What is DAM?

What is Digital Asset Management?

Digital Asset Management is a system that enables you to store and manage all types of digital files that your company produces in one central location. Commonly used digital asset types include  images, graphics, video, audio, text documents, presentations, 3D files, and more.

There are several DAM providers available with varying levels of capabilities (and costs), so it’s  important to keep your specific organization’s needs and use cases in mind as you research your  options.

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How DAM Brings It All Together

Let’s say, for instance, your team is using Adobe InDesign to develop digital and print layouts for an upcoming product launch. This content will be funneled into a content repository where the marketing team can access variants of the assets for an omnichannel marketing campaign. Then the worst happens. A day before the campaign is set to launch, you discover an error in the product spec that needs to be corrected across all asset variants. Within your DAM, you can make this correction once and automatically apply it to every asset where this information is in use, as opposed to making the changes manually.

A DAM solution can also save your team from creating duplicate content or re-testing a concept where results have already been proven. It may seem obvious, but many organizations are behind in content management innovation. As made clear in a 2020 study on the state of Universal Content Management, over 56% of marketers currently spend a substantial amount of their time looking for assets that may or may not already exist. This can be an issue for a number of reasons.

Selecting the Right System for Your Needs

In order to assess which DAM system your organization needs, you should first ask yourself the following questions:

1. How many assets does our organization manage today? How/where are they managed?
2. Which file types do we work with (e.g., MP4, 3D, PDF, INDD)?
3. Are we using multiple separate systems for the same tasks (e.g., DropBox, Google Drive)?
4. How do we ensure only brand compliant materials are used?
5. Does our agency also manage our digital assets? What costs are associated with this?
6. Are we improving on the customer and brand experience in a measurable way?
7. How prepared are we for the challenges of ongoing digital transformation?
8. Should we look for an out-of-the box, DAM-only solution? Or define and follow a long term omnichannel content management strategy that also encompasses product data?

Depending on your answers to these first few considerations, our recommended next step is to scope out your business needs and timeline, then begin to research your options.

Third party review sites that evaluate Digital Asset Management tools in an agnostic manner such as Gartner, Forrester, Real Story Group, Research in Action, G2, and Capterra are great places to start.

How DAM Helps You Nail Your Content Strategy

Once you’ve decided on the DAM platform that will meet your needs, it’s time to implement your content strategy.

At this point, you’re likely to have completed an RFP process, scoped your initial project roadmap, and have the relevant DAM users set up within the system. Your DAM vendor’s onboarding team should now be ready to help everyone get acquainted with the system through documentation, videos, and training calls. Ideally, you’ll also have a dedicated project manager whose job is to ensure your solution be delivered on time, with high quality, and within budget.

To help you further master your DAM system, we recommend having 2 - 4 champions of the system that can help pioneer and introduce future users with ease. One common roadblock is that some silo-based habits may need to be broken – such as sending updated digital assets via email or by direct message. In order to get the most out of your DAM, you’ll want to encourage users to upload and collaborate through your central system. This may be rocky at first, but the rewards of a fully implemented and adopted content hub are well worth it.

For more tips, check out our post on
How to Deliver on Your Software Implementation.

censhare Digital Asset Management

censhare Digital Asset Management allows you to automate all of your manual content admin tasks, leaving you free to focus on creating the optimal customer experience. Use the latest images, documents, graphics, media files, and other assets to create, edit and update any content. Link assets any way you want, add references and other vital information such as source or usage rights.

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• 480p
• 360p
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Supports all file formats including video and 3D

Bulk upload and export

Automated import and export

Transfer of metadata (XMP, EXIF, IPTC)

Multi level duplicate checks

Automated versioning

Image and video version generation

Rule based archiving and de-archiving

Full text search for all content and metadata, including smart, intuitive filters

censhare DAM provides a single record for each asset that can be used by everyone. This means each asset can be flexibly linked to related information, such as target audience, source, usage rights, or other insights, enabling your teams to intuitively find and use any content.

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