As your business grows, the number of assets and media files needed to build your brand increases—and as the number of digital assets grows, the tougher it becomes to adequately streamline your workflow.
Conveying vital information like project updates and newly generated files across departments becomes surprisingly tedious. Sometimes, looking for a single file can take one too many hours. Everything becomes chaotic, to say the least.
Luckily, there’s a way out—a way to effectively manage your digital assets and bring order to your library.
Innovations in technology have enabled companies to increase reliability, functionality, and productivity using digital asset management systems. Keep reading to learn how they can boost productivity in your business.
What is digital asset management?
Digital asset management (DAM) is a process organizations use to store, share, organize, find, and retrieve digital assets from their ever-growing content library in a secure and centralized location.
A digital asset here means any identifiable media that legally belongs to an organization. It’s the key component of DAM and can include any asset, such as:
- Documents
- Spreadsheets
- Images
- Videos
- PDFs
- Graphics
- PowerPoint slides
- Audio files
Digital asset management centralizes company assets and enhances efficiency in the organization. It deals with the control and flexibility of managing these assets between departments, customers, or partners. Additionally, it provides safe and easy-to-access storage for all types of digital assets. These are crucial, especially in the era of remote work hiring.
Some other features of DAM include:
- Automated workflows
- Streamlined creative and marketing projects
- Standardized templates and file formats
- Version control
- Administrative capabilities
- User permissions
- Advanced search
- Unique identifier
- Sharing of assets (APIs)
DAM provides a foundation for small and large businesses to deliver a consistent brand experience across multiple channels. But it can also do much more, especially in terms of productivity.
8 Ways DAM boosts productivity
Organizations adopting DAM see increased business productivity. Here are eight proven ways DAM will make your workforce more productive.
1. Organized content in a single, centralized location
If you want to build a strong online presence, you’re likely creating new assets continuously—but having more files makes misplacing them easier.
Digital asset management software provides a centralized location for all the digital assets you need, be it branding materials, infographics, or logos. It ensures your important files are not misused or lost.
What’s more, DAM’s unified platform boosts sharing and enhance communication across your organization. With this platform, different departments quickly access digital assets and files at all times. Plus, storing and tagging assets in the DAM system makes it easy to retrieve them whenever you or another team member needs to perform tasks.
2. Streamlined workflows and easy flow of information
Teams frequently work across departments to create content or work on a project. Each project has multiple stages throughout its development, which creates a need for approvals, feedback, and revisions. Lots of back and forth.
DAM makes it easy for teams to provide feedback or share insights on projects, ensuring greater consistency in the workflow.
Team members won’t always have to stop, back up, and redirect when working on the project. In turn, this streamlines communication, leading to a 20-25% boost in productivity. The flexibility of DAM facilitates cross-team collaboration and reduces miscommunication or misinterpretation.
3. Consistent branding across all channels
When engaging with customers and the public across multiple media channels, all it takes is a low-resolution graphic or out-of-date image to undermine your brand.
DAM prevents that from happening. It directs every team member to a single location where digital assets are stored, ensuring they use on-brand files every time they interact with customers. As a result, all public content posted on behalf of your company meets your brand’s exact standards and guidelines.
Consistent use of the right content ensures cohesive messaging across all customer touchpoints, promoting your brand identity in the market.
4. Repurpose high-performing content
DAM software can save you time and valuable resources by providing visibility to your media assets. A bird’s eye view of your digital asset library helps you quickly identify high-performing content for repurposing and reuse.
The maximum accessibility DAM provides over old and recent media gives new life to past projects, ultimately saving time, money, and resources by reusing existing assets.
5. Improved internal and external collaboration
In this era of data communication and remote work, teams must collaborate and share files internally and externally to get the job done. Online collaboration statistics show that top-performing workers spend 45% of their time working collaboratively. This means they’re constantly sharing large volumes of assets across the board.
