fly.
Cloud-based DAM is trending due to its capabilities like sharing of assets and effective global collaboration.
DAM optimizes the digital assets and creates URLs for them. It utilizes Content Delivery Network for asset delivery to allow users to use the digital assets directly in mobile apps, websites, or other platforms. It allows users to access high-quality assets that also enables customers with fast loading.
Leverage the DAM capabilities of transforming the traditional file formats into the next-gen 3D models, image formats, 360-degree images, videos, and more. The built-in tools of the platform automatically resize, crop, transform, and transcode the version and creates multiple versions for different use cases.
DAM allows you to create different variations and layouts for the assets to meet the changing needs of websites, mobile apps, and marketing processes. The platform generates variants by providing resizing, cropping, and image effects automatically.
It also allows generating new assets from the existing ones. For example; using the AI capabilities of DAM, you can create a short preview of a video. All these happen within the DAM so you do not need external tools for asset editing or downloading.
This is one of the most important capabilities of the DAM that you must consider during the DAM section process. Make sure that the platform comes with built-in connectors that allow the solution to connect with different types of systems including
Do not miss to check the performance of the DAM before making a buying decision. The platform must be able to handle the heavy loads.
To check this, you can upload demanding files such as M4V video files with an H265 codec, TIFF files with 100+ megapixel, multilayer PDF files. Check if you could upload small JPEGs and a heavy video simultaneously and if the DAM platform contains multiple renders. Also, make sure the system handles concurrent downloads with five different users.
I would like to suggest you go for a Cloud/SaaS-based platform that allows you to build and implement dynamically scalable Digital Asset Management systems to ensure the excellent performance of the system.
Choose a DAM platform that has a web-based, user friendly, and seamlessly working user interface. There are many Digital Asset Management platforms available in the market that contain high-tech features and functionality but they have a steep learning curve that ultimately reduces productivity.
Do you want to implement a DAM solution that enables you with all the above listed common, functional, and non-functional capabilities?
Start a conversationDAM allows you to import assets either one by one or in bulk using convenient applications of images and metadata.
Asset security
After importing the digital assets, you should utilize DAM security privilege. The platforms ensure asset security with Access Control Lists (ACLs) and permissions that define which users can access or modify the digital asset based on their roles and responsibilities.
It allows brands to store and manage a large volume of creative assets and their metadata. Also, it facilities the users with fast retrieval of the asset.
Advanced DAM converts the image formats automatically as per the requirements and creates the native thumbnails, without smart cropping or resizing.
Well, you won&#;t find this ability in all the DAM. There are a few platforms that allow users for manual editing of documents and images in the interface.
Once you have assets in place, you can enrich them easily using the metadata and generating analytics on asset usage.
You can track relationships between assets and versions or variants of the original assets using the DAM. Asset finding, bundling, and management become easier for you and your users.
Each DAM system has its own structured process for working with assets that starts from asset creation, approvals, versions, to publishing.
Implementation of DAM enables you with easy ways to search the required assets quickly. You can search for assets through metadata, workflow stages, collections, and image attributes.
DAM allows users to preview, videos, images, or other digital assets before downloading them.
You can share the asset files with other creative users by using a link generated by the DAM.
Looking for a Digital Asset Management platform that allows you to perform end-to-end activities related to asset management and streamline your day-to-day business processes?
Talk to our DAM expertsProduct marketing
Local marketing
Print and offline marketing
eCommerce
Website
Want to discuss what else you can do with an advanced Digital Asset Management solution?
Let&#;s connectDefine custom workflows
A feature-rich DAM allows you to design and configure custom workflow as per your specific operational requirements.
Asset approval workflows
Automate your asset approval workflow using the DAM. Once the digital assets are ready to get approved, respective authorities will receive a notification that the asset is ready for approval.
Reduced human error
The automated workflow of asset management, asset approval, and marketing processes allows you to eliminate the overhead cost caused due to human error as well as save time for your team too.
Project management workflows
Utilizing the product management workflow, you can easily consolidate the files and processes you required for successful project completion. DAM allows you to manage all the needed digital assets in a single location and access them on the fly.
Complete control over the approvals
DAM facilitates you with approval and assigning capabilities to make sure that every piece of content that gets distributed physically and/or digitally is correct, accurate, and approved. It becomes easier for your marketing team to know how and where to track the campaigns they are working on.
Stronger brand presence
DAM allows your different teams to work together in multiple campaigns by managing the varied assets in a single repository. This helps you improve your brand consistency by spreading the same message across different output channels.
Consistency in creative assets and messaging helps you create a stronger impact of your brand on the customers. It also impacts your brand recall value as your brand stays top of the mind when a customer is determined to make a purchase.
