In a time of accelerated digital transformation, the concept of digital assets is also rapidly expanding. Put simply, almost everything is a digital asset these days.
Digital Asset Management (DAM) has long been an essential tool in content-centric fields such as marketing, media, and entertainment, but they’re no longer the exclusive users of rich media in day-to-day operations. The growing volume and complexity of digital content in most industries have made DAM a crucial capability in a wide variety of organizations.
Today’s companies use digital assets for everything from customer engagement and process optimization to security and quality assurance. Employees need to access the assets – images, videos, audio and more – quickly and easily, without leaving their usual workflows. This makes integration with key business systems vital in any DAM solution.
Reining in rich media
Even in fields like marketing where people have deep experience handling vast quantities of digital content, the management challenges are increasing. Keeping pace with consumer expectations means constantly creating rich, interactive omnichannel content that must be accessible, yet still meet evolving governance regulations. Then there’s the ongoing task of overseeing rights and permissions, which has a direct impact on the bottom line. When there’s no central destination for digital assets, they end up stored in multiple, unconnected repositories – upwards of 20 is typical – throughout the organization. Employees waste time and money searching for files and bringing them into the relevant business application, or duplicating them if they can’t be found.
Business leaders outside marketing and media face an especially daunting task. They’re often unaccustomed to basic management processes for digital media, yet their companies are now overflowing with it. Fragmented storage and poor accessibility drain productivity, frustrate employees and degrade customer or partner relationships with slow content distribution and potential inconsistency.
Integrating DAM with business processes
Central management and full visibility are foundational for organizations seeking to maximize the value of their digital assets. Whether it’s a marketing team producing omnichannel content for external consumption or an engineering company creating training videos for remote employees, a DAM solution keeps everything in one place.
Having a hub for all digital content is critical, but so is integrating that hub with web content management, product information management, content delivery networks, graphic design tools, and other fundamental systems. By linking digital assets with product and customer data within enterprise applications, employees can efficiently create, find, manage, distribute and reuse content.
An advanced DAM solution reduces costs and boosts productivity by eliminating time-consuming searches and duplication, automating the renewal of intellectual property, and enhancing consistency across channels. The content supply chain becomes transparent in the context of employees’ familiar business processes.
Just as important, good DAM solutions enable companies to control the complete lifecycle of their digital assets. Filters and security features limit access, so specific employees, partners, and customers can use specific assets without making manual requests.
