Modern businesses are using and handling different types of electronic content for their operations. Digital content is primarily used for marketing and advertising campaigns. Companies should learn to manage these files and documents through a reliable and secure management application. These tools allow businesses to store and manage valuable digital data and assets efficiently and adequately.
What is Digital Asset Management?
Before we discuss the various types of digital asset management software, let’s find out what digital asset management is all about. Digital asset management or DAM is the process of organizing, accumulating, searching, retrieving, sharing, and managing rich media. The DAM process also handles the permissions and rights of rich media, which include images, videos, music, podcasts, animations, and other valuable multimedia files and content.
Digital asset management creates an archive to manage and preserve digital content in an efficient manner. In essence, DAM is all about maintaining a group of files and media. The files contain metadata to explain each record’s name, format, and usage. If your company regularly uses digital content and rich media, you need to use a digital asset management software to efficiently and effectively manage these digital assets.
What Are Digital Assets?
Content or media stored and managed in digital format are digital assets. A digital asset has corresponding metadata that describes the asset, including its ownership, right to access, and encoding. A digital asset may be anything from a photo or video, to sound clips, presentations, podcasts, and all kinds of digital media.
The asset is stored and managed in a digital format. The information of the asset is found in the metadata. The metadata describes the content of the asset, how it is encoded, who owns it, including the access rights. To succeed in a digital environment, companies must understand the importance of digital assets for their business.
The Importance of Digital Asset Management Software for Businesses
In a nutshell, digital assets have three main characteristics: digital, distinct and identifiable, and valuable to the organization. The most common types of digital assets are:
- Photos including product images
- Videos
- Word documents
- Excel spreadsheets
- Plain-text (Notepad) files
- Slide deck presentations
- Graphics including brand logos, design files
- Audio files
- PDFs (portable document format)
- HTML documents and other data associated with them
There is no doubt that digital asset management is vital for any business that is dependent or uses digital assets. Here are the main reasons digital asset management software is crucial for companies:
- Proper Storage
Having the right DAM software allows the company to store their digital assets properly. It helps save server space by reducing or eliminating duplicate versions of digital assets. A DAM software lets you have a clear overview of your digital files.
- Eliminate Unnecessary Costs
DAM helps reduce unnecessary expenses when creating content that requires rich media. Your creative does not have to spend to develop or buy new assets. The existing assets can be evaluated and altered as needed, thus making DAM a necessary tool to cut or manage business costs.
- Easy Management of Electronic Files
All digital assets are stored in one location, which makes the files easier to manage. Multiple files can be uploaded easily for safekeeping. Team members are permitted to access folders as necessary.
Digital management software is an essential tool for keeping the company’s digital files organized. Digital asset management handles different types of rich media assets, including:
- Brand Assets: Managing marketing-related and brand-related content like brand logos, product images, and other sales or marketing collateral
- Library Assets: Company photos and media assets that are seldom changed or used and put in an archive
- Production Assets: Digital media production assets like the ones used to create and develop video games
- Cloud-Based Digital Assets: Media assets are available and accessible through mobile devices
Benefits of Digital Asset Management Software for Businesses
Modern businesses are dependent on digital content to keep up or stay ahead of competitors. Industries like education, finance, healthcare, hospitality, publishing, and IT are using digital assets to reach out to their customers. Businesses, small and large, can use digital assets to build their websites, promote their business on social media, and more. It only makes perfect sense to invest and utilize a DAM software to keep their proprietary digital assets secure. Digital asset management software is highly beneficial to all kinds of businesses. Here’s why:
- Digital assets are stored in a server for ease of access. DAM software allows users to access the necessary digital assets wherever and whenever they need them.
- It prevents the misuse of digital assets. Manage access to digital assets within the organization. Permissions can be changed so that only the suitable assets will be available to specific team members.
- DAM software gives users the ability to share and collaborate with team members. Finished and ongoing projects can be shared and distributed efficiently.
- Businesses get more value for their investments by having the ability to utilize and repurpose digital assets. By extending the life cycle of existing rich media, you can save more money by not buying new digital assets.
- Digital asset management software allows the business owner to understand how the company’s digital assets are used. By generating reports from the user interface, the system administrator will know who, when, where, and how digital assets were utilized.
- It helps ensure that all digital assets are consistent with the company’s branding. When you use your digital assets for your website, social media accounts, and marketing paraphernalia, you want all multimedia assets to have consistency and uniformity.
- Digital asset management software is particularly beneficial to the company’s marketing team. With the proper use of DAM software, marketing teams can improve the speed and efficiency of their campaigns.
- DAM software allows businesses to control permissions and rights to their digital assets. Asset information is easily integrated from other software and platforms.
