How to Map Out Digital Media Asset Management Strategy

What Is a Digital Asset Management System?

With the rapid proliferation of rich media content (audio, video, images, animations, etc.), more organizations are collecting stockpiles of digital information assets to be used as marketing materials. Thus, keeping track of accumulated digital content, and making sure it is accessible to users, is becoming a challenge.

A digital asset management (DAM) system is designed to address this challenge by serving as a centralized archive of rich media files, offering efficient search capabilities to help users locate, identify, and retrieve specific content. The use of DAM systems has expanded beyond their traditional role as digital content has become more prevalent in marketing various customer engagement programs.

If you are planning to adopt DAM, you also need to map out a DAM strategy. Developing this strategy will comprise configuring workflows, managing asset ownership, and working on a taxonomy that supports user adoption, measurable results, and asset findability.

Tips to Consider

Here are some tips to consider before mapping out your DAM strategy:

1. If a coordinated approach is not taken, then it’s difficult to determine what assets are, how to use them, and why they exist. One of the main issues with business processes today is that they often do not include any DAM strategy. This oversight happens when digital assets are acquired without any predetermined approach, which results in an inability to gauge how to properly use them. This lack of planning may very well erode a business’s competitive edge when turnaround time and speed are of high value. Re-creating assets is a time-consuming and costly exercise. Thus, the lack of a standardized approach can lead to third-party licensing issues as well.
2. With DAM, brand consistency takes place across channels and campaigns. DAM serves many roles inside and outside an organization. Therefore, it should support greater automation in managing the local or global version of assets across channels.
3. A DAM strategy provides a framework for protecting, storing, organizing, and distributing various digital assets. When digital assets are properly managed, they help fuel content’s value chain for an enhanced digital experience. A DAM strategy should include editorial, managerial, and production activities to enhance digital assets. It should also involve reviewing the final version of a file, indexing multiple renditions, and identifying derivatives. Finally, a DAM strategy has to consider how assets will be used for commercial rights and payment purposes. These plans help identify potential issues before they become costly mistakes.
4. It is important for organizations to understand the customer’s journey: What services/products are they building, for whom, and when? DAM helps translate business requirements into technical specifications. With the help of DAM, organizations can build and oversee the development of digital products. They can also ensure that their digital assets are measured and optimized to fulfill business goals. For instance, uploading an app to the Google Play store or Apple App store doesn’t mean that the job is finished. The customer is always looking for updates and improvements to the product, and the same is built into an organization as it didn’t exist there in the former model.
5. By deploying DAM, an organization can control and democratize user access to content. A DAM system is a single repository where assets are stored and where tasks are ready to be distributed to others. Work that is not ready can be kept under the control of people who are managing it. This control helps with data protection and management; for example, when employees leave an organization, the assets aren’t lost.

MPS’s DigiCore supports the digital transformation of print data while maintaining the print fidelity. DigiCore also allows easy access and distribution to online platforms as well as to popular retailers. With DigiCore, publishers can easily manage the global visibility of end-to-end workflows and track any content item within a global content format. With HTML5, publishers can also manage and create future-ready digital content and support its integration with popular operating systems and devices.