The internet has turned our lives around, made impossible possibilities exist, and revolutionized connection and communication. It is no surprise how digital has become the most preferred mode of consuming information and communication. Almost everything we do, we utilize the internet somehow whether it be sharing a selfie on your Instagram account or ordering a big mac from McDonald's.

With the rise of emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, digital experiences have become more customer experience-oriented.

Although the digital world is a boon to us, it does have its limitations. For example, people nowadays want everything organized and structured. Be it their lives or their digital files. Accessibility is not considered a luxury, it is a necessity. Since almost all data is digitized, people want their data at their disposal where they know where to find what they are looking for specifically, categorize it, and use it when and where they want. They also wish to do all of this across multiple touchpoints and devices.

Businesses as well as customer, want their data completely organized and structured so they can locate their digital assets easily.

What is a digital asset?

A digital asset is any piece of content that can be stored digitally so you can easily transfer and receive information without storing it physically. The ownership of a digital asset depends upon the platform you are storing it on and the form you are storing it in. Anything can be a digital asset - be it a sprint report or a video of your favorite song.

Traditional e-commerce brands have different departments handling different areas of the business. Example - Your technical team may create a report for bugs that need to be fixed through outsourcing. This “digital asset” can easily be sent outside of the organization. To be honest, every department interacts with digital assets that ultimately foster the growth and success of your business.

Some examples of digital assets are -

Presentations/ Pitch

• Documents (word and PDF)

• Spreadsheets

• Video

• Audio

• Pictures

• Design Files and much more

Digital Asset Management

Digital asset management helps businesses in storing, organizing, finding, retrieving, and sharing their entire digital content catalog from one place, i.e. a “single source of truth”. It offers immense value to businesses by having a strong hold on their assets. Digital Asset Management offers complete controlled access to their entire digital library.

Digital Asset Life Cycle

Digital Asset Life Cycle is as obvious as it sounds - It is the phases your assets have to go through. It is a process of creating, using, and maintaining digital assets. Let us have a look at the different phases of the Digital Asset Life Cycle.

1) Creation

This is the first phase of the Digital Asset Life Cycle. Herein, the asset is created. It is a fun stage wherein a business delves into content that could add some sort of value to their offerings - Be it writing insightful blogs or creating cutting-edge designs. First, the idea is conceived, then it is conceptualized and finally developed.

Once created, this concept needs to be structured strategically in order to be used later in the Digital Asset Life Cycle.

2) Managing

This phase requires managing tasks such as asset familiarity, asset organization, and approvals. This phase is very crucial as it organizes and structures your asset. if this is not done correctly, your business will have large operational overheads. The team will spend their time and resources managing their assets rather than doing meaningful work.

This phase also hones the team's ability to review, edit as well as approve any changes - all in real-time.

3) Maintain

This phase ensures that you maintain and keep your digital assets up to date. This can include observing the asset for any changes, finding out loopholes, and making sure that systems are compatible with the asset. This also means revisiting the security procedures and practices of old assets.

Maintaining also means that any changes done to new platforms and procedures must be retroacted to old files and file systems.

4) Archival

This process involves getting rid of the digital assets that are no longer needed for the business. This can be in form of wiping data from devices, deleting physical media, and decommissioning servers. This step is important to not clutter the systems and keep everything organized at all times.

This step also helps in the safety and security of digital assets and confidential information when an organization switches systems or goes out of business. We should keep in mind that generally deleting single storage points of data is not enough and we should delete the backups as well and that too across all platforms of storage and communication.

Why is Digital Asset Management important?

1) Content under one roof!

Digital Asset Management allows team members across all departments to easily locate content. Running a business takes a lot and sometimes people lose track of their assets as so many of them are created on a daily basis.

A single source of truth where different departments of your business can access content while increasing the efficiency of processes.

