Digital Asset Management: A Complete Guide

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Digital asset management presents a software and systems solution that enables businesses to store, organize, manage, retrieve and distribute an organization’s digital assets. Perhaps, you are wondering what is digital asset management. Well, digital asset management refers to a business process and information management technology.

What are Digital Assets?

Digital assets refer to any form of content that can be stored electronically, enabling you to create, publish, manage and share with anyone within and outside your organization. Today’s rapidly changing digital environment means that there is no limit to what encompasses digital assets.

Files like videos, photos, documents, videos, and other media are considered assets. Virtually every department engages in digital assets that fuel the growth and success of your organization. Interestingly, a digital asset management platform allows team members within your organization to search, collaborate and share assets effectively.

What are the Benefits of Digital Asset Management?

Effective digital transformation requires organizations to manage every digital file in their media ecosystem. The larger your business grows, the larger your digital asset library.

There are myriad benefits associated with digital asset management for your organization.

1. Quick and Easy File Access

Everyone looking to understand digital asset management can relate to spending too much time on a single file.

Most digital asset management solutions are cloud-based and therefore allow everyone 24/7 access to digital assets from anywhere as long as they have an internet connection. The software allows businesses to store all their digital content in one centralized location. This way, internal and external stockholders can find what they need faster.

Similarly, those businesses that understand digital asset management have access to rights and permissions that can be tailored toward the needs of different users—ensuring that the right people have access to the system.

2. Up-to-Date Content

If you are looking to understand digital asset management, then you need to understand that your risk of outdated files is significantly reduced. Digital asset management ensures that essential assets are easily updated upon being uploaded.

With up-to-date information, your business remains on its toes because there is ready information on the current market. The system users also have the peace of mind they need to perform well while using the most up-to-date information.

3. Enhances Safety and Security of Important Assets

Digital asset management eliminates the risk of losing critical business information. It prevents your files from being lost by ensuring safe and secure storage in a central location, unlike what happens with external hard drives.

4. Enhances Direct File Sharing

With a digital asset management system, you can easily share your files with others within the system. For instance, your internal and external stakeholders need access to a good share of your company information.

You can control how the assets are used after sharing them with different users because the system allows you to set expiration dates and track your sharing history.

5. Reduce Operational Costs

Digital asset management saves operational costs. A digital asset management system can save your organization a lot of time spent performing high-value tasks, hence boosting organizational performance.

Digital asset management can help improve your return on investment by enabling faster creation, storage, retrieval, and distribution of your digital assets.

Challenges Associated with Digital Asset Management

You will soon hit the bottom line if you are not adequately managing your digital assets. Here are some challenges businesses face with digital asset management and how they solve them.

Accessibility of Assets

You can hardly control your digital assets if you do not have a working digital management system. Chances are that the wrong people are using the wrong assets, which can be expensive for your business.

Luckily, you can regain control with a centralized solution that helps to establish workflows, manages system access, and streamlines the approval process so that the correct files get to the right hands.

Disconnected Workforce

If you are not adequately managing your digital assets, there is a high probability that you are running a disconnected workforce.

You can take advantage of a unified platform that helps boost collaboration and sharing. With a digital asset management platform, you can enhance team performance by democratizing assets, improving consistency across channels, and creating agile workflows.

With digital asset management software, your team gets empowered as they have a single source of information for all your brand assets. Information security is also enormously improved as it enables your team to store, share, organize and share their digital library.

Lost Time and Money

You will continue to count significant losses if your team spends precious time looking for misplaced assets. With a centralized platform, your workforce can organize, monitor, and maintain every asset in your business, giving them time to focus on growing your business.

When Should You Invest in a Digital Asset Management Software?

• When it is resource-consuming to find your assets. Digital asset management software can help if it takes several minutes to find and share digital files. It comes with a wide range of tools that can help you to organize and search for files.
• When your assets cannot be accessed conveniently, accessibility is crucial for productivity among team members. If your team cannot access files with ease, this might be difficult to push deadlines, and brand inconsistencies may also be common.
• Suppose you need enterprise-level security for sharing and storage access. You must lock down essential business documents in a stable and secure environment. A digital asset management system allows you to enjoy a secure data center for round-the-clock monitoring.
• If you are experiencing bottlenecks during creative collaboration. With a digital asset management system, you can get real-time alerts that increase project communication. For instance, your workforce will be updated when new files and comments are added.

Final Thoughts

Digital asset management is used across industries where digital assets are involved. When looking for the best digital asset management software for your company, you must first identify your business's current challenges.

• Identify key users and discuss the functionality they require.
• Create a list of important features to consider when looking for digital asset management providers.
• Be careful to consider the type of digital asset management platform that is right for your business. For instance, you can evaluate the benefits of a cloud-based digital asset management system over an installed-on-premise solution for your business.
• Select the best software that will benefit your business and that your employees will leverage.