A Brief About Digital Asset Management Practices For Availing Better Efficiency
DAM (Digital asset management) is the operation of the collection of digital assets. This system provides the facility for creating data, in management, in organizing data, in production, in distribution. Also, finding the stored data can be done with minimal effort and less time by using a DAM system.
Through this DAM system, any digital assets like images, documents, files, audio-video clips, and digital files are stored with security and transparency. All those above-mentioned business data stored in a centralized location for better and easy access.
To access the digital assets easily, DAM is most important.
Here in this article, we are going to discuss availing better efficiency and productivity from the DAM. On average, employees spend 2.5 hours a day looking for up-to-date files. This inefficiency can lead to a major loss in your team’s productivity.
Without a centralized location for the storage and management of valuable business assets and the details become outdated. An intelligent and powerful central storage allows any digital asset to be saved, edited, and recovered.
Digital asset management (DAM) helps you to approve and update all your business assets from a centralized location. DAM reduces waste of time and helps the design team concentrate on what matters.
What is Digital Asset Management (DAM)?
Digital Asset Management (DAM) is a software platform for organizing multimedia assets such as images, videos, and audio. Organizing and using thousands or even millions of these assets can represent a major challenge for organizations in industries such as entertainment or advertising.
When an organization accumulates multimedia files in several projects, it is extremely important that they can easily locate a given asset. The process of arranging, storing, and distributing digital assets within an entity is Digital Asset Management.
Any virtual file offering value to the company is a digital asset. Images and videos are the most common formats, but they can include audio files, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more as well.
Usually, a Digital Asset Management system functions as a central repository for your properties. DAM software allows you to store, organize, and digital exchange properties from one centralized location.
Benefits of Digital Asset Management (DAM)
1. Performance Enhancements
Graphic designs and imagery are continuously used in the marketing industry to elevate quality by adding visual impact.
DAM helps improve productivity and performance by eliminating the need to request assets when used. The design team can spend the time to develop assets by housing all illustrations and images in a specific location. This decreases design requests and avoids reworking of assets already completed.
The constant need for marketing content implies that new assets are still being created. But getting more files will make misplacing them easier. DAM solutions eliminate the expenses associated with reconstructing lost materials. It is safe and easy to recover once stored in the system.
2. Maintain Integrity And Consistency Of The Brand
Business logos, color palettes, photographs, and videos are shared widely through promotional materials. DAM solutions ensure that all team members use the same on-brand files. Using simple search tools to guide everyone to one content repository, marketers can curb the use of outdated file versions.
Old logos and outdated images are too frequently used because people couldn’t find the redesigned versions or were unaware of them. Centralized storage for all assets ensures that the most approved versions of files still have access to teams, associates, affiliates, agencies, and clients.
This systematic use of the right content ensures that the brand images are consistent at every customer touchpoint.
3. Ensures Secure Allocation of Assets
It is not easy to know who has access to images and data floating around in emails and documents.
DAM helps centralize and maintain digital asset control by setting permissions and various file levels. This security enables the design team to verify who has access to files and give you guidance on when and how to use them.
DAM systems offer information to stakeholders faster. In a self-serve environment, internal content associates, sales teams, and external stakeholders will instantly access materials. Integration with other marketing platforms will simplify and enhance distribution processes across networks and other systems.
4. Accelerate Innovation and Production Cycles
Various DAM tools contribute to content creation with reliability and flexibility. To speed up and boost creative production, version control, on-the-fly transformations, and workflow approval features minimize time spent on manual tasks.
You can search for data by name, date in a simple storage system. A DAM works in the search process and saves your time with the specific keywords, groups and subcategories, the collections.
5. Reduce Redundancies in Workflows
DAM systems can expand the value of assets by reuse and repurpose by presenting a complete picture of available content. Also, DAM supports cross-team collaboration and lowers the risk of costly miscommunications.
A DAM system helps ensure that the files are secured in your storage center and sent through all channels. You can add business-level data encryption and other functionality, including a watermark in visual assets.
6. Authorized Access
DAM administrators can regulate how various user groups can associate with assets. This enables businesses to limit access to confidential data or restrict privileges for downloading certain files. If anything changes, you’ll know who did it. A DAM registers all read-only or editable administrators.
These features will enhance all DAM users’ user experience while protecting the confidentiality of the data and restricting the disclosure of sensitive information. This is why a DAM security system will limit access to information based on its importance to a specific user. In the same manner, the software can also control access to features.
