What is Digital Asset Management

Intro

Companies are increasingly adopting digital asset management solutions that ensure assets are organized and accessible to employees across the organization.

Learn what a DAM system is, why it’s important for managing a company, and how it can be implemented into your organization.

What is digital asset management (DAM)?

Digital asset management (DAM) is the process of managing a company’s digital assets. This includes storing, organizing, enhancing, and distributing the assets internally or externally.

A digital asset can be an image, a text, a document, or any other file that can be stored digitally. Companies often have a wide variety of digital assets. These include technical documentation, legal documents, spreadsheets, or brand assets like logos, icons, and visual identity guidelines.

Why is it important to manage digital assets?

Digital asset management has become increasingly important in recent decades where the majority of internal and external communication happens online. With more and more digital files being produced in a company, the need for effective management is becoming ever more important.

Let’s look at the advantages of using a digital asset management system and the risks of not using DAM.

Advantages of using a DAM system

Central access to assets: If files are saved to employees’ local drives, they may not be accessible to everyone. By doing online digital asset management on a cloud-based DAM system, company assets are centrally stored so all employees can access them.
Consistent brand identity: By having neatly organized digital assets, managers can enforce brand guideline compliance so that the brand is portrayed in a consistent manner. This ensures that the company is perceived as professional.
Protection of assets: Digital assets can be valuable like other assets and should be protected. DAM systems can serve as a digital vault that guards a company’s digital assets against ending up in the wrong hands.

Risks of not using a DAM system

Inefficient resource use: If a company doesn’t have a DAM system, employees may waste time looking around for digital assets. 69% of employees that do not have a digital asset management system implemented say that they use Google to find company assets.
Inconsistent brand identity: Without a digital asset management system, companies can find it difficult to keep a consistent identity as brand managers will be forced to manually roll-out rebranding efforts or updates to branding guidelines.
Reputational risks: If a company hasn’t implemented a digital asset management strategy, it may be more difficult to ensure compliance with internal and external guidelines. This could lead to unfortunate incidents, but in the worst case also regulatory scrutiny if copyright laws or other regulation relating to the digital assets isn’t adhered to.

How does a digital asset management system work?

A digital asset management system is a software tool that enables companies to centrally manage their digital assets using different software solutions that work together. This allows for effective management of digital assets. Let’s look closer at how a DAM system works:

1. Asset upload

A digital asset management system enables companies to upload digital assets to a central, often cloud-based, hub. Here, all digital assets can be stored safely and centrally for all employees across the organization to access them.

2. Organizing assets

Once digital assets are uploaded to the DAM system, they need to be categorized in order for employees to easily access them. This is done by tagging the assets with metadata – keywords and descriptions – so that they are searchable.

3. Searching for assets

With metadata attached to each digital asset, employees can search the DAM system and locate the asset they are looking for. Here, they can retrieve the asset in the format they need.

4. Updating assets

Brand managers and administrators can update digital assets within the DAM system and instantly roll-out the updates to all users. This enables assets to be updated in real time so that every employee has access to the most up-to-date digital asset.

5. Controlling access

Administrators of digital asset management can assign permissions to different employee functions. For example, brand managers can edit brand assets while other employees can only use the assets in a predefined manner.

6. Automatic compliance

Most DAM systems check digital assets against company guidelines to make sure that they are used in a compliant manner. This enables employees to focus on core work and not on getting their content approved.

7. Integration with applications

Brand compliance platforms like Templafy use digital asset management as a component to ensure brand compliance. The platform integrates with and supercharges DAM solutions to give employees access to company-approved digital assets within the organization’s office application, such as Office 365 or Google Workspace.

What is digital asset management used for?

Digital asset management is used by companies and professionals across industries. Here’s a few examples of how different types of companies use DAM systems:

Online businesses:

Once an online business grows in size, cloud storage solutions like Google Drive may not be sufficient to ensure proper management of digital assets. Many online businesses move to digital asset management platforms to ensure consistent content across all marketing channels.

Financial institutions:

Financial institutions use DAM systems to store, organize and manage proposals, contracts, reports, and other financial documents. Some choose more overarching platforms like Templafy to ensure compliance with internal and external guidelines and regulation.

Manufacturing companies:

Companies that manufacture goods can find great use of digital asset management systems. These types of companies can have a lot of digital assets in the shape of product details, technical documentation, and more that need to be properly organized.

Most enterprises and large companies:

Enterprises and large companies often have departments in different countries. This creates a need to have centrally managed digital assets that are available to everyone across departments and time zones.

The best digital asset management software

There’s a range of digital asset management software on the market. The best DAM solution depends on the size and needs of the company. Let’s look at three tools for three different sizes of companies.

Small businesses: Dash

Dash is the go-to digital asset management tool among small businesses. It has an intuitive way of building digital asset folders and an AI that enables advanced search capabilities.

Mid-sized businesses: Bynder

Bynder is a popular choice for mid-sized companies that are looking for digital asset management software. Bynder has more than 4000 clients across the globe that they help store, organize, search and retrieve digital assets.

Large companies and enterprises: Templafy

For larger companies and enterprises, it’s rarely enough to just manage brand assets – the use of brand assets has to be monitored so that compliance with internal and external guidelines is ensured.

One of the most widely adopted solutions for enhancing digital asset management software to ensure brand compliance is Templafy. The Templafy platform integrates with existing DAM tools and connects them to employees’ workflows, enabling large companies and enterprises to create on-brand, compliant and personalized documents across every employee.

CASE

How Templafy helped the Capital Region of Denmark

The Capital Region of Denmark is one of the largest public employers in Denmark. The organization needed to centralize their IT administration system and give all employees easy access to on-brand presentation templates and digital assets from within Microsoft Office.

Using Templafy’s custom Admin Center, The Capital Region of Denmark’s employees can now centrally manage document templates and content, enabling the marketing and branding teams to maintain, update and distribute content to all employees in an instant. Implementing Templafy has freed up resources that can now be used for more important work, such as new treatments, technologies, and health-care services.

4 tips for implementing a DAM

Plan ahead

Start educating employees on how to use the digital asset management system before it gets implemented. This will give them a sense of ownership that can increase engagement.
Set clear guidelines

Establish guidelines for how employees should tag digital assets with relevant metadata. This will ensure that the DAM is useful and not just another messy folder system.
Choose an integrated tool

When choosing between different digital asset management systems, choose a tool that can be integrated into your existing office application, such as Office 365 or Google Workspace. This ensures that employees can continue working in their preferred app and streamline their workflow.
Analyze usage

Monitor employees’ usage of the DAM. By analyzing the data and pairing it with qualitative interviews, you can learn how the digital assets are uploaded, edited, searched for and retrieved, which can provide valuable insights that can be used to improve the DAM workflow.

Start managing your brand with Templafy

Digital assets need to be neatly organized to make the most of them. However, it’s also important to ensure that they are used correctly in the content production. With Templafy, you get access to a complete brand compliance platform that ensures all digital assets are stored, managed, and used correctly. Try it out!

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