Who Uses Digital Asset Management Software: Top Industries & Teams
Digital Gold for Teams Everywhere: Digital asset management (DAM) software transforms how a variety of different teams can access and manage assets, including marketing, sales, IT, legal, and creative teams.
Boost Efficiency: DAM software helps teams in any industry (e.g. retail, ecommerce, & media) to organize, store, and retrieve digital assets efficiently, in order to save time and improve productivity.
Creativity Unleashed: Creative teams can focus more time on strategic work and innovation, instead of the tedious work of organizing, finding, and utilizing assets.
One Tool to Rule Them All: In a world of digital clutter, DAM software is a central hub for all assets that makes sure everyone has access to the right materials, regardless of their role or industry.
Digital asset management (DAM) software is extremely useful for different kinds of teams in several industries, including marketing & advertising, media & entertainment, retail & ecommerce, and IT.
Here are the most common use cases across functional areas and industries to help you decide if investing in DAM software is worth it for your organization.
What Teams Use Digital Asset Management Software?
In larger, more complex organizations, there are many applications for digital asset management. I looked at some common uses and specific examples to highlight these use cases. Who knows, this might inspire your team to expand the use of a tool you’ve already invested in.
Marketing & Advertising Teams
Marketing and advertising teams use DAM solutions to organize approved images, advertisements, and other marketing assets. This makes sure any member of the team can find approved images or ads and use them efficiently.
A DAM system comes in especially handy when assets or ads need to be created in different sizes or formats. Features like searchable metadata can make it easier to find assets when time is of the essence, like when ads or creative assets need to be submitted or uploaded quickly.
Sales Teams
Sales teams benefit greatly from digital asset management software. It helps streamline the proposal and contracting processes and gives them back valuable time to spend with prospective customers.
Having approved content and assets shared within a DAM system also improves brand consistency (and allows for better alignment between sales and marketing teams).
IT Teams
One of the benefits of digital asset management for IT teams is the software’s ability to easily keep track of documentation and release notes.
Having a central location to store and organize these documents can save time and maximize efficiency for IT team members, leaving them with more time to better support customers or users.
Another benefit of a DAM tool is that it can also be used to keep track of expiration dates for software licenses, which makes renewals a breeze.
Creative Teams
Creative teams that are charged with creating brand assets can benefit from a system that houses their digital files and has role-based permissions. This makes it easier to enforce brand guidelines and to keep digital assets organized and up to date.
A DAM system that supports different content types is vital for creative teams, who often work with a wide variety of file types, formats, and different mediums like print files, video, or animations.
Legal Teams
Legal teams can use some types of digital asset management to store approved contract language, making procurement or contracting processes with vendors speedier and more efficient.
The search functionality can help lawyers or their assistants find the exact clause or paragraph they need when they need it.
What Industries Use Digital Asset Management Software?
In addition to the different departments that can leverage the capabilities of digital asset management systems in their workflows, there are a number of applications in different industries. I’ve highlighted some examples below.
Retail & Ecommerce
The retail and ecommerce industries rely heavily on digital content to promote products for sale. Marketing teams might create a variety of media assets to be used in various channels, such as the company’s website or social media, as well as in other marketing materials.
Manufacturing
In manufacturing, precision matters. Manufacturers often opt for DAM systems that offer product information management (PIM) capabilities or features. This results in an organized system that makes it easy to find product information and images.
In large, global organizations with a lot of SKUs, the ability to search by product names or IDs, model numbers, or even the SKU can help users find the images and information they need more efficiently.
Education
Organizing and managing all of the digital assets and content needed for higher education audiences without some type of DAM can be a huge challenge, one that isn’t worth attempting to undertake anymore.
Sharing files with multiple levels of stakeholders using email or shared folders is messy and leaves room for old assets to float around and be used by mistake, even after they’ve been decommissioned.
Using a digital asset management system coupled with a content management system helps you make sure assets are correctly tagged by date, audience, and other key features so that the right asset is available to the right user at any given time.
Media & Entertainment
In the media and entertainment world, there are so many digital channels that require the creation and distribution of digital assets. This could include different retailers, social channels, and websites, and even TV, radio, and print.
It takes a lot of coordination to share digital assets with all of these channels, but having the DAM system act as the single source of truth can help. Use naming conventions so that everyone can see which channel and which type of content has been shared.
Healthcare
Digital assets for the healthcare industry are used for everything from provider communications, to insurance companies, donors, and patients.
Healthcare systems also produce a lot of educational content for patients, which may require different types of assets, including photos and illustrations, audio files, video content, or even written guides.
The right digital asset management platform for the healthcare industry is one that can handle a high volume of assets and that has security features to keep proprietary or confidential information from getting into the wrong hands.
Engineering & Architecture
Engineers and architects may use a digital asset management tool to store images of current projects, blueprints, renderings, or video tours of properties. These kinds of assets also help marketing teams promote projects or assemble case studies to help them win new jobs.
Real Estate & Construction
Similar to engineers and architects, there are plenty of use cases for DAM systems in real estate and construction.
Assets like photos of job sites, progress photos, and renderings of what the final project will look like should be added to the DAM tool to keep things organized and allow the teams to access them when needed.
For example, if a new project is out for bid, the construction firm’s sales team can search for photos of similar projects they have completed.
Another good use of a DAM tool is using it to gather photos of homes for sale and organizing them so that they can be used to promote properties on the MLS, on the agent’s website, and even on social media.
Why Do You Need A DAM System?
There are many reasons to implement a DAM system instead of trying to go it alone without any management tools. Some of the most important reasons include:
- Centralized storage for digital assets and documents: Whether you’re overseeing marketing campaigns or trying to improve customer experience in your organization, having the right assets to create the right messaging is critically important. A DAM centralizes all of your assets to make this a breeze.
- Integrates with other digital tools for automated workflows: In the era of ‘do more with less’ and increasing burnout, a DAM tool that integrates with other software and apps in your workflow will help people spend less time pulling creative files into their content creation process. This leaves more time for strategic and creative work.
- Tagging and search functionalities save time: When it comes to brand management and overarching asset management, use tagging best practices so that search functionality works right. This means better version control and less risk of someone grabbing the wrong asset because they are rushing. For example, clearly labeling an asset for use on Facebook ensures a team member won’t accidentally use the LinkedIn asset, which is a completely different size.
- Role-based permissions allow users to access the assets they need (and hide the ones they don’t): Rights management features make it easier for project managers and marketers to share approved digital assets with the right members of team so that the final products are on brand and no one is going rogue.
- Cloud-based DAM systems allow you to access assets from anywhere: In a hybrid work environment, this makes sure that remote workers are just as productive from home as they are in the office. Being able to access media files and video assets from home means that there aren’t tasks that are limited to in-office days.
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