What is Digital Asset Management (DAM)?

Find

• Use folders to Organize your assets and help people quickly find assets, or know where to upload them.
• Create a taxonomy and then use it to add values to assets, additionally helping your team quickly find, and filter assets to locate what they’re looking for.

Share

• Sending links to collections or selections of assets is a great way to share assets with non-registered DAM users. Look for the ability to expire and password protect these links.
• Portals are another great way to grant access to your digital assets. Portals can be made public, or password protected, and offer a more branded look and feel to offer your end-users.

Access

• Who needs what? Using groups you can bulk assign your users access to view assets they need to work with.
• User levels can then help determine what those users can do with the assets once they’ve accessed them.
• Integrations with tools like the Adobe Creative Suite can allow your users to quickly find and version assets from within the Adobe Creative Cloud.

What do you put in a DAM?

How do you determine when something is an asset? It’s a common misconception that a DAM is a storage solution. While the DAM will store all of your assets and can become the system of record, it is not the place for everyone to upload anything your organization has ever produced. Before organizing and uploading, you need to ask yourself, “Does this digital file have value within my organization? 

When do you need a DAM?

If you’ve ever heard someone in your organization say any of these statements, or ask you any of the following questions, you need a DAM!

• “I can’t find the right logo!”
• “These files are too large to send in an email!”
• “Who edited these photos?”
• “Can you send me those videos again? I can’t find them anywhere.”
• “Who deleted my work from the shared drive?”
• “Did everyone review these photos?”

Get some DAM requirements!

Before you begin shopping for a DAM, be sure you understand the requirements you’ve gathered from your team. We’re often asked, “Can you integrate with my toaster?” To which we’ll reply, “Well, yes, but what are you trying to achieve with this integration?” To which they will respond, “I have no clue! Someone on my team had that as a requirement, but that seems crazy to me.”  Once you’ve gathered your requirements, make sure you understand and then prioritize between, “Have to have,” and “Nice to haves.” And, get an idea if you're looking for a hosted environment, or if you're looking to host on-premise. 

What to look for in a DAM

While the concept of digital asset management itself can be distilled down into easy-to-grasp concepts, it can evolve quite quickly into something rather complex. Maybe complex is what you need, or perhaps you’re looking for something simple, or maybe what you need is something in between. Regardless of what you’re looking for, make sure you pick a vendor that can walk you through their tool and SHOW you how it will help with your requirements. Your requirements will help quickly narrow down your search.

Be DAM assertive!

Chances are, a canned demo is not going to answer all of your DAM questions. Make a list of things to ask. Your time is valuable, so if you have some “deal-breaker” requirements, don’t be afraid to lead with those.

Get a DAM test account

You wouldn’t buy a car without test driving it, so why would you buy a DAM solution without seeing what it can do?

DAM, we can help!

We know a lot of people don’t get into digital asset management on purpose. Quite often, you’re simply the one at your organization who knows where everything is and realizes this is a problem. If that’s the case, we can help!