2) Easier Workflows

If you want to bring agility to your initiatives, Digital Asset Management is going to be your best companion. The automation offered enables timely feedback, approvals, and deadlines to be accessed by the team.

This in turn expedites processes and keeps everything in check so there is no scope for last-minute risks. It also ensures that no work is lost or misplaced in the clutter.

3) Brand Consistency

By establishing your brand guidelines and content, your team can be directed to a single source of truth with a simple search option. This also ensures that no outdated, old and low-quality media is being used.

Consistency in content enables brand messaging to be the same throughout all touchpoints. This also minimizes the chance of human error because everyone refers to the same source.

4) Enhanced Security

Centralization of digital assets offers incredible safety and security. Authorizations and accesses eliminate unauthorized people from getting any access to the files they should not be subjected to.

Only those who have access and appropriate permissions can view the file. This ensures utmost privacy and safety for the business and stakeholders.

By centralization, we mean that you as the business have ownership of the data.

5) Analytics and Reporting

Digital Asset Management enables you to get a thorough understanding of how your content is performing across various articles and how your team publishes content. The main questions pertaining to content delivery- when, where, and how are strategically calculated through this approach.

This analytics can help in measuring what kind of content works the best and makes you aware of the room for improvements. This can allow the team to repurpose their best-performing content, which will lead to saving a lot of resources.

A good content management system will let you know the performance of your content across all channels in one place so that you don’t have to go to all channels in order to check the performance of your content specifically. This also gives you the big picture.

Digital Asset Management Vs. Traditional Content Management System

In Digital Asset Management, you can prohibit and limit access to some people. In a Content Management System, however, the author has the liberty to access all site uploads but not other people’s posts or site features.

A traditional Content Management System is curated for the web so any changes or edits in your Content Management System would be seen on your website. Functionalities of a Content Management System are mainly swayed towards fostering text and images to smoothly display on the web. Although Digital Asset Management and Traditional Content Management Systems share certain features, they are slightly different. Example - Uploading is not as prioritized as much as structures in a Content Management system.

Content Management Systems focus more on pages while Digital Asset Management focuses more on categories for individual uploads.

Digital Asset Management Vs. Headless Content Management System

To be honest, Headless Content Management Systems have diminished any distinctions between Content Management Systems and Digital Asset Management. Before the advent of Headless Content Management Systems, Traditional Content Management Systems were made for web content and holistically offered customizations based on the web.

Businesses prefer Headless Content Management Systems over Traditional Content Management Systems due to the omnichannel marketing actions and direct functionality. These systems not only store but also distribute content to an array of channels and are not limited to the web. We have written a dedicated blog on what a Headless Content Management System is and how it can help businesses so be sure to check that out after reading this blog!

Use Cases of Digital Asset Management

Internal Use Cases ➖

• Design Teams - Creative Design teams use Digital Asset Management Systems to access, upload and distribute branded assets.

• IT Professionals - As IT Professionals manage permissions and system updates, Digital Asset Management is of prime importance to them.

• Marketing Teams - Collaboration and publishing are made super easy(one click) with Digital Asset Management.

External Use Cases ➖

• Agencies - Agencies can share assets with clients and regularly monitor and update the reports.

• Partners - Assets can be easily accessed by partners to collaborate on offerings.

DAM it….

Digital Asset Management can be utilized to enhance the efficiency and productivity of a brand. If you want to invest in Digital Asset Management software, you should do your research on the basis of your team’s requirements. We personally always recommend businesses to go with Headless Content Management Systems instead of Digital Asset Management as it does everything that Digital Asset Management does but with 10x more efficiency and user-friendliness.

What do you think? Would Digital Asset Management be a useful tool for your business? Does it truly revolutionize the way teams operate? Well, We feel it is a very subjective answer but all in all we think it is in fact an extremely useful tool for teams! Is it better than a headless CMS though? Erm, We will leave it to your speculation.

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Until then, Stay tuned for our next blog! Ciao! 🙂