What Do You Need To Know Before Implementing DAM Solution?

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By: Sagar Sharma

What Do You Need To Know Before Implementing DAM Solution?

As the market & industry has been evolving repeatedly, businesses need to be innovative to answer all those demands of consumers. To ease the pressure on creating more and more optimistic content especially in today’s digital era, companies & businesses are looking for a suitable platform that allows them to manage end-to-end content lifecycle. Digital Asset Management (DAM) system offers complete control over the content life-cycle to an organization or a business.

DAM system offers the power to collect, distribute and organize the digital content in a centralized location with full security features. The digital transformation has enforced companies & businesses to go for the digital asset management solution, however before selecting a DAM solution you need to be cautious on certain things.

This article elaborates those things along with the questions you should ask yourself before picking DAM solutions for your business/company.

What is Digital Asset Management (DAM)?

Digital Asset Management is a kind of software specifically designed to make things easier for administrative people on gathering, managing, and sharing the digital content among the departments. This DAM system stores the gathered digital content in a centralized location and makes it easier for all users to access it.

DAM system helps business leaders to streamline their business process by providing a proper structure to the workflow for the digital assets of a company/business. Here digital assets pointing digital forms of the product data like video, image, catalog, audio files, presentations, and so.

To explore Digital Asset Management in detail, visit An Ultimate Guide to Digital Asset Management (DAM).

Features of Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution

Wondering how to select the right digital asset management system for your company or business! Or keen to hire a DAM developer to develop a perfect asset management system. Well, here we have enlisted the key features that you need at your DAM software.

1. Organizing

We all know the DAM system gathers and stores digital content in a centralized location so that all can easily access it at any time. But digital asset management solution is capable of doing more than that.

Instead of just collecting and storing the digital content, the DAM system stores that data in an organized manner making it easy for employees, agencies, and partners to find it easy using the advanced search option. By doing so, the DAM system simply maximizes the potential of the company’s digital assets.

2. Searching

DAM solution offers an advanced searching option making it easier for employees, agencies, or partners to find the right digital asset of the products quickly. Without the DAM system, finding the right product assets could take time.

Digital asset management system stores product digital assets with proper descriptions, keywords, attributes, and so in categories. With this discovery of products, the digital asset becomes so easy.

3. Downloading

Companies or businesses use the DAM solution to store the valuable assets of their products so that their team can make use of them at any time from anywhere. A digital asset management system eliminates all those hassles of employees, agencies, or partners on accessing digital assets of the products at any time in the desired formats.

The platform allows users who have permission to download/access the store assets to be able to change the formats and resolutions, this removes the headache of business leaders from responding to the requests of changing digital assets size, formats, and resolutions.

4. Version Control and History

Digital asset management solutions can store all those changes made on the stored assets in a centralized location. So that, administrative people are able to track all those changes made on the assets and check who is used and share the edited content.

5. Sharing

Digital Asset Management Solution comes with the feature of sharing large files among the departments in a variety of ways.

Email Sharing 

The most common of sharing links of the gallery where co-workers can view or download in zip format.

Lightboxes

Companies using the DAM system for longer-term projects can utilize this lightboxes function where co-workers can access aggregated files in categories.

Branded Portals

Perfect way to share the product’s digital assets among both internal and external users through the customized-brand online library.

6. Access Control

Even though the DAM system provides easy access to the stored assets in a centralized location, it does have the feature of restricting users from accessing and downloading the content from the centralized server. This access control structure of the DAM solution helps business leaders to create user groups with rights for accessing the stored content in the DAM system.

Key benefits of using Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution

Avoids Spending Money On Misplaced Works

Very often companies suffer from creating ill marketing content by placing repeated content on new products and spend a lot to rectify the error. The DAM system eliminates such costs and provides accurate content to the marketers to create an efficient marketing campaign.

Promotes Creativity & Accelerates Productivity

Once a company or business starts to experience the efficiency and agility of content creation, they look for version control to streamline the workflow. DAM system provides such functionality reducing administrative people’s time from spending on the manual mode of developing creative content and focusing more on accelerating productivity.

Streamlines Asset Distribution

The digital asset management system provides a platform in which digital assets of products are shared fast within internal and external departments of a company or business. With the presence of automation in system integration and content distribution, the DAM system creates a self-serve environment among co-workers to share assets.

To learn more about the essence of a DAM solution for your business, don’t miss to read Why Do You Need a Digital Asset Management Platform? [Significance, Advantages, Common Issues & Criteria ].