7. Rich and Powerful Metadata
Another powerful feature of a DAM is the capability to edit asset metadata. These metadata can contain crucial details, such as legal access controls. The metadata is also critical to search: if you don’t know where a particular asset is stored in your hierarchy, you can search for all the pictures or all the specific individual’s related products.
A digital asset management framework is a vital digital foundation for many media industries, advertisers, and others. By using the DAM’s powerful organization, security, and workflow features, the operations can be streamlined, and new performance levels can be achieved.
How to choose a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution?
A DAM system is rich in storing digital assets, so implementing it is going to give you enormous benefits. There are several digital asset management systems available in the market and which to choose is a critical dilemma. But with the right information, choosing a DAM system becomes easy. Check for the below points to know what is best for your organization.
1. Review the Existing Model
It is important to understand your workflow and structure. Make sure you are aware of; who are your end-users, in what format your assets are stored, and what difficulties are faced by the existing model. Only if you know what the problem is then only you can find the solution.
2. Integration with the existing model
A DAM system is going to be a key holder and central platform for all of your digital assets. As it is going to be a central platform, it has to be integrating with your existing model. So consider only those DAM systems, which collaborate with the existing system.
3. Pricing and Security
As there are several options available for DAM practices, make sure to choose, which has benefits with affordable prices to your organizational needs. Strong authentication with multi-factor security should not be neglected when you choose a practice at affordable prices. Prices and security should be hand in hand.
After choosing a DAM system, the next important part would be digital asset management practices. Here in the article, we have enlisted important steps to practice the DAM system in your organization and let the system benefit you, the way it should. Practicing the DAM is a simple process. After implementing a DAM to get the maximum benefit from it, you want to consider the below digital asset management practices.
Top 7 Best Digital Asset Management Practices
Follow some of the digital asset management practices recommended by the experts in your organization.
1. Create a business workflow around the DAM platform
Understand the critical workflow that relates to the content. To understand workflow, a simple method is to contact employees who are dealing with them. Ask them what kind of problems they are facing with the existing model and what could be possible solutions for those problems. Create opportunities with existing problems. Leverage DAM with those problems and create an automated workflow, improve productivity, and get maximum asset usage.
2. Integrate DAM into Workflow
A DAM system is going to be the central platform for storing all the digital assets. Integration of DAM with existing workflow can be done by training users for the use of the system. To get maximum productivity, access procedures (saving, tracking, modification access) should be redefined. DAM’s inbuilt collaboration tools communicate the usage and development of assets in minimal time.
3. Use DAM analytics when creating new content
Digital asset production- new content creation is not a head-scratching task with the help of DAM. The content creator team should have access to DAM analytics to overview the most-used content, to find out gaps, to find out why the asset is least used, and in improvement or creation of different updated versions of that least used asset. By finding gaps, the new content with the DAM can be easily created.
4. Take advantage of permission and security
A DAM system has the function of authentication and double-layer security with permission. Different departments have different roles and not everyone is going to require all the data of digital assets. With DAM, access to particular data to a particular department should be given so that with security, users can access content which only they require as part of their roles and responsibility.
5. Don’t use a DAM for everything
Using DAM is important for organizations when they want to grow. But do not use a DAM for storing everything. If you end up storing everything on DAM, you possibly could upload the same asset with multiple variations. The same asset when uploaded with variation is the time retention process and is not going to give you multiple benefits.
6. Avoid copyright issue with Access control
A DAM system does everything it can to void copyright infringement. When content is being purchased by you on a license then configure the same thing on the DAM. Let the DAM administrator alert the concerned team about the expiry of the license so that the concerned teams could switch to the new digital asset or renew the license. If the configuration of the license is not done with the DAM, it would create a problem.
7. Standard naming convention
While practicing DAM, another important step is naming conventions. Naming is very important for organizing and searching assets. Create clear, specific, simple, standard, and structure for metadata. Train your creative teams for naming content with DAM analytics with standard procedure. Make sure all the creative members are following the same standard method. When a standard naming procedure is followed for storing digital assets, it becomes easy to find those assets with a particular name.
Summary
Thus after investing in the DAM, it becomes absolutely necessary for your organization to get the maximum output from it. The above mentioned are some of the best digital asset management practices to get the most benefit from DAM investment. You spend a lot of money, time, and energy before choosing the right DAM system for your organization. With the best practices, you can compensate those spent money, time, and energy with better output from DAM.
To have better control of your digital assets, these digital asset management practices are very important. By creating workflow around the DAM platform with integration with the existing model, by using DAM analytics for new content creation, to avoid copyright infringement, and by standard naming procedure, one can get the most out of the DAM system.
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