Consolidate different platforms
A comprehensive DAM helps your team to complete a project by using all the required digital assets from a single source. Users from different departments know exactly which platform they need to use for the required assets. This saves them from performing an irritating process of finding the right information by logging in and out of multiple platforms.
Allowing you to manage all your projects from concept to customer effectively, DAM enables you with full control over each and every action. It saves time for your team for switching between various platforms. And, most importantly, it reduces the cost that you spend on platforms that you may not need any longer due to the ultramodern capabilities of DAM.
Advanced search capabilities
A user from your team with the access rights can use the DAM and search for the needed assets quickly and easily using the features like folder categorization, search-by color, keyword search (just like Google), and more.
Leveraging the search capabilities of a DAM, the users won&#;t spend extra time in finding the assets and being confused about where the required asset is stored in the solution.
Boost team productivity
DAM eliminates the assets search and usage-related issues for your associates as they know where they need to go to find the exact asset they are looking for.
Rather than interacting across different users and channels as well as searching through multiple platforms, they can use DAM to get the required assets. Enabling your teams with a streamlined process of asset management, DAM improves their productivity.
Simplify asset reuse
Instead of recreating or buying the images from scratch, DAM allows you to check if you have any images in your solution that you can re-use in your on-going project.
It again provides you benefits of time and money. You can save the time of your team that they spend on creating additional design and money spent on downloading the images from the stock photo sites when you already have an appropriate image that can be repurposed.
Prevention against legal problems
DAM provides you with features like digital right management that provide you protection against the issues like license abuse and asset misuse.
It provides you total control over your digital assets where you can define when and who can download the assets. Thus, the platform reduces the possibilities of license abuse and asset misuse. Eventually, it reduces the cost that you invest to deal with the legal issues.
Single source of truth for all your assets
DAM is the single source of truth for all your digital asset-related requirements. It helps you overcome challenges with siloed departments. When all the digital assets are stored in a single location, it becomes easy for your teams to collaborate effectively and focus more on the success of the campaign.
Asset and project management integration
Improved and efficient processes are one of the major benefits of DAM implementation. Consolidate your assets and projects in a single location in order to improve the efficiency of your project and asset management process.
Do you want to leverage all the benefits mentioned above? We would love to provide a detailed understanding of a robust DAM platform that improves your business operations and ROI.
Contact usPlenty of Digital Asset Management platforms are available in the market that offers a wide variety of features. But, to select the best one, you should focus on the outcome that the platform delivers to your organization and not the features.
During the DAM selection process, make sure you are clear about the key purpose, primary users, internal user stories, metadata, file types, API requirements and integration, distribution channels, and budget.
Before starting to search for a reliable DAM, it is very important to understand your key business objective for considering the DAM. And, during the selection of a DAM platform and vendor, keep this objective in your mind to ensure that you end up selecting the best fit for your digital asset management needs.
Administrator
You need to elect a person as an administrator of the DAM solution. They will be responsible to keep updating digital assets, ensure everything is well organized, and make changes as and when required.
Identify this person during the DAM selection process only so they can participate in the training and decision-making process during the implementation.
Departments
Determine the users who are going to use the DAM on a regular basis in order to enable your organization with operational and business benefits. Define the departments in your company who will be using the DAM.
To gain maximum advantages out of a DAM solution, you need to conduct interviews of varied users from different departments to get a profound understanding of how DAM implementation helps them streamline asset management operations and improve productivity.
Number of users
Note that everyone that uses the assets is not considered as DAM users.
Yes, you heard it right.
Who are your users?
People who need to access the DAM to retrieve and search for the images as well as assign, approve, and complete the projects are your DAM users. You need to be clear about the number of users as it impacts the pricing of DAM.
Your authorized users can share digital assets with the people who are not using the Digital Asset Management system.
Provide the user information to your solution vendor when you view demos.
Define the ways that DAM is beneficial to your business. Also, determine how it will address your existing operational and business challenges. This information helps you to check the potential of the DAM solutions when you take the demos of different Digital Asset Management platforms.
Think about the relevant user stories by contemplating the below-listed elements:
Ask the DAM vendor if they enable you with the Digital Asset Management solution that addresses the issues that you are facing in current processes as mentioned in your provided user stories.
Metadata is an essential part of a DAM as it contains the information about each asset and makes the assets searchable and configurable to your existing workflows. Before creating metadata for your DAM solution, you need to check out
Here&#;re the most common types of metadata
You might be using varied digital assets such as images, videos, audio, and documents in different file types. While selecting a DAM, make sure your vendor provides you a solution that allows you to manage your asset seamlessly with your preferred file type.
