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Digital Asset Management (DAM): Definition, Benefits, Solutions

Written by Arslan Hasan | Reviewed by Mobeen Ali
dam digital asset management tool


Here is a fun fact: According to a study, using a DAM tool can help marketers shorten time to market and increase high fives in your organization by 500%.

Pretty interesting, right? Well, what if I tell you that you could also have these increased conversions in no time if you know what DAM is and how it can benefit your business?

But just like old me, a lot of us do not even know what digital asset management is and how it differs from Content Management System (CMS).

In this blog, I will be taking you through what DAM Systems are, what their benefits and features are, the top 5 DAM tools, and how they can boost your business efficiency. 

Alright, then. Let’s get started!

What is Digital Asset Management (DAM)?

Before digging into digital asset management, you first need to understand what digital assets are. 

What is Dam, and what does Dam stand for? Digital Assets are files that have a long-term intrinsic or acquired worth. There are a lot of things that come under digital assets. All the images and videos on your website are your digital assets. Not only images and videos, design files, word documents, and PDFs come under digital assets.

Now as you know what digital assets are, you can understand digital asset management better. 

Tools like Apimio help you manage your Digital Media in a much more flexible way without going heavy on your budget.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) services is all about the control, flexibility, portability, access, and reporting of these digital assets between businesses, customers, partners, and suppliers as a discipline and a technology. 

DAM is concerned with delivering the appropriate information to the right people at the right time on all devices. A digital asset manager has the ability to manage and measure digital asset engagement across an organization and its potential worldwide reach.

PIM software has an inbuilt DAM cloud tool for teams for digital asset management while managing other information as well.

Difference between CMS and DAM?

The phrases “digital assets” and “content” have become interchangeable as the digital asset management business has evolved.

This adjustment was made to better connect with marketing teams and the growing popularity of content marketing. However, the word “content” in the DAM arena has led to the misconception that a DAM and a CMS (content management system) are interchangeable.

A DAM and a CMS are two different technologies that serve entirely other purposes for a marketing team.

In a nutshell, a CMS helps manage content for your website, but a DAM helps manage material across multiple channels for your entire firm.

A classic example of a CMS is WordPress. WordPress is a CMS that allows users to create websites, blogs, or even applications.

wordpress-CMS

What about a DAM example? Well, we will talk about that in detail later in this blog.  

How does Digital Asset Management work?

A lot of you might be wondering how this all DAM work in the first place.

Well, DAM begins with creating digital content in a digital format or encoding digital content through methods such as picture or text scanning, or digital audio recording.

Following that, we require indexing so that the file or asset may be uniquely identified inside an asset inventory. 

Metadata tags, which provide more information, details, or a description of the item, are commonly used to accomplish this.

Metadata can also capture rights, licenses, and pricing for a digital asset. The support is available, findable, retrievable, useable, sellable, and manageable with the correct metadata.

A digital asset becomes a part of business processes once it has been indexed. During the creative process, a graphic designer may access several images. Some of the digital photographs from a museum’s collection may be sold or licensed.

The DAM system keeps track of how, when, where, and which assets were accessed, modified, and applied to business tasks.

Assets have their own lifecycle as part of these operations. For example, the designer may make changes to an image to make it better fit a layout. Version control is required in this situation.

Each time the designer modifies, he must create, save, and index the file.

But what if the designer is a junior who isn’t allowed to change the main catalog images?

A DAM system can define rights to manage an asset’s lifecycle, protecting it from theft, accidental corruption, and deletion.

Understand the fundamental differences between PIM and DAM systems

Benefits of Digital Asset Management

Distribute Content Quickly

Keeping track of asset licensing, staying on top of file versions, and regulating stakeholder access without a solid system is challenging and can lead to many issues.

A DAM is an online solution that organizes, measures, and distributes your assets.

A digital asset manager (DAM) allows users to quickly alter, edit, and resize photos and videos and insert links directly from the DAM.

This is done in a method that a user can track and manage to keep creating content on track.

why dam tools are necessary benefits

Find Content Even Faster

With DAM, stakeholders may quickly discover the creative files they need using a quick search, instead of looking into shared drive.

