Is Dropbox a Digital Asset Manager?

In today’s digital world, it is now more necessary than ever to have a way to collaborate and share resources among employees and even channel partners and agencies. Thankfully, a DAM or Digital Asset Management company provides a workable and easy-to-implement solution to ensure that a modern business is functioning optimally in the digital arena.

What Is a Digital Asset Management Platform?

A Digital Asset Management Platform, also known as a DAM, is a solution that allows companies to centrally store, share, and manage digital files. In many cases, a DAM is shared across several departments within the business, but it can be utilized externally as well, in conjunction with channel partners and agencies. There are several types of digital assets, such as images, videos, documents, and more. These all need to be managed and correlated to create a cohesive brand look, image, and standard of operation. Therefore, digital asset management is invaluable for today’s modern businesses.

Is Dropbox a Digital Asset Manager?

In short, no, Dropbox is not a DAM or Digital Asset Manager. However, Dropbox does provide a form of digital asset storage, so it is often confused with a DAM, although it does not offer the preferred functionalities that are associated with DAMs. Elements like tagging, the ability to alter or update an existing file or have files updated in other locations automatically, and more are not part of what Dropbox offers, so, it can’t be considered a DAM. A more accurate way to classify Dropbox as a file storage tool. It’s helpful as far as what it offers, but will never serve the full purpose and usefulness of a true digital asset manager.

What Is an Example of a Digital Asset Management System?

There are a few notable digital asset management companies to choose from that all offer a wide range of options for businesses today. If you are trying to decide between them, it’s worth noting how they differ. The most well-known and used digital asset management examples include Adobe, Brandfolder, Bynder, and Canto. These DAMs are standalone, meaning that they require you to purchase a third-party solution either through an agency or developer to create your desired digital experience.

Adobe digital asset management is a well-known solution, but it has a pretty high cost, and its implementation time is quite lengthy, especially when compared with other DAM solutions. Therefore, while these other best digital asset management solutions or best DAM systems are noteworthy for what they offer, Lumavate does a bit more by providing  DAM functionality along with a full PIM and disgial experience platform (DXP) as part of their platform. This ensures that you will enjoy a seamless integration with a built-in system through Lumavate. It’s also worth noting that as one of the top digital asset management systems, Lumavate can handle product records in just a few clicks and can be utilized within digital experiences without any need for technical resources.

Lumavate offers more than any other solution on the market. It is a product experience management (PXM) platform that offers DAM fuctionality along with DXP and PIM functionalityA DXP is key to creating digital product experiences, like websites, labeling and packaging, product catalogs, brand portals, and much, much more. PIM or Product Information Management is also an integral part of what is offered by Lumavate. This function allows you to unify all your product data throughout many departments, enhancing collaboration and unification throughout your business.

Digital Asset Management companies serve as the central location for storing, documenting, organizing, cataloging, and analyzing all your brand’s digital assets. Of course, choosing Lumavate means you get even more functionality. DAMs also make digital resources and assets taggable and searchable.

What Is the Difference Between CMS and DAM?

Digital Asset Management or DAM is used to share, manage, and store digital assets. This allows unification among departments and allows digital files to be shared even among external partners. A Content Management System, or CMS is instead used to create, publish, and edit online content. Therefore, a CMS solution is often used to manage and oversee a business’s website. This means that a CMS, unlike a DAM, is used solely to manage content and cannot provide the resources needed to build or oversee a complete digital experience like is offered with a DAM or DXP.

DAMs are not all created equal, though, and they offer much more than CMS systems. However, when evaluating the right DAM for your company, consider the following aspects of a good DAM solution:

• Understand Brand Needs: Pinpoint the challenges you want to have that need to be remedied with a DAM. Product demos help determine if you have chosen the right DAM for your company as it will showcase how it will improve functionality.

• Consider the Scale: Ensure that any DAM you are considering can be scaled to accommodate your company’s growing and future needs. You want a solution that will be limitless in terms of growth to support your business not only now but in the future.

• User-Friendly: A good DAM solution will offer user-friendly integration and navigation, along with easy tagging, searching, and uploading capabilities. This streamlines the workflow of your entire team and makes life much easier. 

• Integration: Another important factor to consider when choosing a DAM is that it integrates well. This means that you want something that enhances cross-functional collaboration to the extent that it makes all team members' lives easier by allowing for ease of use for all assets between marketing and sales teams. 

• Customer Support and Regular Updates of Products: A good DAM will also offer regular product updates and provide customer support by aligning with your company’s growing and evolving news. This will help enhance your product by providing the best support possible.

Try Lumavate

Lumavate is a DAM solution but offers even more options, making it a true PXM or Product Experience Management company. It allows you to manage your audio and documents, like PowerPoint, spreadsheets, PDFs, and images, like JPEGs, PNGs, and SVGs. Lumavate also helps you organize your text over the platform as well as videos and much, much, more. Contact us today to schedule a demo and see how it can serve as a much better resource than a simple file storage system like Dropbox.