A digital asset management platform can securely share assets with internal and external collaborators without additional software. This minimizes wasted time and allows collaborators to access what they need quickly. Sharing large files through email is no longer practical. And tools like Slack don’t provide the kind of interagency collaboration DAM does.
6. Accurate ROI and content performance tracking
DAM systems include analytical tools that let you track and measure the performance engagement of your digital assets across channels. With DAM software, you can see which assets your team uses the most and track their performance.
This makes it easier for you to determine the performance engagement of the asset. You’ll know where to focus your effort and budget. Plus, the data will identify opportunities to reuse your best-performing content and save your time and other valuable resources.
Image Source: Brandfolder
The analytics section of DAM software shows number of shares, downloads, and views
7. Lower legal and compliance risk
A DAM system helps you stay in compliance with license rights and regulations. It protects content from unauthorized use with the option to restrict access to sensitive information or limit download privileges on some files.
DAM has a functionality that sets licensing expiration dates for digital assets and protects images from copyright infringement. With this, you reduce the time spent on tracking and managing compliance.
8. Delivering business at scale
One of the more critical ways DAM increases productivity is by automating content operations.
It makes locating assets through keywords, tags, and metadata automation easy—all you need to do is adjust user permissions and store unlimited assets. Once you implement a DAM system, your team will be able to work quickly and efficiently on projects, allowing your company to deliver business at scale with no extra effort.
Tips and best practices for digital asset management
Getting a digital asset management software tool is the most effective way to control and manage your digital assets. However, a comprehensive strategy helps you to organize and store them securely. Some best practices you can employ include:
Define and outline your goals
The first tip is to determine why you need DAM in the first place. What are your objectives for implementing a DAM system? What business processes will your DAM improve or support? Knowing why you need a DAM tool will help you find the right solution for your business.
Conduct an asset audit
This is necessary to ensure you know what assets your business uses and to identify team members responsible for managing those assets. Assets cannot be protected from threats if the personnel responsible for their protection are not aware that the asset exists.
An asset audit also gives you a clear overview of what you currently have. Ensure all information is identified, documented, and maintained in an inventory. Review the inventory annually and make appropriate updates during each review.
Classify your assets
To ensure they are correctly handled, digital assets should be classified appropriately. Classification helps you put the necessary security controls in place and reduces the likelihood of sensitive information being viewed by unauthorized users.
Classify your assets by legal requirements, business value, sensitivity, and how critical it is to your organization. Establish a classification schema that differentiates between the different groups of digital assets. Implement file naming conventions to improve search and discovery.
Determine the handling of assets
Dictate precisely how users can access and interact with your DAM system by assigning user permissions. This includes the type of assets they’re permitted to use and the use requirements. Explain the reasons and goals for using DAM to your team, and encourage the culture of shared responsibility.
Use automation
Automate digital management software to accomplish tasks like file format conversion and tagging. For instance, train the software to add labels to assets or organize new assets once they’re approved. Automating workflows saves time on repetitive tasks and frees up time for your team to get more important work done.
Consider how DAM integrates with other tools
Small businesses use many systems and processes to accomplish their goals. Different software for small businesses can integrate well with DAM, so your DAM should be flexible enough to integrate with other tech stacks.
For example, if you’re looking to improve productivity alongside growth in marketing, consider investing in digital asset management software that integrates with a CRM tool. This would enable your team to execute initiatives faster, increasing productivity.
Another tool to consider alongside DAM is a content management system (CMS). This would provide easy shortcuts to content creation. Used in tandem with DAM, the content production process is simplified.
Put together a list of all the software you want your DAM to connect with so you can find a working solution.
Get the right DAM solution for your business
A digital asset management system has a positive impact on your business productivity. It can securely manage, share and track the performance engagement of your assets. It can also create workflow efficiency, uphold compliance requirements, and align your brand standards across channels.
The best DAM software is easy to understand, giving your workers the confidence to navigate and get what they need for their tasks. However, choosing the right SaaS DAM platform is getting complicated. There are many DAM solutions, so it’s crucial to find the right one for your organization.
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