How To Use Digital Asset Management To Make Online Collaboration Easier

The massive growth in digital marketing has created many new opportunities for businesses, but also new challenges. Marketers have more distribution channels and more file formats and types to deal with, all the while trying to stay on-brand and consistent.

With so many digital assets on hand, successfully executing a marketing campaign in today’s competitive business landscape is much easier said than done. Organizations large and small are struggling with issues such as missing files, inconsistent branding, and inappropriate file permissions.

Enter digital asset management (DAM) software, which aims to help organizations better manage their digital content, from images and videos to text and audio files. Not only does a DAM solution make it easier to organize and search for your files, it also includes features for managing usage rights and brand compliance.

File management solutions are no longer the sole responsibility of your IT department. Creative professionals and marketers need to take charge of their own fate and find the best DAM system for their situation.

In this article, we’ll discuss five ways that DAM software will make online collaboration easier for your employees, from improving search to getting everyone on the same page.

1. Getting the Entire Organization on the Same Page

As enterprises accumulate more data and files than ever, it’s more and more important to have a “single source of truth” (SSOT): a trusted, up-to-date, accurate data source that all employees can rely on when collaborating and making business decisions. For many organizations, DAM software has become part of their SSOT solution.

DAM solutions help get everyone on the same page by ensuring that employees adhere to their job roles. Mature DAM software allows you to assign responsibilities within a given workflow or cycle, so that employees have greater visibility into their exact obligations.

2. Streamlining Production of Work-in-Progress Marketing

DAM software helps you design a workflow, stick to it, and reinforce it. In particular, you can capitalize on repeatable templates that save you a great deal of the work during each cycle. Although you’ll never be able to automate the entire approval workflow, you can greatly improve your speed and reduce your turnaround time by saving your most frequently used files in your DAM system.

3. Avoiding Duplication or Recreation of Existing Assets

Storing files in a DAM system ensures that teams don’t waste time and effort repeating work that has already been done. 97 percent of organizations say that they have reduced their asset creation costs by at least 10 percent thanks to their DAM system.

For example, if the copy for a marketing campaign has already been approved, then there’s no need to rewrite it for another advertisement in the same campaign—only the layout needs approval.

4. Spending Less Time Searching for Assets

Searching is a crucial part of DAM software. For many organizations, it’s a major improvement over their previous DAM practices, and the entire reason why they make the purchase. Sophisticated DAM systems include advanced search features and filters that allow users to find exactly what they’re looking for at a moment’s notice.

Behind the convenience of the search functionality, however, lies a complicated metadata schema that is independent of any single DAM platform. In order to formulate a schema that works well with your organization, you need to understand how employees will actually use the system.

For example, if users typically search for files based on their name, then adding dozens of metadata fields and keywords is unnecessary and will only increase the system’s bloat. Search features are typically lightning-fast during the sales demo when there are relatively few assets in the system. However, once you load all of your assets into the software, speed can degrade quite rapidly if you don’t know what you’re doing, which can harm user adoption.

In the vast majority of cases, employees use filenames to locate the information that they’re looking for. In order to balance speed and usability, however, you should understand what kind of files users typically search for and the methods they use to do so.

5. Ensuring Brand Compliance

Establishing a coherent brand with on-target messaging and visuals is essential for success. 89 percent of content marketers say that brand awareness is an important goal to them. Your company’s brand dramatically affects customers’ opinion of you, and ultimately determines whether they remain loyal to your business.

Whether it’s establishing a consistent tone of voice or using the right shade of red in an advertisement, you need to protect your company’s brand. DAM software helps to ensure compliance with your brand by helping you find data and collaborate with the right people. The single source of truth that a DAM system makes it easier than ever to remain on-brand and professional.

Final Thoughts

For modern creative organizations that are rich in digital assets, DAM is a necessity. However, you need to make sure that you implement it in the right way. Choosing the right software is only half the battle; what really matters is how it aligns with your workflow and processes. 

To learn more about improving your digital asset management and increasing the efficiency of your processes, download our free guide: Future-Proofing Your Digital Asset Management and Creative Production.