Here&#;s the list of the most common file types that are usually supported by all the leading Digital Asset Management platforms.
DAM solutions should have proper APIs and integration in place to create a seamless working experience for your team and streamline the processes they are working with.
Thus, Digital Asset Management is usually used with some other systems as it is very rare that any organization needs a solution just to store and manage digital assets. Most of the time companies integrate it to manage product-related or business-related digital assets.
Implementations of DAM enables you with multiple possibilities listed below:
Here&#;re the few solutions with which DAM is widely integrated and used.
Product Information Management (PIM)
Product Information Management is used to manage a wide variety of products in a centralized location. PIM also allows them to market and sell the product through websites or eCommerce.
Integrating the DAM solution with your PIM system, you can manage the product-related videos, images, audios, documents, and many more digital assets in the DAM solution.
Content Management System (CMS)
CMS is considered the best marketing platform that allows you to promote the products or services related content to inform the customers about your offerings.
Integrating DAM solutions with CMS, you can create, assign, annotate, and compare the content versions as well as publish the content across multiple digital platforms. Thus, in some of the CMS solutions, DAM is the necessary requirement.
Digital Experience Platform (DXP)
Digital Experience Platform allows brands not only to manage the content but also the marketing related activities from a single platform.
DXP and DAM integration allows the companies to manage creative digital assets related to different marketing campaigns in a centralized location and use them as and when required.
Digital Commerce Platform
Yes, I am talking about your online store where you sell and promote your products or services.
Integrate DAM with your Digital Commerce Platform to manage all your offering related digital assets in a single location. DAM is highly used by almost all the B2B, B2C, and B2B2C organizations to ensure logical and structured asset management.
Master Data Management (MDM)
Master Data Management solutions allow organizations to manage all types of business data including products, services, marketing, sales, finance, accounts, human resource, employees, customers, and more.
Integrating DAM with MDM you can manage all digital assets like pictures, excel files, documents, videos, etc. in a single platform.
Project Management System
DAM contains project management capabilities too. It allows you to manage your marketing projects from scratch starting from concept to customer. So while selecting a DAM, don&#;t forget to discuss it with your vendor.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Almost every organization uses Enterprise Resource Planning software to manage varied business data. Mostly, it allows to manage sales, procurement, and production-related information.
Integrating DAM with ERP, you can facilitate your sales team with the latest marketing collaterals, the procurement team with the quotation-related terms and conditions, and the production department with managing the documentation of guidelines and instructions to perform certain production processes.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Customer Relationship Management solution saves all the customer-related information for an organization. Usually, customers share the requirements documents, pictures, and videos to convey what problems they are facing and what solutions they are looking for.
DAM allows you to manage all these documents, images, videos, and other digital assets that you have received and sent to the customers in a centralized repository.
Others
If you want to integrate the DAM for other third-party software or applications, then there you have multiple options to choose from. You can integrate with any of your existing enterprise systems and third-party applications to automate and streamline the digital asset management process.
Once the assets get approved, you can use them for printing, digital channels, sharing to internal and external dealers, marketing, and packaging. Define your preferred distribution channel on which you want to deploy your assets to gain maximum benefit of DAM. Digital Asset Management solution allows you to work for any, many, or all the channels listed below.
Before sending an asset from the DAM for printing, check out if there are approval workflows that are aligned with the printed materials process and what file types are available with you in DAM for that particular asset.
Digital platforms
You can store and manage the digital assets that you want to distribute across all your customer touchpoints in DAM. The platform allows you to establish a workflow for asset approval, scheduling and reporting. Thus, it provides you an opportunity for consolidating the programs in a single location.
Sharing with external dealers
Are you working with the external dealers to distribute your approved assets? Then, you need to consider a DAM that contains advanced features like rights management and assets sharing to improve asset time-to-market.
Marketing channels
All the companies are using digital assets for marketing campaigns and promotions. If you want to implement a DAM to fulfill this purpose, then the platform enables you with Marketing Asset Management capabilities where you are allowed for creating, editing, approving, versioning, distributing, and analyzing the digital assets.
Packaging channels
DAM allows you to create, manage, and approve the assets for packaging related media assets. Check with your Digital Asset Management solution vendor how they help you to improve the packaging process through packaging asset management. Make sure they offer advanced packaging focused integrations.
Want more information on dam construction companies? Feel free to contact us.
The most important for any business is the budget. Isn&#;t it?
Make sure to discuss the pricing of the DAM to check whether it fits into your budget or not. Along with investment you need to get clarity on ROI aspects too. The platform must increase your income after a certain time either by improving productivity or by reducing overhead costs.
