It’s clear that digital asset management (DAM) is becoming a key solution in the digital ecosystem because of the way it connects your assets to other key aspects of the company. This connectedness paves the way for collaboration and breaks down silos between teams in the organization. It also creates time-savings and flexibility that can turn into a competitive advantage for your business. Companies that are focused on becoming digitally mature are investing in a DAM as an integral part of the marketing technology stack because of the efficiency and control it brings to the marketing process and business overall.
Here are five ways DAM connects your digital assets to processes and encourages collaboration within your company:
With DAM, your assets are connected to the right people at the right time. Your creative directors can do a simple search to find the assets they want to use for a campaign and kick off a project process with workflow tools. Your designers can access digital assets from the DAM directly in their Adobe application so that they can create materials for the project and upload them back to the DAM where they are routed for approval. The final, approved versions of assets like brochures and spec sheets can be accessed and downloaded by your sales people.
Your teams can work together more effectively when people have access to the assets they need, and all teams can use a single source to find and manage those assets.
DAM can help connect your assets to other key areas of your digital ecosystem. DAM uses metadata to attach information to assets so that they can easily be found and the metadata stays with them wherever they go. The DAM can push and pull information about assets with them as they go through other systems. For example, you can integrate your PIM with your DAM to understand the product information based on the metadata attached to the asset.
The DAM can connect to your systems of distribution so that it’s simple to send assets to your digital and physical channels as soon as they are ready to go. When your systems are connected across departments, it helps break down silos by connecting the teams behind those systems.
Digital assets are an important part of your marketing and creative campaigns and DAM can help connect the processes that help those campaigns come to life. Digital asset management systems allow you to run workflows based on actions done to assets.
Business Process Management (BPM) workflows allow you to manage tasks, review, and approvals from the DAM so that finished assets are managed from a single source. Automatically routing assets through the approval cycle helps teams collaborate since there is visibility into the process to identify and improve bottlenecks rather than losing project updates in the depths of inboxes.
DAM is a central solution that connects your assets to your digital channels so that you have a consistent omnichannel presence.
A DAM allows you to create different versions of an asset, or download the asset in a specific size based on the channel where the asset is going to be distributed. So whether it’s ecommerce, social media, email, website, print, packaging, in-store signage, or any other channel, DAM helps your teams work together to get your assets where they need to be.
With Digital Rights Management (DRM) and DAM, you can control who has access to your assets and when.
DAM can be integrated with DRM tools that allow users to look for assets based on their availability for the duration of the campaign they are working on. This helps eliminate silos and tension related to the misuse of assets by teams who aren’t aware of the legal ramifications that can be associated with using expired assets.
The way a DAM connects your digital assets to the people, systems, processes, channels, and permission controls in your organization make it valuable to the business overall.
To learn more about how to focus on connecting your systems and teams, download the Digital Maturity Model for Marketing Processes white paper.
