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How to Select the Best Digital Asset Management Software for Your Business

Digital Assets refer to any form of a digital file and the digital assets are commonly used by the creative and marketing teams. Digital Asset Management Software helps to organize, categorize, search, retrieve and archive digital files, such as images, documents, creative files, audio and video clips.

Digital Asset Management can provide a centralized repository that makes it quick and easy to upload, catalog, manage and distribute a large collection of valuable assets and with DAM, you get more value from your digital assets. Digital Asset Management Software provides an ideal platform for easily organizing, accessing, and distributing the digital assets.

Digital Asset Management is able to support the complex processes of ingest, documentation, cataloguing, editing, searching, processing and management of digital contents and media.

What are Digital Asset Management Software?

Digital Asset Management Software organizes and processes files while facilitating collaboration and file sharing of digital assets. The typical capabilities of this software is asset storage in the cloud, retrieval of assets, asset sharing, and management of brand. Other functions of this program include archival and backups, creative workflow automation, usage tracking, and e-commerce.

The Digital Asset Management Software is also essential for file safety and security. In fact, this has the abilities of placing a watermark on your digital assets such as images for copyright protection - a common problem in the creative industry. The program also goes ahead and allows you to set parameters that only grant access to certain users.

There are multiple classifications of this program based on the functionalities. The classification is as follows; a system that manages library assets, a system that manages brand assets, a system that manages assets based in the cloud, and a system that manages production assets. The software also offers advanced functionalities to companies to facilitate scheduling assets waiting to be distributed and managing all stages in the lifecycle of a digital asset.

What are the types of Digital Asset Management Software?

There are several types of the software and each comes with unique features and benefits. Each of these types is either focused on operational use or creative production. The creative production type is highly technical and typically hard to use while the operational type is user-friendly and allows users from anywhere to access the assets at any time. The following are the common types;

What are the types of Digital Asset Management Software

Library Asset Management System: It focuses on storing and retrieving of huge amounts of media assets that do not frequently change its size.
Brand Asset Management System: It focuses on re-using the content used in sales and marketing of materials. They include images of products, marketing collateral, and logos.
Production Asset Management System: It focuses on storing, organizing, and revising the control of digital media that frequently changes.
Marketing Asset Management System: It manages all marketing assets such as marketing plans, digital files, brand guidelines, and other marketing assets.
Digital Content Management System: It manages all digital assets and has the capability of embedding content onto websites.
Media Asset Management System: It manages the large files of audio and video content.

You may like to read: Top Free & Premium Digital Asset Management Software

What are the features of Digital Asset Management Software?

Digital Asset Management Software is specifically built for managing media files and assets and the crucial key actions of this software are ingesting of a digital asset, assets manipulation, defining of assets to increase searchability, and distributing and repurposing of assets. The software completes these actions with the help of the following features;

Features of Digital Asset Management Software

Asset Uploading: The feature provides users with an excellent platform for uploading single files or even thousands of files in batches. The feature also has the ability to extract metadata during the uploading process.
Asset Management: It is comprised of several tools ideal for manipulating digital assets, converting files, editing of metadata, managing of version, and managing of digital rights. The tools provided by the this feature also helps in making assets more secure as well as easier to find and allow you to share with other users.
Dashboards: It displays different types of data about the digital assets, views, number of assets, and uploads or downloads as well as other users' activities. The dashboards also offer thumbnails and notifications of the recently added assets.
Search: It provides users with an excellent platform for finding content through the use of keywords, upload dates, file types, metadata or by using checkboxes for filter assets. The search feature also enables you to automate tagging with controlled metadata values and target assets with spotlight collections and searches.
Asset Sharing: The feature facilitates sharing of assets in multiple ways. The ways include embed codes, email, via social media channels or through direct download links. The asset sharing feature also facilitates sharing of assets through a download pickup page using preview thumbnails.
Asset Versioning: It provides tools that allow you to publish content across the web. The tools allow you to crop and resize digital assets automatically and paste into any web page, gain insight into the usage of your asset through geo-location map views and URLs with embed codes.
Filename Management: It provides you with an excellent platform for identifying duplicate files, retaining metadata values for each asset version, and maintain version control of assets by using embed codes.
Roles and Permissions Management: It enables you to have authority over who will access your digital assets by setting user roles and permissions levels.

What are the benefits of Digital Asset Management Software?

In the creative industry, whether your work is to manage digital assets as a photographer or any other responsibility related to digital assets, this software will offer you with compelling benefits for accuracy and efficiency. The benefits come from the software's functions which are upload, edit, define, and distribute digital assets. These are benefits provided by a Digital Asset Management Software;

Improves collaboration and access to critical assets: It provides tools that facilitate collaboration among users. It also simplifies the access to critical assets because all users with permission have the ability of instantly downloading valuable materials as soon as they become available.
Eliminates workflow redundancies: This program provides you with a central control that helps in facilitating easy communication and ensuring all the team players are on the same page at the same time. With this, the software decreases inefficiencies and greatly reduces the chances of costly workflow redundancies.
Accelerates creativity and production cycles: The tools provided by this software helps your team to quickly create and repurpose digital assets along with a smoother workflow and approval. The software also gives you a competitive edge in your production cycles over other companies.
Eliminates the cost of lost or misplaced work: One of the main issues when dealing with digital assets is losing or misplacing them. It has been a common case as it becomes easier to design quality digital assets. With this system, businesses in the creative industry have an excellent platform for eliminating the cost associated with losing valuable assets by ensuring they will not get lost are easy to find.

What are the latest trends of Digital Asset Management Software?

The Digital Asset Management Software began from an exclusive tool for large-scale enterprises to an essential component in every marketing department. The software primarily focused on media library and the storing, sharing, and cataloging of assets. Currently, businesses and organizations can leverage its modern tools and tactics to improve the effectiveness of their digital content. Some of the latest trends seen in this software that makes it an essential tool for businesses in the creative industry including;

Artificial intelligence: AI is taking over every aspect of business. In this software, artificial intelligence will replace the manual workloads of employees. The technology provided by artificial intelligence will enable the software to automatically scan content and create corresponding metadata tags. It will, therefore, allow business to find what they need quickly while saving hours of organizing assets.
Automation and use of machine learning algorithms: It will allow a Digital Asset Management Software to recommend specific tasks within an activity or campaign. The machine learning algorithms will also enable the software to pull more appropriate assets from the system by learning from the data and patterns of usage.
Metadata management: With the latest technology, a Digital Asset Management Software will have the ability to predict associations between digital assets and therefore, allowing the software to automatically suggest options for metadata.

How to Select the Best Digital Asset Management Software for Your Business

Delving into the creative industry is a challenge mainly because of the copyright issues and costs associated with losing and misplacing of digital assets. The software is the perfect tool for anyone wishing to venture into the creative industry. The challenge comes when one has to buy this software as there are many solutions available in the market. The following are factors you may consider when selecting and buying the best digital asset management software;

Software as a Service (SaaS): You may have a computer that does not have enough capacity to make room for your ever-growing files. Therefore, consider a software that allows you to store files online as opposed to on-premises (SaaS). The software should typically provide you with a cloud-based storage system.
Collaboration and Sharing: The software you choose should allow users to view and comment on your projects. By allowing users with permission to view your documents and comment about them is vital for collaboration and improvement.
User-friendly features: Your ideal choice for this program should be user-friendly as it will mean that it's easy for you to teach others how to use the software easily and effectively. A software with features of third-party integrations also makes life easier for your users.
Support system availability: The software you choose should contain support teams. The support teams are ideal for answering burning questions raised by your users. The support teams also offer specialist training for your employees to increase their knowledge of using the software.