How Digital Asset Management (DAM) Fits into the Creative Workflow

Creativity is an essential aspect of every brand, and it can be seen throughout the organization in all departments. From brainstorming an innovative process solution to unleashing a brilliant advertising campaign that attracts a new legion of consumers; creativity leads to success. 

When it comes to producing content that amplifies a brand’s message, outside-the-box thinking and innovation can set a product apart from the competition. Because of this, brands need to cultivate an environment that encourages creativity for all their departments that produce content. This not only means that collaboration and constructive conversations should be happening, but brands should also limit distractions for their content producers so that they can focus on creating compelling work. 

Brands should try and standardize their creative processes—where applicable—so that designers can focus on creativity rather than spending time on administrative tasks like finding and organizing design elements and information.

For creative teams that are struggling to find the best way to utilize existing files, images, logos, and other digital assets, digital asset management (DAM) is the savior they’ve been looking for. 

How Digital Asset Management Can Propel a Creative Process to New Heights

The key to creativity is putting aside specific time to think and put forward progressive, innovative ideas without the distraction of working through a cluttered and confusing process. 

DAM allows brands to house all their assets in a centralized location. The right DAM solution will also enable teams to find assets easily from a window directly into Adobe InDesign. Instead of spending precious time weeding through old emails or drives on their desktop, creatives can search for the asset they need with ease using keywords and saved search features directly from their creative tool. 

Here are some telltale signs that a creative team is ready for a DAM solution.

How to Tell if Your Creative Team Needs DAM

Creative teams that don’t use DAM are susceptible to working in silos, with their own individual processes and methods of storing and finding the files they need to complete their work. This can cause massive confusion and inefficiencies within each project. Not knowing where a specific image or file is will likely mean that whoever is looking for the asset will need to spend time recreating a new digital asset. 

Here are some common occurrences that happen within teams that could definitely benefit from a DAM: 

• A designer or creative spends a lot of time working on a document, only to find out later that the document they were working on was the wrong one.
• A creative team can’t quickly redeploy objects to another workflow or designer with the need to download a massive number of documents. 
• The team doesn’t have versioning to understand if the most current version is being used, causing the project to be restarted or scrapped, leading to wasted effort. 
• A convoluted process leads to disconnected workflows for creative work, causing massive amounts of inefficiency. 

MediaBeacon is a DAM that supports Creative Workflow

For years, MediaBeacon has been providing creative teams with a DAM solution that streamlines productivity while eliminating harmful silos and ensuring everyone is on the same page. 

Through store, search, and control features, brands can utilize MediaBeacon to find the files they need when they need them, directly through Adobe InDesign. MediaBeacon also includes digital rights management capabilities, allowing brands to control who has access to specific assets and enforce expiration dates based on licensing. 

Creative teams also need collaboration to thrive. MediaBeacon makes it easy for teams to compare and annotate versions side-by-side, communicating edits and suggestions easily before an asset is approved. Notification features also ensure that projects don’t get delayed. 

With an extensive amount of integrations and partners, integrating MediaBeacon into current processes is made simple and allows teams to use solutions that they are already familiar with. MediaBeacon is easy to use, so teams don’t have to spend too much time trying to learn the ins-and-outs of this DAM solution. 

MediaBeacon is for creative teams that want to focus on being creative, not searching for lost digital assets. To learn more about how DAM can work with your creative workflow, check out the story of how Pivot Point uses MediaBeacon