Digital Asset Management: Why you should give a DAM

Can’t find the latest all-important presentation? Did your marketing team publish the wrong version of the company’s logo in your latest advert? Worse yet, has your organization had to pay a fine for copyright infringement?

With customers asking for more accurate information and better engagement across media channels, many organizations find themselves stuck in an endless struggle with managing their ever-expanding libraries of digital content. This development means that a lot of organizations have now become content publishers while lacking the necessary digital infrastructure to cope. 

While some companies resort to solutions like Dropbox or Google Drive, this choice means that chaos is almost guaranteed as your number of digital assets continues to grow. Luckily, there is a solution to this problem: Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems.

What is a DAM?

Nobody likes acronyms, so let’s get that out of the way first – DAM stands for digital asset management. DAMs are software platforms that organize and manage your team’s important digital media which means your company’s images, videos, presentations and documents will be hosted on a company-wide content storage system.  

To be a little more precise, DAM is a digital library solution for all your organization’s digital assets – documents, images, PDFs, marketing material, audio files, videos, presentations, podcasts, animations and any other digital or multimedia content – in an easy-to-access, quick-to-search, centralized location.

Introducing DAMs to your productivity software stack means no more searching your Inbox for the latest version of a presentation or a logo or urgently having to scramble your team for help minutes before an important meeting – everyone in your team will be able to find the correct needed files from any device right away.

Benefit #1: Ease of use

One of the major benefits of introducing a DAM into your productivity stack is improved file browsing capability. DAMs are usually more visual and thus more intuitive to navigate. In addition, adding tags and metadata to your digital assets further increases collaborative ability between your creative, marketing and IT teams.

This means your team gets to spend more time on important work and not updating files and managing version control; introducing a DAM frees up teams to concentrate on strategy and activities to grow their business.

Benefit #2: Time Savers

According to Gistics Executive Insights, employees lose a day per week managing and transferring files; which translates to a little over than one work week per year! DAMs eliminate one of the business’ biggest hurdles – DAMs help teams save precious time by delivering the right files at the right time. 

Furthermore, once your DAM is in place, the team will find their digital assets can be updated faster and more accurately than ever before. The ability to deliver consistency becomes both time and cost efficient.

Benefit #3: More than just storage

Integrations also play a role as to why DAMs add value to teams. Most DAMs integrate directly with systems and platforms that teams work in already which means teams gain further value – ensuring a creative team is using the latest version of a file is as simple as refreshing and updating a network link to where the logo file is stored on your DAM,  with minimal interruption to workflow.

DAMs also ensure that any duplicates of files are eliminated, so there are no incorrect versions of your assets which could add confusion. 

Finally, DAMs offer scalable solutions that grow as your team’s needs and size grows. Your team doesn’t need to worry about the financial and technical costs involved in activating additional server space – since DAMs are cloud-based, they’re easy to scale to your needs while offering security, protection and ensuring your files never get lost. 

Adding a DAM to your stack

While some teams continue to work in outdated systems, many are finding that working in newer modern platforms offers excellent solutions and this is especially true when working with digital asset management.

Similarly to how project management tools have replaced Email as the primary engine that drives work, DAMs enable a more effective solution to managing a company’s arsenal of digital assets.

Are you an organization looking to integrate DAM as part of your work software stack? Looking for a partner to help with your onboarding, system integration and change management challenges? Get in touch with WNDYR Sales, our DAM partner manager, to find out more.