The detailed understanding and analysis of the Digital Asset Management system ensure that you gain maximum ROI with all your expected features that are suitable for your budgetary constraints as well.
If you are not sure about your DAM requirements but you have clarity on your business needs and want to get clarity on technical aspects
Connect with our DAM expertsWhen you have plenty of assets in your DAM, searching for the right asset quickly is the biggest challenge. By managing your digital assets in the DAM, you can leverage simplified asset search, navigation, and organization.
Taxonomy
Taxonomy allows you to classify and organize your assets and related information. You can also define the structure of your asset information using the DAM. So, make sure your solution vendor provides you a Digital Asset Management that has sophisticated taxonomy capabilities.
Metadata
Metadata represents information attached to the assets. It is very essential as it makes your content searchable. You can determine metadata based on the understanding of how you are going to use your assets.
Categories
Define the categories for your assets based on how people used to search for assets in your organization. Usually, they search for the asset by entering the brand, SKUs, product identification number, color, and more.
Create a list of categories you want to consider in your DAM solution and ask the solution provider whether they can include this category in the system.
The Digital Asset Management solution should be flexible and scalable to meet your frequently changing business needs and achieve your specific organizational objectives. Digital Asset Management solution can be deployed in three ways
Examine your business goals and DAM requirements to make the right choice for your business.
SaaS/Cloud
SaaS/Cloud-based DAM platforms are highly in demand as it enables your organization with the benefits of convenience and security.
On-premises
On-premise DAM allows you to drive your own software updates on your internal network. But you need to be dependent on your solution vendor to have full control over the system as they take care of the network connection, hardware, and initial configuration of the platform in your network.
But, the major benefit is you have all rights to run software updates and make required modifications in the system as and when required.
Hybrid
Hybrid is the right choice for companies who do not want to utilize the capabilities of SaaS/Cloud or on-premise models fully but want to consider specific elements of both the platforms. As the word itself says, the Hybrid Digital Asset Management solution enables you with the benefits of both types of models.
Let&#;s have a quick comparison of SaaS/Cloud, on-premise, and hybrid Digital Asset Management platforms so you can make the right choice.
Difference between SaaS, On-premises & Hybrid
Workflow plays an important role in any DAM as it gives you an understanding of how you can create, manage, consolidate, and distribute digital assets in different systems and multiple customer touchpoints.
When it comes to workflow management, you need to check whether the Digital Asset Management solution vendor provides you the custom or standard workflow as well as discuss the workflow usability with them too.
Custom workflows vs. standard workflows
Most of the Digital Asset Management platforms come with standard workflows that are built-in. But there are a few platforms that allow you to create a custom workflow for your Digital Asset Management system. It is better to go with the platform that provides custom workflow and gathers information on any associated implementation differences.
Usability
Check the workflow of the DAM and analyze how it is easy to configure, implement, and edit. The usability of the workflow is defined on the basis of the scalability and adaptability of the platform.
Digital asset import and upload
Before starting to upload the digital assets in the Digital Asset Management solution, it is good to get complete clarity about the asset uploading and importing capabilities of the platforms. It should contain various capabilities such as automated metadata, drag-and-drop uploads, uploading multiple files, file size capabilities, and editable metadata.
Asset storage space
Get the idea of how many assets you have right now that you want to shift to the DAM. Also, analyze how frequently and what amount of assets you need to upload in the solution. Once you have this data, discuss with the solution provider whether the solution is capable to fulfill your asset uploading requirements.
Data migration
After the DAM implementation, you need to migrate all your assets that are stored in disparate systems and local systems in the DAM. So, you need to do some homework where you need to check
It is crucial for you to understand the asset migration capabilities and process of the DAM platform before selecting the DAM.
Want to migrate and store your asset data from the disparate systems to a DAM and build a centralized repository of digital assets?
Let&#;s start a conversationExternal file sharing
DAM contains file-sharing capabilities and allows you to send the asset files to the people who need them. These people could be external users as well who need the assets but they don&#;t have access to the DAM for direct downloading of needed assets.
Moreover, the Digital Asset Management solution allows you to create collections of digital assets and share them with external users. But, while selecting a DAM, you need to discuss how to define permission for sharing the assets files with external users with your solution vendor.
Single Sign-On (SSO) integration
Talk with your vendor about user authentication options available with the DAM platform they offer. There is a Single Sign-On functionality available in many Digital Asset Management systems that allow users to sign in into the system with their corporate login credentials instead of using separate login to keep track of only authenticated users access the solution.
User roles and permissions
To ensure the security of your digital assets, it is very essential the DAM allows you to control the access rights based on user roles and permissions attached with each role. Integration of user roles and permission feature, you can have complete control over your digital assets and you have the right to decide who can edit, view, and organize the assets.
