Who Uses Digital Asset Management?

Brands invest a lot of time and money in creating or obtaining digital assets. To get the maximum value out of these assets, they turn to digital asset management (DAM) as an approach for storing, managing, and publishing their content across all digital channels. Without a DAM system, it’s easy for organizations to lose track of the content they have. Assets go unused and investments in content are lost forever. This means people have to spend precious time searching for or recreating missing files, which has the waterfall effect of impacting campaigns and go-to-market timelines. These are just some of the many reasons businesses need a DAM system. In this post, we’ll dive deeper into the various roles and types of businesses that benefit from digital asset management.

Who needs DAM?

Creators

Graphic designers, content authors, photographers, videographers, and other creators use a DAM system as a centralized repository for their files and to streamline their workflows.

With a DAM platform, creators know exactly where to find existing assets — no more hunting for or recreating content that already exists. They can share proofs, which are then reviewed and approved via automated workflows. And when final creative files are ready, they can be distributed to managers, marketers, salespeople, and e-commerce teams through self-service portals and share links. There’s no more emailing back and forth, and there’s much more time for actual creative work. 

Marketers

Marketers use DAM software to manage the media assets and files creators produce for their campaigns, product launches, and content marketing initiatives. 

In a digital asset management solution, marketers can search for content by keyword, convert file formats on their own, publish content to channels, and share assets with agencies, distributors, retailers, and other collaborators. Platform analytics reveal which assets perform best, how they’re used, and where they’ve appeared around the web. That feedback helps marketers prioritize their efforts and make smarter content investments.

IT professionals

IT professionals benefit by providing their organization a tool that keeps their assets accessible, governed, redundantly stored, and trackable. Using pre-built integrations and APIs, IT teams reduce data redundancies and silos that bloat storage costs and open up security vulnerabilities.

Which industries use DAM?

Digital asset management isn’t valuable for just one type of organization in one type of industry. The structure, process, control, and efficiency that come from DAM — and the systems that support it — benefit a diverse range of industry types. 

Agencies

Agencies rely on DAM tools to safeguard client assets, increase productivity, and provide on-demand access to the up-to-date, approved content needed to power their clients’ marketing and creative campaigns. Some agencies purchase a digital asset management solution and use it as their own in-house tool to manage assets, workflows, and deadlines for their many clients. 

Other agencies perform the same activities of asset management, but in collaboration with the client and in the client’s DAM platform. Agency creators, account managers, and other contributors can log in and search for content in the DAM system or access curated subsets of assets via a portal. If a brand or agency administrator updates a file in the DAM system, that change is reflected anywhere that asset is embedded online. This saves agencies from the time-consuming task of updating creative across channels and prevents branding missteps and inconsistencies. Everyone wins when clients don’t need to send another email asking for the agency to send over the files again.

Financial services

Regulatory compliance and risk management are of utmost importance to banks, insurers, and other financial services institutions. DAM helps these organizations ensure only compliant, approved assets are in circulation, reducing legal risks associated with the dissemination of outdated or non-compliant information. DAM also helps financial organizations, like Zurich Insurance, enforce brand guidelines to maintain a cohesive and professional representation of the brand across all customer touchpoints and regions– a critical factor for building trust and credibility. 

Food and beverage

Food and beverage companies have many dependencies to get accurate product labels, creative, and promotions out to market. They use DAM to relate assets to products and standardize their complex creation and approval workflows. They also rely on the DAM to integrate with their product information management system to connect their product assets to product data before sharing with distributors and e-commerce channels.

Here’s how two industry players — Johnsonville and Sargento — use a DAM solution to move their business forward.

Government

DAM assists in improving communication between federal, state, or local governments and their constituents by centralizing and making accessible the assets needed for campaigns, community outreach, and public service announcements. This helps government employees carry out their roles more efficiently and effectively by offering better control of when assets are available and when they should be removed from circulation, making it easier to showcase the impact of government projects and programs in the community.

