Is your company prepared for the digital asset management (DAM) wave sweeping across all industries? Research and Markets’ 2023 Global Digital Asset Management report says North America will have the largest DAM market size growth by 2028.
Let’s look at the benefits of DAM and how to implement the perfect digital asset management solution.
Why Should Companies Use Digital Asset Management Solutions?
To understand how digital asset management works, think of it as a software-powered, multilayered system of creating, managing, sharing, and tracking digital assets. It’s a one-stop location from which a business controls who has access to its digital assets, how long they can access the assets, what they can do with each asset, etc.
Companies that invest in a DAM system benefit from, among others:
1. Time and Cost Savings
Without a DAM platform to manage company assets, organizations waste time and resources tracking where all their assets may be scattered in the expansive cloud-supported digital world. If the company does not have data recovery expertise, it will need to hire experts to salvage what’s recoverable.
It’s not unusual for some assets to get lost or misplaced, and the organization must recreate or replace them. A digital asset management solution solves this challenge, saving the company time and money.
2. Well-Organized Digital Assets
DAM software keeps all of the company’s digital assets in one location, so authorized personnel can access them easily and quickly. Everyone in the company knows where to look whenever they need a specific asset. The DAM system has a search feature that helps users locate assets effortlessly. For new employees especially, this makes orientation into the company a breeze.
Best Practices for Implementing DAM in Your Organization
Businesses will only benefit from all that DAM software offers if the management system is correctly implemented. Sound complicated? It’s not. Your company can get DAM implementation right with these steps:
1. Centralize Your Asset Storage Location
When the company starts implementing digital asset management strategies, you’ll have assets spread across multiple locations, from shared drives to websites, app portals, and computers. Many of these assets will only be accessible to a few people and, often, only to the person who created them. Sometimes, employees may store different versions of the same file.
Work toward bringing everything under one platform. Doing so minimizes the risk of loss and gives everyone access to the files. It also ensures that you keep the desired version of each asset, and when discussing or editing a particular item, everyone can open the same file.
Use version control to manage file versions and ensure the team can access the latest asset version. And assign access levels to control who can do what with each asset.
2. Make Search Effective
Digital asset management software can hold seemingly endless digital data formats. Finding a single file in such a system would seem impossible to the untrained eye. But not when you have an excellent search feature. Your DAM search tool is meant to help users locate assets quickly and with little trouble.
To get the most out of the search tool, add lots of metadata about each asset stored on the platform. The software will populate the file details field with information like file size and dimensions, date created, and who created the asset. Keep the file name simple and descriptive so anyone looking for the file can find it on the first search attempt.
For example, say you want to name a cat video the company used in Client B’s marketing campaign. Cat Video, Campaign Cat Video, and Marketing Campaign Cat Video are all options that could work. But they are not as effective as Client B Marketing Campaign Cat Video.
Such a specific name stands out amid random cat and marketing video file names that may be stored in the system. And users will be relieved to find the video without struggling.
Most DAM solutions will have the option to add keywords associated with the file. Add as many descriptive words as possible, especially those unique to the item, so that users who don’t know the asset name can find it using keywords.
And don’t worry if coming up with keywords seems draining because the best DAM solutions have an auto-tag feature that automatically creates identifying keywords for each file. Simply choose the keywords to keep, and add more custom tags to the created list if you like.
3. Audit Company Digital Assets Regularly
The DAM platform automates a lot of the processes involved in managing assets. But someone still needs to monitor the system and take stock of what’s happening with each item. Ensure there’s a digital asset auditor on the team to spearhead this process.
A typical digital asset audit checks:
- The range and volume of digital assets the company has
- Whether there are underused assets
- Whether there are overused assets
- Whether any assets are missing
- Duplicate assets
- Asset review and expiration dates
- Compliance regarding things like licenses and usage rights
When conducted regularly, DAM audits can help the company identify and fix gaps in DAM implementation.
Conclusion
With proper planning, digital asset management can be a boon for any business. Rather than taking a blind approach to DAM execution, a deliberate implementation strategy yields better results overall. To this end, some best practices worth adopting include centralizing all digital assets, customizing search parameters, and auditing the DAM platform regularly.
