What Is Another Name for Digital Asset Management?

What type of storage process does your company have for managing digital assets? Are the files spread haphazardly across the organization on individuals’ computers, servers, thumb drives, and maybe even the servers of your advertising agency or public relations firm? Is putting together a report, a campaign, or a presentation difficult because you’re continually having to hunt down files and the people who control them?

This kind of inefficiency, which has likely been experienced by nearly every company at one time or another, wastes time, money, and employee energy, particularly as companies increasingly sharpen their focus on engaging in valuable content marketing. Manual processes are time-consuming and take employees away from their core duties. They frustrate workers and lead to employee disengagement and turnover. The result is incorrect or out-of-date information reaching customers and partners, and poor efforts at today’s all-important content marketing. This is a particular challenge for manufacturing companies, who may have hundreds or even thousands of products to keep track of. The good news is that these problems and inefficiencies can be solved easily and affordably with the help of digital asset management.

What Is Digital Asset Management?

Digital asset management, or DAM, refers to centralized storage for all digital assets such as documents, images, audio, video, company logos, and more. While these digital assets are typically managed by the marketing team, with the help of a DAM, they are available for use by various teams and workers throughout the business as well as channel partners. Because they are centrally stored and managed, they are always quickly available and up to date, ensuring that the company isn’t wasting employee time and energy.

At its core, DAM can be achieved with a very simple solution such as Dropbox. What easy solutions like Dropbox lack, however, is a system to manage and search the content.

What Is a Digital Asset Management System?

While centralized storage is the first step, digital assets need a front-end management solution to render them easily accessible. Digital asset management tools allow companies to not only store the digital files but also manage and share them effectively using the solution framework. A DAM is often shared across multiple departments in the business as well as externally with others, such as advertising agencies and channel partners. 

Using digital asset management platforms, employees and departments can search for the right assets – an important element to eliminate time-consuming manual hunting for material – and be certain they’re finding the latest and most up-to-date materials. They can also create a portal for other users to gain access to the digital assets, opening the door to collaborative work.

What Does a Digital Asset Manager Do?

In many companies, one individual may be designated as the digital asset manager. This person, who will likely be in the marketing or advertising department, is responsible for the overall management of the digital asset management solution. Ultimately, this individual is responsible and accountable for the DAM even though multiple people may be responsible for uploading digital assets, and many more may use the solution to locate accurate materials.

A digital asset manager job description includes responsibility for the presence, accuracy, and organization of all the digital assets of a company. With a continued marketplace shift toward multichannel digital in marketing and communication, digital asset management jobs are flourishing as companies expand their content marketing programs.

Digital Asset Management vs Content Management System

The phrase “digital asset management” is often used interchangeably with “content management system,” or CMS. There are some similarities between the two solutions. CMS and DAM solutions both help businesses improve efficiency and productivity and help ensure that content is consistent and accurate. They provide scalability and flexibility in the use of the materials and guard the information from unauthorized use with enhanced security protocols.

Where CMS and DAM systems differ is in how they allow employees and partners to use the content and digital assets. A CMS is typically where the content for a company’s website is stored. It serves as the front end of the website so that employees outside of the webmaster and the IT department can make modifications to the company’s website. A DAM solution goes beyond a content management system. For starters, it’s more flexible in terms of the places the digital assets can be stored. Marketers, advertisers, and others within the organization can use the assets stored in a DAM in a wider variety of channels than just the website, making a DAM a more robust technology resource than a CMS.

What Are the Digital Asset Management Companies?

Today, there is a wide variety of DAMS on the market. Prominent digital asset management system examples include companies such as Adobe, Canto, Bynder, and Brandfolder. While these digital asset management companies all allow for centralized storage of digital assets, they are simple DAMs that still require the use of a third-party solution to create digital experiences. Given the high costs of solutions such as Adobe and the lengthy implementation times required, adding the complementary solutions required such as product information management (PIM) and a digital experience platform (DXP) renders these solutions extremely costly, and means they’re simply not the best DAM systems available.

For companies that do not have limitless technology budgets, a DAM solution that is fully integrated with a product information management and digital experience platform can save significant money and implementation time and ensure that all elements of the platform work together. The best digital asset management solutions are those that have complementary technologies pre-integrated to ensure that the solutions work together in a way that allows users to engage in content marketing without headaches.

Lumavate offers a DAM solution that includes a full PIM and DXP in its platform, providing seamless built-in integration to the DAM for users. Assets in Lumavate’s DAM can be associated with product records in only a few clicks and used in digital experiences built without any technical resources, making it easy for employees across the company to take advantage of the solution’s assets without the assistance of the IT department.

The Lumavate solution is not only full-featured but also affordable: with each of our pricing plans, companies receive access to our Product Information Management (PIM) solution, Digital Experience Platform (DXP) in addition to our core DAM solution.