The capacity to readily search for digital assets based on metadata given or simply by tagging them with keywords and other attributes is at the heart of every Digital Asset Management system.

Using automated processes, facial recognition, metadata extraction, and AI tagging, your can tag files correctly.

Stakeholders may then use complex search queries or filters based on this information to discover content faster than ever before.

Share Digital Assets Seamlessly

Many marketers don’t realize that they’re re-creating a lot of the content they’re working on. This creative repetition is costly and consumes a significant amount of both internal and external resources.

Marketers may avoid content duplication by having up-to-date creative saved in a central area, and they won’t have to buy or design the same assets over and over again.

You can empower your team to self-serve information regardless of their timing or location by allowing them to search for and share digital items effortlessly.

Users may locate, embed, convert, share, and publish assets with only a few clicks.

digital asset management connectivity

Manage Brand Compliance

As the world is connecting more than before, people are creating and using more digital files. A DAM helps marketers control assets and track their utilization, bringing order to the chaos.

Marketing teams, designers, agency partners, and other business stakeholders may use approved branded assets and content with just one click. With a DAM, they’ll always have access to the most up-to-date creative files. This is crucial for brand compliance and consistency across all marketing channels.

ROI Tracking & Reporting

The solution ensures brand consistency and decides which assets drive engagement and which content should be deleted.

Furthermore, DAM can update assets distributed throughout the internet via Content Network Distribution (CDN) links in real-time.

As a result, there is no risk of it reappearing online if anything becomes obsolete or a special deal expires.

Key Features of Digital Asset Management

Content Creation Workflow

Collaboration amongst colleagues is inefficient when creative workflows are missing. It is easy to lose the trail of who is responsible for what. This problem is very common, especially when working with external partners or coworkers from various places.

You can improve your content production and streamline communication between departments by using a content creation workflow function.

Digital Content Creation and Publishing

The “Create & Publish” modules allow you to customize InDesign layouts. Moreover, it also allows you to change predefined text or picture regions, and create on-brand publications.

Whether it’s a social post or a newsletter, every notion is always in the appropriate format and consistent with your business identity.

Centralizing the process of developing and releasing marketing materials should assure uniformity, avoid errors, and speed up the transition from web to print.

Creating content could be one of the riskiest things that you could be doing. Managing content and publishing it on the right social media platform is the real game-changer. But the real game-changing thing that you could do is to share it and promote it in the right context of the market.

Brand Portal

Your designers will most likely remember your brand book off the top of their heads. Other members of your team, on the other hand, are unlikely to agree. Consumers must be able to identify with your brand if it is to be successful.

A brand portal feature enables you to deliver consistent brand standards and up-to-date assets to everyone involved in generating and distributing marketing material, ensuring that everyone utilizes your brand correctly. 

Top 5 DAM Solutions

At this moment where we have discussed the benefits and key features of a DAM, you must be wondering what solutions are currently available in the market.

In this section, we will discuss the critical DAM solution (software) that you can consider using.

Apimio

Apimio-website-DAM

Apimio is a digital asset management system that allows users to store, share and optimize their digital assets in a central location. It let you centrally manage all your product images and the product information and syndicate it across multiple platforms

One of the unique features of this digital asset management system is that it also allows you to share all these digital assets with your vendors and (or) retailers. 

Moreover, Apimio also gives you recommendations on image data quality and permits you to make those recommended changes. Through this, you can improve your image data quality before sharing it on multiple platforms and business partners. 

Read More here

Amplifi

Amplifi-website-DAM

Amplifi is a cloud-based DAM software with a natural user interface that is simple to use. It, too, has a fully branded look and feel with customized portals, just like Workfront Library.

Amplifi also automates media transcoding and using artificial intelligence (AI) for content tagging and product-centric organization.

Another special feature of this tool is that it can stream, embed, link, and convert on demand any submitted and stored movies.

Third-party programs supporting automation can quickly publish, distribute, and share all of the digital assets.

