What is DAM?

DAM is more than a software

A Digital Asset Management (DAM) system is not just software. It’s a combination of people, processes and tools. DAM consist of the program for cataloging and retrieving digital assets, managing rich media and visual files.

Typically this includes workflow processes, databases and repositories for storing, tagging, protecting and sharing digital assets. It supports collaboration, revision-control, and access-rights.

But just because you can see it, does not mean you should be able to publish it. Permissions-controlled accession DAM is really helpful here. A well-organized DAM is the foundation for creating a captivating content and customer experience while managing your brand.

Small & simple or large & complex DAM?

DAMs are increasingly becoming one of the pillars or even the foundation of the Martech Suite as the content is there.

There is however a marketplace split between an affordable simple media bank image repository and a media bank ready to serve as the prime content engine underneath the MarTech stack.

Essential for Brand Management

Every marketing or brand management department needs DAM. It is now essential to marketing as visual story-telling becomes central to customer communications and experience. The most sophisticated corporates are positioning their DAM systems as the single source of truth for their media assets.

Customers demand ease of use, a user-friendly digital experience no matter if the DAM offering is Simple or Complex. This is true for Brand Management, Enterprise Asset Management, Marketing Asset Management, Publishing and Video & Audio Management.

DAM is a continuous process

Implementing a DAM solution and making it operational just gets you to the starting line. Yes, that’s right, that just gets you started. Although you can sign up and get running in a preconfigured SaaS you still need to specify the needs for the perfect solution for a you. After the implementation project – a program is born. That means this is a continual DAM journey and there is no finish line!

A successful DAM program encourages curation, not just blind collection. We will discuss how to keep your DAM alive and how your assets may go live to give return on your investment and talk about best practices.

Making assets alive and searchable

DAMs content gets organised by taxonomies, keywords and tags called metadata (data about data). Adding metadata to digital assets is the trick that makes the digital assets searchable, findable, reusable and potentially repurposable. In this respect, a DAM solution is only as good as its metadata. Metadata matters although it can get cumbersome to fill the needed data.

The beauty of digital asset management is the ability to add metadata that adds value to that digital asset and increases its retrievability. If you load something with no information you’re not doing anything better than you did before by sticking it in a folder on a server, no matter if its in Dropbox or OneDrive.

DAMs AI tools are getting smarter using Computer Vision in metadata tagging, a task that once took hours now takes minutes and helps in curating the content.

People need to be educated for DAM

The maintenance in an Enterprise DAM is not about the software. Firsthand, it’s educating your users to workflows, processes, metadata and business rules. Train your users as much as you possibly can. The more they understand about why metadata matters, the easier and better it’s going to be.