DAM This...

Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems are a commonly misunderstood tool. “They’re like a file storage system, right?”. Technically, that’s not wrong, but that’s like saying that Google is “just a search engine”. Also, not technically wrong, but...short-sighted. 

We get asked a lot about storing assets (and DAMs), so I thought I’d dissect this a bit and help anyone looking for a DAM understand them a bit more. So let’s explore why you’d want a DAM, the benefits of having one, and what to look for in a great one, such as Digizuite, a “dam” fantastic selection, especially if you’re considering or already implemented the Episerver Digital Experience Cloud platform. 

• DAMs should keep your assets well organized. Every organization has tons of assets, from images and videos, to PDFs, presentations and more. Keeping them organized in one place is critical. DAMs make this possible and more importantly, make locating assets easy (if configured properly).
• DAMs should have an easy authoring experience. Following your initial upload of assets, a quality DAM should:
• Make uploading and organization of additional assets simple.
• Have an easy way to view assets, and edit attributes about those assets.
• Include version control so you can see changes over-time, as well as send out different versions of an asset, over-time or to different sources. Nothing ever stays stagnant.
• Have a workflow capability that is robust enough to meet your operational needs. At a minimum, make sure you can review, approve, reject, etc.
• DAMs should integrate with multiple tools from content management systems to print outlets or paid media distributors. No matter what you’re currently doing, your DAM should support an integration or connection to these other outlets where your assets are used or distributed. Remember, the goal is for you to stay organized and manage assets in a single place. Try to make as few exceptions as you can there.
• DAMs should be a great tool for tagging assets with attributes or metadata. Now that your assets are in a single place, be sure to add descriptions, tags or other attributes about those assets in-order to easily locate them, but also to be able to federate that data outward. With compliance and accessibility rules becoming stricter by the day, having a central location in which to tag assets with metadata means you can stay more organized. And don’t forget, tagging can be manual or automatic...let’s put the DAM to work!

Ready to get started? With this list and some other considerations, you might be ready sooner than you think! Get in touch and we can share a few more “pro tip” considerations for your DAM selection and help you begin.