Once you select a DAM you are going to use that platform for years. So it is very important to get an understanding of the scalability of the solution. Make sure that the platform can evolve as your business grows.
Accessibility
Create a list of users who are going to operate the system locally or globally. While selecting a DAM, make sure it consists of flexible accessibility options to ensure all your local or global users can seamlessly operate the solution and perform their tasks.
Language
Implement a Digital Asset Management solution that enables you with multi-lingual interfaces. It should allow users to create, manage, and distribute the digital assets in the native languages of targeted regions. It plays a key role in attracting your target audience available in different countries.
Globalization
Define your business goals and requirements for global expansion. Discuss those goals with your solution provider and understand how the Digital Asset Management platform helps you meet your international/global requirements.
Security
Security is the most important aspect for any software system and so for Digital Asset Management platforms as well. Go with the DAM solution that ensures you the high-end security standards for the safety of your critical digital assets.
International
Leverage digital rights and licensing to set your digital assets to adhere to embargo dates and different specifications related to international permissions.
Expiration dates
DAM allows you to define the expiration date for each asset. This eliminates the process of removing the assets manually from the Digital Asset Management system when the asset is no longer in use. Also, it ensures the users are using those assets only which are eligible for use.
Terms of use
Create terms of use that all the users need to agree to before downloading any asset from the Digital Asset Management solution.
By managing the digital assets in the DAM, you can allow your creative and functional teams to make the required edits in the assets that are going to be used for packaging and non-packaging purposes such as marketing collaterals for print or digital use.
An advanced Digital Asset Management platform allows organizations to sync the images with the desktop in order to edit and enrich the digital assets on the go. As your files are seamlessly synced in the background, your creative team needs to work on their desktop only.
Creative collaboration
In a Digital Asset Management solution, when a creative is assigned to a task, they will receive an notification. They can open the assets and start working on the assigned task.
In some of the platforms, you can utilize the sharing and synchronization capabilities of the system that allows the creative team to open the assets directly in their preferred third party software like Adobe application and start working on it right away. They do not need to work in the Digital Asset Management system.
Analytics and audit logs
Using DAM, you can publish the assets on the different output channels. Not only that, you can track the performance of each asset and understand which asset performs the best. With the help of an audit log, you check which assets have been downloaded and check the rights associated with them.
Automated workflows
Enabling you with automated workflows, DAM allows you to set appropriate sequences of the actions for your different marketing projects. These actions could be attaching appropriate images, due date, and assigning the creator to the project.
Publishing platforms
After the completion of the asset approval process, you can schedule to publish them on different sales and marketing channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc.
Process control
Once you have assigned the project, you have a dashboard where you can have a full overview of the project completion status. You can check if the project is on track and meeting the deadline as well as see the bottleneck that slows the business processes.
Asset markup
Some Digital Asset Management platforms provide this feature to brands. It notifies them when the creative has completed the first draft of the design. You can review the assets and markup them with required revisions. Annotate the assets to describe the changes and edits you want to make and then provide them to the creatives for revisions.
Once you receive the new version of the asset, you can view both versions side by side and compare them in order to check the difference between the versions.
Notification
DAM allows you to set up campaigns so that your teams are informed when you assign them a project or when an asset is ready for approval. Moreover, when any user downloads an image, you will be notified due to the copyright specific licensing limitations to control asset use.
Are you looking for the right DAM platform that can tackle your project management related challenges and requirements effectively?
Contact our teamWhen you have multiple options, it is quite challenging to find the right one. There are multiple Digital Asset Management platforms available in the market and to select the best fit for your organization.
To check the potential of the Digital Asset Management solution, you need to ask a few essential questions to your solution vendors whom you have shortlisted. Compare the answers provided by the different solution vendors and select the best platform for you.
Here are the most common but most important questions that you must ask the vendors.
Got the answers to the above-listed questions? Let us help you in suggesting the best DAM platform that meets all asset management related objectives.
Talk to our DAM expertsCredencys has extensive experience working with Pimcore for developing a robust Digital Asset Management solution as per the specific business needs of every organization. It offers a wide range of feature sets that suit your basic and advanced requirements for digital asset management.
To learn about the hidden capabilities of Pimcore&#;s DAM, feel free to book a 30 minutes free consultation with our DAM experts.
If you're a digital asset manager, marketing or communications manager, you probably spend a lot of your day trying to keep control of your organisation's creative assets: videos, images, brand assets and associated documents.
Do any of these situations sound familiar?
If so, you could probably benefit from Digital Asset Management (DAM) software.