Questions to ask before selecting a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution

For a product-based business, the Digital asset management (DAM) platform plays a crucial role in storing, finding, retrieving, and sharing digital content. The digital asset management solution provides a centralized digital library of data giving access to peers, clients, employees, contractors, stakeholders, etc. These digital assets include images, creative files, photos, audio, video, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.

1. Is it searchable?

Digital assets play a crucial role as it gives the crucial details about the product to the customers that prompt them to purchase the product. A good DAM system should allow filtering of the data using different parameters like the author, date, file type, project, etc. The different search functions should be able to find the assets across the different channels.

2. Is it scalable?

Before selecting the DAM system, one should check if the system is scalable. As the product undergoes development, the product information goes on increasing. As product information management trends, more digital assets get added.

3. Is it customizable?

Different enterprises have different products that attract different sets of people. Every business has a unique ecosystem of people, processes, and procedures. The selected digital asset management system should be able to accommodate all the needs of the business. It should allow categorizing the product based on the customizable fields.

4. Does it allow integration with the other tools?

For the smooth functioning and development of the business, several tools are used. All these tools should be compatible with each other as these tools in unison will lead to progress.

Integrations between the different systems lead to speeding up of the workflow thus saving time, money, and effort. It is important to understand that the DAM system that a company is selecting souls to be able to integrate with the other tools used.

5. Is it video compatible?

One of the important digital assets is video data. Not all DAM systems can handle this video function. While selecting the best DAM system, make sure that the selected DAM system can handle the video content effectively.

6. Is it cloud-based?

Making use of the DAM system makes use of a lot of IT resources. Digital assets occupy a lot of space. It is important for setting up and maintaining servers with adequate security. While selecting the DAM system, one should make sure that the system provider hosts the assets securely on the cloud.

7. How is the metadata input?

A DAM system is used for storing all the assets as well as including these data into context. Metadata provides additional information for each of the assets and it includes the keywords, copyrights, dates, product lines, approval status, etc. that is important for the organization. Select the DAM system that automatically allows management of the metadata by organizing the files accurately.

8. Assessing assets through a mobile device?

The DAM interface should be easily accessible from different mobile devices like smartphones, laptops, tablets, etc. The different team members should be able to access data from anywhere.

9. Does the DAM system fit into the team structure?

Every organization has its existing ecosystem of users, process, and workflow. While incorporating the DAM system, it should be able to adjust with the different systems that operate.

10. Can the DAM system assign different permission to different users?

The DAM library includes data for the different departments within the organization. While selecting the DAM system, check if the system allows the admin to approve access to a particular set of data to the particular group of members or teams. Flexible permissions will allow teams to access the required data while maintaining data safety.

11. What are the legal and regulatory requirements?

The different brands in the healthcare, finance and other such industries must abide by the strict laws. In this case, it is the legal team’s responsibility for enforcing the compliance. If the organization needs to meet the requirements set for the different regulatory bodies, then the DAM system selection depends on its capability to restrict the use of the asset to ensure following compliance rules.

12. How much is local market visibility?

It is important to understand what all marketing assets are essential for marketing. The selected DAM system should act as a window to track the local marketer activity. It should help the reported dashboard to reveal the different adoption levels.

13. Does the DAM work with the other software or tools for multi-location marketing?

The marketing trends are changing constantly and the company needs to use some tools or software that will help in improved marketing. The DAM system should be able to integrate with the different software and tools to offer an open API.

14. Does it have analytics and reporting?

The DAM system allows centralizing the assets to give a better overview of the asset library. The selected DAM system should have robust reporting and analytics that will provide insights into how these assets are used. A DAM system should be able to protect assets from misuse by keeping a track of the access to the assets.

15. Is it secured?

The DAM provider should use proper encryption and security protocols for the safety of the assets. The digital asset management system provider should be able to provide detailed security so that you can ensure your data is safe.

16. How is the vendor’s reputation?

The DAM system controls all the important assets that the vendor providing the DAM system should have a good reputation and established track record for providing the best services.

17. How is customer support?

Digital asset management is a continuous process and the DAM system provider should have a very good support team with improved customer care. There should be a dedicated staff for responding to queries and interactions.
Digital asset management (DAM) plays a very crucial role in every organization in its growth and expansion. If your business is having digital assets then it should have a robust DAM system.

Bottom Line

Hope this article gives a clear view for the business leader who looks to hire a DAM developer or buy a perfect DAM system. DAM solution streamlines and manages the entire content lifecycle and offers an efficient workflow that boosts productivity and helps to achieve business goals within the time frame.

Before stepping into the process of getting a DAM solution, make sure of what your business needs and act accordingly. By doing so, you can avail full benefits of DAM.

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