Digital Asset Management

DAM is a process and a structure for managing digital assets. This is done using software that users log into and access, usually online. Overall, a DAM system should help you manage and share accurate, multi-channel content at every stage of the customer journey.

There are four core things all good DAM systems should enable users to do:

• Store: easily upload digital files and content to a secure cloud-based system.
• Access: search for and retrieve the files users are looking for simply and quickly.
• Distribute: supply assets to other users or marketing software platforms as intuitively and seamlessly as possible.
• Control: manage site structure, folders, metadata, users as well as branding and look and feel of the site.

Anyone who uses digital files. That is a lot of people, but almost everyone within your business accesses digital files everyday. That might be your design team using product shots in your latest brochure, sales teams sending a pricing sheet to a client, the HR team adding the company logo to a job spec or your IT team creating a new web page.

Yes, your whole company can benefit from having a DAM system. Marketing is normally responsible for the implementation of a DAM system but every department will utilise it. You will find your brand consistency improves as everyone is accessing approved assets from your DAM platform.

There is nothing worse than seeing your brand represented in the wrong way. We have seen some company logos treated very badly over the years. This is normally not down to maliciousness by perpetrators, it happens because they didn’t know where to go to get the right logo in the right format, so they just used what they had. With a DAM system all your users have access to the correct, on-brand digital assets that show your brand in the best light.

Yes, there are loads of benefits. Brandworkz DAM has numerous features make managing your digital assets easy and intuitive. For example, we have a Version Control feature that alerts you when a new version of an asset is uploaded. So if your sales team is using a pricing sheet stored in your DAM system they will be alerted when a new version is updated and will always have the most up-to-date version.

An industry-leading DAM system will offer additional features to help manage your whole brand, not just your digital assets.  Look for a DAM system with integrated CMS brand guidelines enabling you to educate users about what your brand stands for and how to use the content, alongside the digital assets themselves. An integrated Web-to-Publish feature will allow users to customise or localise on-brand content using dynamic templates.

Alongside these features, remember to look for an on-brand UI and simple, intuitive interface for better uptake by your end users.

An internal server works as a place to put your assets but there is a number of issues that can arise:

• Sharing: each department or even each team member might have their own place where they store assets, this will lead to a number of silos that the other teams are unaware of.
• Access: many internal servers require you to be on the network for access, with cloud-based DAM you can get access from anywhere in the world.
• Functionality: DAM systems have numerous tools that make managing your images far easier and reduce the amount of resources required, servers do not have this level of functionality.

Most DAM systems, Brandworkz included, are now hosted in the cloud. This means that your digital assets are stored in servers around the world and are accessed via any web browser. The opposite of this is an ‘on premise’ system which is installed in your office, this type of system is harder to deploy, harder to maintain and costs significantly more purchase.

You can find out more about Brandworkz DAM and its features by going here. You can also find out more about the benefits of DAM and some tips on how to best manage your digital assets on blog which is located here.