In this guide we're going to look at what DAM software actually is, the problems it solves and some questions to ask a vendor before making a buying decision.
Digital Asset Management (DAM) software is an effective way of organising digital files in a centralised location - a 'single source of truth' - making it easy to store, use and share assets.
DAM systems are most commonly used for managing media assets, such as photos, videos and logos, but they can also be used to store any type of digital file.
An increasing number of organisations, from SMEs through to multinational blue chip companies, are making the switch to dedicated DAM software and taking advantage of the many benefits it offers versus cheaper alternatives.
A dedicated Digital Asset Management platform solves a wide range of common issues affecting DAM and brand managers. Here are just four of the most important that a DAM like ResourceSpace can solve.
Sharing digital assets with internal and external stakeholders sounds easy, right? Simply download it from whatever file storage software you use and send it over.
You probably know it's often more complicated than that.
Sending large files, or a large number of files, is impossible over because of attachment file size limits. Even third-party apps like WeTransfer cap how much you can send unless you pay for the premium version.
A DAM offers a fast and secure way of sharing multiple large assets. You'll be able to generate sharing URLs that can be accessed quickly with no need to download the file, while you can also create specific URLs for sharing with external users and set optional access restrictions.
Having a dedicated central repository for all your digital assets, with each user having access to what they need, will also significantly reduce the number of requests you receive for different files.
One of your most important jobs as a digital asset manager is to manage the copyright and licensing agreements that accompany your images, videos and other files. You might only be able to use an image for a certain period of time, or you might be restricted to where you can publish a video. The right to use someone's likeness (a picture or video) is particularly an issue when it comes to images of children.
A Digital Asset Management platform should include some form of license management, and automatically notify you or lockdown the file when permissions end. Your DAM will also make it easy to find relevant licenses because they'll be associated directly with the files they relate to. You'll no longer have to dig through folders on your local machine or Google Drive to find them.
If you rely on external content contributors, for example graphic designers or videographers, it can be difficult to get them all to stick to a single process. They'll share files with you in different ways or send them to various team members, meaning it's hard to make sure everything has been approved and to keep track of where certain assets are stored.
However, with a DAM all of your external stakeholders simply upload their assets to a single location. The digital asset manager will have visibility of all uploads and be able to approve accordingly. This ensures a single, clear and logical process for uploads from external stakeholders.
You'll also be able to restrict access to those people so they'll only have access to what they need, while you can set passwords for specific external uploads too, ensuring no one can upload a file who doesn't have permission to do so.
A common frustration for digital asset managers is spotting outdated brand assets being used on marketing and sales collateral. Unfortunately, when you don't have a single location for all your branded assets, it's hard to be sure which is the latest version of a file.
A DAM makes this confusion a thing of the past.
Everyone who requires branding assets will know where to find them, and you'll have complete control over what they can access.
Time-limited sharing links also ensure that stakeholders won't be able to simply bookmark a link to an asset that eventually becomes outdated, instead having to re-request the file.
If your organisation is already using a solution like Google Drive, Dropbox or Microsoft SharePoint for file storage you might be thinking you don't need to invest in a dedicated DAM solution. Some of the companies we speak to even think that those platforms are DAM systems.
Although there are some similarities, these solutions are nowhere near as feature rich as dedicated DAM solutions. The likes of Google Drive and Dropbox can be used to store files, but that's about it. By comparison, Digital Asset Management software functionality includes:
Ahead of choosing a DAM vendor, ask these seven questions of the provider and yourselves to ensure you're getting the best solution for your needs.
Your digital asset library can grow quickly, so it's important that whatever DAM you invest in has room to grow without frequent increases in cost. You also need to think about this in terms of team members. For example, you might only need two active users at the moment, but what about when your team expands?
Make sure you are clear on the points at which your price would increase based on asset storage as well as users.
This might be the most important question you ask.
Your DAM isn't just a place to store stock photos or images that are already publicly available on your website or social media platforms. There'll also be digital data that needs to be kept private or that has copyright restrictions. With this in mind, you need to know the platform you're investing in is secure.
Ask about all of the following:
Some DAM software providers offer solutions that need to be installed and run on your organisation's computers, whereas others host their software remotely over the internet.
The latter, known as cloud software, can often give you more flexible usage options simply because it's not tied to a particular location or machine.
Cloud software can be accessed from anywhere in the world, which is ideal if you have users in multiple locations, or out in the field. It also requires no IT infrastructure or expertise to set up and run, as the software vendor will manage its operation on your behalf.
Cloud software is much easier to update, too; remote technical support and upgrades can be implemented without disrupting your business operations, whereas on-premise technical support involves much more intensive resources.