Healthcare

Whether healthcare organizations are promoting their services or educating the public, DAM helps them control the accuracy of the information they share. With its permission-based access and rights management controls, a DAM solution ensures that only the right content is used by the right people, regions, and departments. If information changes, system admins simply update the revised assets in the DAM system, and the changes are automatically reflected anywhere those assets live online. This helps the healthcare industry manage compliance and prevent mistakes that could impact their standing as a trusted and reliable brand.

Higher education

Colleges and universities need a tremendous amount of content to support all of their audiences, departments, and programs. These institutions turn to DAM to help them wrangle their digital assets into one centralized, searchable content library, while ensuring brand governance is upheld across the hundreds or thousands of staff, faculty, students, and others accessing digital assets across departments, schools, and campuses. Flexible governance models help share assets between departments while keeping more sensitive assets private to a smaller group. University of Georgia, University of Kansas, and many other higher education institutions are benefitting from a DAM solution that streamlines content workflows and eliminates the financial drain of lost assets.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing brands like Simpson Strong-Tie use DAM software to centralize their many thousands (if not millions) of assets, improve the consistency of their product imagery and branding online, and distribute content to global teams, including sales reps, dealers, and resellers, more efficiently. Many manufacturers also benefit from using a combined DAM and product information management (PIM) solution to ensure their product data, marketing content, and assets are 100% aligned and accurate. 

Media and entertainment

Media and entertainment companies use DAM to simplify workflows so they can keep up with the demands of their fast-paced, high-stakes industry. DAM systems support this need in many ways. They facilitate bulk importing and editing of images, videos, and audio files captured at live events, so assets are ready for immediate use. They utilize permissions to ensure that only authorized user groups can access certain content. And they mitigate risk by automatically enforcing licensing terms and use restrictions.

Nonprofit

Nonprofit organizations use DAM to maximize marketing resources on a limited budget. Many nonprofit organizations invest in a DAM system because it drives a greater return on their content investments — and ultimately pays for itself in time savings and asset reuse. With limited creative resources, nonprofits also utilize DAM tools, such as templates, to empower volunteers and employees (with and without design skills) to create their own on-brand marketing materials. Here’s how YMCA England & Wales gets their money’s worth with DAM technology. 

Print and publishing

The print and publishing industry uses DAM tools to streamline production operations from a single content hub. With the help of a digital asset management system, publishers and printers can easily share files with collaborators, agencies, and vendors for proofing or printing. If edits are needed, they can retouch catalog or publication pages or quickly revert to an earlier creative version in the DAM system. When revisions are ready, content sent via share links and portals automatically updates with the most recent files — no more uploading and downloading to shared folders or unnecessary printing delays.

Retail

The retail industry uses DAM to deliver omnichannel e-commerce experiences to customers. Using DAM software — often combined with a PIM solution — retailers can centralize their product photos, videos, and other assets together in a single source of truth. With no question of which asset is the right asset, retailers achieve greater consistency across their many online and offline channels. 

Retail brands come in all shapes and sizes. To learn how brands within a specific retail vertical use DAM software, check out our case studies featuring stories from retail companies in cosmetics, technology, luxury goods, specialty products, footwear, and more.

Sports

The sports industry has the monumental responsibility of capturing the excitement of game day through photos and videos — and then using those assets to connect with fans, press, and revenue opportunities. A DAM platform gives professional sports teams and organizations a central, searchable repository for these assets so designers, coaches, players, partners, marketers, and press can access them in the mere hours and days following a game. Time is of the essence, and DAM is changing the game for teams like the Houston Texans.

Travel and tourism

“A picture is worth a thousand words” — just ask any transportation, recreation, dining, or hospitality business in the trillion-dollar travel and tourism industry. The right DAM software gives businesses in this vertical the tools, brand control, and insights needed to put their most impactful, must-travel-here-now imagery forward. A digital asset management system helps these organizations control the quality of their assets and streamline their workflows, so they can get their best content in front of potential travelers, faster. Just look at The Mariners’ Museum and Park, who use their DAM system to help museum staff streamline internal access to digital assets and share their collection with a global audience.

Where to go from here

While the use cases, priorities, and requirements for digital asset management may vary depending on your role and your organization’s industry, the benefits are universal. To learn more about how Acquia DAM can fit into your organization’s digital ecosystem, request a demo today.