ResourceSpace

ResourceSpace-website-DAM

ResourceSpace is an open-source DAM built in the United Kingdom that supports both cloud and on-premise implementations. Because it is open-source, it is highly adaptable and expandable to your company’s size and requirements.

The software’s UI and header may be customized to fit your company’s identity and name, which is very cool.

Another standout feature is its Enterprise Single Sign-On for maximum security. On the other hand, ResourceSpace only offers annual plans and costs annually; there is no monthly pricing alternative.

However, it does include 10-GB of storage and a no-strings-attached free trial.

Bynder

Bynder-website-DAM

Spotify, Canon, Puma, and other multinational brands use Bynder as their digital asset management platform.

Users may automate creative workflows with versioning, annotations, and customized approval processes. Users may also develop fresh marketing content immediately on the platform using easy-to-use brand templates.

It works with a variety of third-party software, like Magento, Google Analytics, and others. The fact that it has Android and iOS apps is also a plus.

Bright

Bright-website-DAM

Bright System has two DAM software options: one for medium to big organizations (Asset Bank) and one for SMEs and startups (Bright) (Dash).

It is one of the few DAM solutions that provides both a web-based and on-premise end-to-end experience.

The software includes various capabilities, such as bulk upload and numerous lightboxes, to let you upload, store, centralize, manage, and track all of your digital assets.

However, the best solution for your DAM totally depends on your budget, your business size, and the features you are looking for.

Conclusion

That’s it! This is pretty much everything that you need to know about digital asset management in 2021. 

I am sure that you may now have a better idea about DAM, its benefits, its key features, and the top solutions of DAM that you can consider. 

In this generation, where everything is getting digital, it’s crucial to have a system that can manage all your digital assets, saving your time and money. 

Therefore, as a digital marketer myself, I would highly suggest that you consider a DAM solution to make things easy for yourself and bring up your sales game.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a DAM solution?

A digital asset management (DAM) solution is a software application that helps organizations catalog, store, and retrieve digital assets such as images, videos, and documents. A DAM solution typically includes a web-based interface that allows users to search for and preview assets and tools for organizing and tagging assets. Some DAM solutions also include features for collaboration, workflow management, and file versioning. 

DAM solutions are used by various organizations, including businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies. They are often used to manage large collections of digital assets, such as those created by marketing teams or design studios.

What is its purpose?

The purpose of a DAM system is to help businesses efficiently manage, store, and retrieve their digital assets. It can help businesses save time and money by providing a central location for all their digital assets. In addition, a DAM can make it easier to find and reuse files and to control who has access to them. For businesses that rely heavily on digital assets, a DAM system can be an essential part of their operations. By managing their digital files in a central repository, businesses can improve their efficiency and better protect their valuable assets.
 
A DAM system helps you keep track of your digital assets and makes them easy to find and use.

How does a DAM system work?

A DAM system typically has four main components: a repository, a catalog, an index, and a search engine.
1. The repository is where the digital assets are stored.
2. The catalog is a database of information about the assets. 
3. The index is used to locate assets in the repository. 
4. The search engine allows you to search for assets by keyword or other criteria.
When you need to find an asset, you can use the search engine to locate it in the index. Once you find the asset, you can retrieve it from the repository.

What are the benefits of digital asset management?

Digital asset management can seem daunting for eCommerce businesses, but the benefits are well worth the effort. 
1. Businesses can save time and money by taking control of their digital assets while improving their customer experience.
2. Improved efficiency: With digital asset management in place, businesses can quickly and easily find the files they need when they need them. 
3. Increase productivity.
4. Reduced costs: They can avoid the costly mistakes of using unlicensed or outdated assets.
5. Improved customer experience: Helps businesses deliver a consistent customer experience across all channels. This can lead to increased sales and customer loyalty.

 

Why do you need a DAM?

You need a DAM for your e-commerce business to track all your digital assets in one place. To optimize your digital assets for better performance. To protect your digital assets from being lost or stolen. 

Written by Arslan Hasan

Arslan is a Content Marketing Specialist at Apimio. With a Bachelors's in Marketing, He's an expert writer in the Business and E-commerce Industry.

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