Often companies that have limited in-house IT support, or who need to know they can access rich media files 24/7 from any location, find cloud software solutions much better suited to their organisation. It is also more likely that your vendor partner is ISO compliant, meaning cloud-based solutions meets the latest industry security standards.
Most DAM vendors provide proprietary software, whereas ResourceSpace is open source - but what's the difference, and what does it mean for you?
Open source software providers make the source code freely available. This means that anyone can adapt and enhance it if they have a specific need that's not being currently met.
By contrast, proprietary software is locked by the vendor who retains complete control over the functionality of the solution.
There are a number of benefits to open source DAM software:
Many DAM vendors claim to have a solution that works for organisations in any sector, but you could be better off working with a partner who truly understands the needs of your industry.
For example, charities often need access to critical media files urgently when they are responding to a humanitarian crisis, or they need to give volunteers in remote locations the ability to upload photos and videos.
In the museum sector, meanwhile, many curators are already using programmes such as The Museum System (TMS) or Emu to catalogue artefacts, and want a rich media management solution that can integrate photo and video data with the information held by those systems.
Equally, product marketers need DAM software that can be easily accessed and used by multiple stakeholders inside and outside their organisation, including suppliers, so it must be intuitive to operate.
If you're considering multiple DAM vendors, talk to them about their understanding of your organisation's unique needs, and their experience working with other companies in your sector. Ask them to share examples of previous projects that they feel are relevant to what you're trying to achieve as proof of their industry expertise.
Some DAM systems offer a huge range of features, often with additional costs attached, but do you actually need them? Putting together a list of non-negotiable criteria will help you get the best value for money from the DAM.
Here are five essential DAM requirements you won't want to compromise on:
Metadata is at the heart of Digital Asset Management. It's how you organise and search for your assets, and if the software doesn't use it intelligently it'll seriously limit the value of the platform.
The more sophisticated the use of metadata, the easier your DAM will be to manage.
There are various pricing models used by DAM providers. For example, with ResourceSpace the software itself is free to use with no usage restrictions. You simply pay for customer and technical support, as well as increased cloud storage when required.
However, other vendors will charge monthly fees and scale up costs based on required features. If the software packages are rigid, you might end up paying significantly more for the use of a single feature you need from the next package up.
We'd recommend only investing in a DAM that offers either a free trial or demo, but ideally both. Don't take the vendor's word for it when they talk about feature capabilities or insist their software is perfect for what you need.
All DAM providers should be able to give a demo at least, so insist on seeing the features you need in action.
Whether or not a new DAM will be adopted successfully in your organisation often comes down to the onboarding process and initial vendor support.
Speak to your shortlisted vendors about how much help they can provide in getting set up, if they can provide long term support, and the costs involved with this.
Some vendors will set you up with your DAM and send you on your way. Sometimes that's all organisations need, especially if they have a DAM specialist on the team.
However, even if you think you don't require post-sales support now, this doesn't mean you won't at some point in the future. Think about what would happen if the person responsible for managing and maintaining your organisation's DAM left the business (even if that's going to be you). How would the business continue to get the best from the platform without that person's experience and knowledge? This is where on-demand customer support would be invaluable.
Digital Asset Management platforms should be constantly improving and evolving. What's standard now won't necessarily be adequate in a few years time.
Ask about the recent changes made to the software, and if they have a published development roadmap.
We make our future development plans openly available, as well as posting to our blog whenever a new version of ResourceSpace is released.
Making your Digital Asset Management process more efficient is usually the top priority. However, each department may have a different idea about what that looks like.
Have conversations early on to make sure that the software you're considering can fulfil what you need and meet everyone's expectations.
Your decision will be based on how the software solves your main problems. For example, inefficient workflows, security concerns or poor searchability. Start by documenting everyone's ideas and objectives so that you can come up with a coordinated plan to evaluate each proposed DAM solution.
Most organisations deal with a mix of internal and external parties. Marketing agencies may outsource freelancers, while museums and galleries have to share resources with academics and patrons. Depending on their seniority or role requirements, internal stakeholders may need different editing rights and permissions.
It's essential to identify who will be using your DAM, their connection to the organisation, and their location--remote or on-site. This will help you shortlist the DAM software solutions that allow for more complex user access specifications.
Videos, photographs, audio files and documents are just some of the different digital assets you might need to manage and organise with your DAM - and these resources are likely to come in different formats and be in various categories as your library expands.
Build a scalable digital asset management plan by identifying the asset types you already make use of, as well as what might be included in the future. Some DAM software solutions will be better suited to images, while others may have greater multimedia functionality. Be sure to ask and check with the provider that they have experience in serving your particular digital asset requirements.
