What is Digital Asset Management (DAM)?

What is a digital asset?

It is any file or content that can be created, managed, published, shared, and stored digitally. Some examples are:

• images,
• logos,
• slides,
• brochures,
• newsletters,
• videos,
• gifs,…

These assets are usually created by your design & marketing teams and shared within the organization to focus on your branding which allows you to raise awareness across the world.

However, recently many digital assets are being created for a company so managing them properly has almost become impossible. To manage them, a company needs an efficient way of storing, collaborating, and distributing the company’s digital assets to avoid a cumbersome process. At this point, a company needs a DAM.

So, what is DAM?

DAM is a software and system solution to all these points we mentioned previously. It is a centralized system for all the workers of the companies to access their digital assets and share them easily with external parties. Most of the time, a DAM is used by sales, marketers, and brand strategists, in short anyone that works with the digital assets of a company.

A DAM system enables you to have a consistent brand within your company’s brand guidelines, keep the quality content, and save time in finding the right asset for the right source.

How does it work?

The functionalities of a DAM platform can slightly change from platform to platform because of the integrations that they allow to make the platform more enhanced. However, we’ll keep it simple and only focus on the main functionalities of DAM.

1. Adding/removing digital assets: upload your assets one by one or in a bulk. After uploading you can also crop the images as well.
2. Categorizing and storing: define how many categories you can use and categorize all your digital assets and store them within the platform.
3. Adding metadata: enrich your digital assets by version, media type, expiration date, tags, creator, and so on. Especially, tagging the assets wisely is so important for the rest of the team to make the search easier. So, make sure that you tag them correctly. Also, admins can create a metadata scheme that fits their organization.
4. Export profiles: use custom export profiles to convert files to another filetype, or crop a selection of the image
5. Downloading assets: download the assets easily and share them with other users if needed. Also, in most cases, you can easily share the assets with external parties with just one click.
6. User groups and permissions: user groups to set permissions for categories and meticulously create a permission scheme that fits your organization
7. Analytics: check which assets are used and by whom to establish KPIs. The variety of the data might vary from platform to platform, but we can say that it is important to calculate your Return on Investment (ROI) by checking analytics. This will help you to see the value of the DAM.
8. Extensions: as we mentioned before, most DAM platforms allow you to add more functionalities so you can use the platform more effectively. Based on your subscription model, you can make your DAM platform more unique and focused on your advanced needs like injecting metadata from your PIM system

Overall, DAM software allows you to create, store, organize and work on digital assets with your team within the given permissions while reducing the production cost since you can reuse the same assets while helping you to follow your brand guidelines. DAM provides you with a single source of truth and saves time for your team to focus on other activities.

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But… Kadanza is more than just a basic DAM. Kadanza Assets is fully configurable and adaptable based on your way of working. It is also a flexible API-driven platform, enabling people to connect with other systems and data. So, besides managing your assets, you can also focus on your brand guidelines, and create automation with the help of CHILI publish, and other custom solutions.

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