- Companies can share specific digital content to external partners and company stakeholders with the use of digital asset management software.
- Digital assets can be easily downloaded using the required file format by utilizing digital asset management software. There’s no need to use a separate file converter since the files are immediately converted during download.
- Digital assets can be annotated so that users can see the review or feedback for each file.
- Business owners and project managers are notified about the status of projects through the DAM software interface.
- Content managers can use DAM software to publish on distribution platforms and channels directly.
- Businesses can modify search information to meet the requirements of the business. Different companies have different ways of describing their business. DAM software allows companies to sort and find digital assets with ease.
- Digital asset management software eliminates unnecessary duplicate copies of digital assets. Duplicate content can be troublesome: it creates confusion and conflict to intended users. A DAM software helps you remove multiple versions of the same file, which are stored in different folders.
- Businesses need to back up their digital data, and this is entirely possible with the use of DAM software. The software saves the history of each file and all of its previous versions. The older versions of the digital data can be recovered as needed.
- DAM software is the best way to keep your digital assets secure. You can be reassured that unauthorized persons will not have access to your sensitive and valuable company assets. System administrators can easily limit or revoke access with a few clicks.
- Utilizing a DAM software increases the business’ operational efficiency. A lot of time is wasted simply by searching for digital files. By organizing your digital assets using digital asset management software, your business saves plenty of time. And time, as you know, is money.
- A DAM software is essential in improving your business’ bottom line, mainly through efficient and effective marketing campaigns. Utilizing a digital asset management system improves your company’s overall performance, which results in higher revenue.
- DAM software is meant to make the organization and protection of digital assets efficient and straightforward. Businesses of all sizes will benefit immensely from the use of digital asset management software.
Do all Businesses Require DAM Software?
Every business can improve how they handle their digital assets by integrating digital asset management software. If your organization experiences these signs, it’s time to start looking for a DAM solution:
- You are spending too much on creating or buying digital assets
- You have difficulty locating or tracking digital files
- You are underutilizing your digital assets
- Your marketing campaigns always exceed the allotted budget
- You have trouble tracking projects
- You are unsure about the legal right of your digital assets
- You have trouble converting your digital assets into required formats
- Your digital brand content lacks consistency
- You are often confused about the current version of your digital assets
- You are worried about how external partners and team members are using the company’s digital assets
Choosing the Right Digital Asset Management System
Businesses will find it challenging to stay competitive in the digital environment without creating or buying digital assets. Digital assets are just as valuable and useful as physical or material business assets.
There are several factors to consider when selecting a DAM software:
- Seamless Integration
There is no such thing as the perfect DAM software. But it should not stop you from searching for a digital asset management software that integrates quickly and seamlessly into your business operation. Your daily business operation should not change dramatically. The goal is to reduce or eliminate flawed processes and keep the good ones.
- Flexibility
Every business owner dreams of growing and scaling their business. Your digital asset management software should be able to adapt to the company’s growth. It eliminates the need to transfer all digital files to software with higher storage capabilities.
- Ease of Use
This one needs very little explanation. How can the business maximize the features of your digital asset management system if you are not capable of using it because it’s too complicated?
- Third-Party Software Integration
First, you need to assess what office applications and tools you use for your business. You should then select a digital asset management software that will allow the integration of these existing applications. For example, DAM software must have the capabilities to integrate Microsoft Office applications.
- Secure Data Storage
The digital assets of the business are precious. Most of these assets are confidential and sensitive information, so a secure and safe DAM software is essential. It must have the ability to safeguard the data from unauthorized use. Fortunately, most digital asset management systems can be modified to permit or restrict access.
- Fits Your Budget
It makes no sense to purchase a DAM software that will put a big dent on the company’s budget. Reliable digital asset management systems do not come cheap. Therefore, it is crucial to choose software with features that can be fully utilized by the company.
- Dedicated Customer Support
All digital asset management system providers offer customer support to the administrator and users. Their support team must be readily available to handle issues and problems encountered by users. Choose a DAM software provider that can extend training for employees to ensure that they are knowledgeable and skilled to manage the program.
Conclusion
Digital assets are essential for businesses to thrive. Thus, digital asset management software is an integral part of your business. Most, if not all, companies rely on digital content to promote their brand and encourage brand loyalty. Adopting a reliable and safe digital asset management tool allows your business to organize all your digital assets in one convenient location systematically.
Selecting and integrating a digital asset management system is crucial to the success of your business. Before choosing a DAM software, assess what type of program your company needs. Remember that digital assets are used to represent your products and services. It enables your business to connect with your target audience through various channels and platforms. It allows your company to use digital assets wisely and efficiently.