At ResourceSpace, we're used to onboarding clients with varying degrees of DAM experience. Some have outdated legacy systems and need a complete overhaul. Others are looking to integrate with existing digital asset management platforms, while others have no DAM or similar system in place at all.
Perhaps you're taking the opportunity to streamline your organisation's workflows and introduce new processes that are going to make significant improvements. You'll need a strategic migration plan to ensure everything happens on time and within budget--this includes how you'll train users and build their confidence in using the new DAM system.
Some DAM systems come with plenty of impressive tools and features--but are they beneficial to your business? Having a list of non-negotiable criteria will help you get genuine value for money from your DAM provider--rather than feature-rich software that doesn't necessarily help your organisation.
To help you, we've outlined five essential DAM requirements you won't want to compromise on:
In there will be an even greater need for organisations to optimise their digital asset management. Consider what changes are in store for your sector and how your DAM system will support you to grow as your needs change.
A critical feature that you need to assess is the user experience (UX). Will your team find the platform easy to use? Our Knowledge Base walks you through common tasks and explains how you can get the most from the features.
Metadata tools are also becoming increasingly more sophisticated, so be sure to choose a DAM system that can evolve to improve search accuracy and reporting.
Once you've put together a list of potential DAM solutions, we recommend having a look at our Digital Asset Management Comparison Checklist.
Choosing the right DAM for your organisation is tricky, but that's not the only challenge you need to overcome - you also need to secure buy-in for the software from senior stakeholders.
First, you need to identify exactly who you need to secure buy-in from, and it won't just be your manager.
There'll be groups of stakeholders that need to be invested in the DAM because, even if they're not decision makers, they'll be users of the system. If they're not bought into it, they won't adopt it effectively.
List the groups of stakeholders and what their specific challenges are. You can then prepare a business case with tailored scenarios for each group.
When building your DAM's business case there are several steps to consider:
The foundation of any successful business case is the research and preparation. You're much more likely to win over decision-makers if you have a firm grasp on existing processes, operating costs and how investment in a new system will deliver ROI.
When it comes to securing buy-in from the whole organisation, start with some key voices who'll support your business case and act as advocates of the system. This could be members of the creative, marketing, PR, sales or IT teams, and as long as you've got a solid business case that solves their challenges, they'll be on board.
You'll probably have a long list of benefits of the DAM you've selected, but it's a good idea to identify the ones that are most relevant to your organisation - especially those benefits that senior management will care about the most - like changes to day-to-day operations and how costs can be reduced.
Work out how much time your new DAM can save your organisation, and then how much money it'll save you over the course of a year.
Streamlined processes will save money by reducing wasted admin time, improving security and increasing efficiency.
Make sure you're not making these common mistakes when deciding on the right Digital Asset Management vendor for your business.
One of the main reasons for investing in a DAM solution is to gain visibility of your assets and manage them effectively. However, it's going to be very difficult to get to this point if you don't start off by working out what's wrong with your current asset management strategy.
Take stock of all current assets before making the switch. Where are they, who's managing the process currently, and how are they categorised?
Organisations that don't audit their digital assets ahead of migrating to the new DAM will find their processes are just as disorganised as before.
Don't just purchase from the first vendor you find. Even if it's us! You need to be sure that the DAM you invest in is right for you. This means considering the problems you want to solve and asking the questions we've listed above.
Check out our Digital Asset Management Comparison Checklist
A successful DAM has metadata at its heart. It's what allows for logical categorisation (in many different ways) and makes it easy for users to locate the assets they're looking for.
If you don't take the importance of metadata seriously you'll end up not collecting the right metadata, not structuring it properly, or not collecting it at all.
Sometimes the total cost of ownership of a DAM isn't as clear cut as it might appear. What's more, not all DAM vendors are transparent with their prices.
With ResourceSpace you only pay for cloud storage above 10GB and technical support if it's required. However, other providers will also charge for:
Make sure you know exactly what you're paying for, and what will incur more charges, before you invest in a DAM.
The biggest threat to your DAM's success is a lack of buy-in from the people who will be using it on a regular basis.
In our experience, most of the issues arise when the person responsible for implementing the system hasn't involved the wider team in the decision process.
If there's a free trial let them try it out; if there's a sales demo get them on the call. The key is to get them invested in the DAM early on, while comprehensive training on how to use it is also essential.
Are you interested in finding out more about how a dedicated Digital Asset Management platform will benefit your organisation? Our DAM experts are always happy to help.
Alternatively, you can launch your free ResourceSpace instance within minutes. Simply complete the sign-up form on the link below and you're ready to go. It's completely free with no usage limits, so what have you got to lose?
Launch your free DAM system now >> No credit card required
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