What Is Digital Asset Management?

Digital assets – valuable stored content – are ubiquitous in the modern business world. As organizations of all size create more critical assets than ever, for a growing range of business purposes, digital asset management (DAM) is more crucial than ever. DAM involves storing, organizing, and retrieving content, including photos, audio files, videos, animations, and any other digital assets you may be working with. A DAM solution may also allow you to manage the digital rights and permissions associated with these files.

Before we dive into what DAM is and does, we first need to understand what exactly defines a digital asset. In simple terms, a “digital asset” refers to any content stored digitally that provides value.

Key Benefits of Digital Assets

Whether it be a font that’s readily used and reused throughout a website or a video of a company gathering, almost all digital assets provide value of some kind. Businesses rely heavily on digital assets to build brand awareness and provide a visual identity of their products or services. And high-value assets are the ones that get a lot of eyeballs, in print or digital media, and across a variety of digital channels such as websites or social media messaging.

For a creative individual or organization, digital assets are of tremendous value — assuming they can be readily found, organized, and utilized.

Key Benefits of Digital Asset Management

Recent years have seen DAM adoption explode among organizations with growing quantities of digital assets. The reasons for this are as myriad as they are straightforward.

• DAM products can integrate directly with existing creativity software, supercharging the program’s functionality, streamlining your workflow, and improving productivity
• A good DAM product is both intuitive and can be quickly implemented, which translates to a rapid boost in productivity without constant assistance from technical or customer support
• DAM makes assets more readily shareable, which has tremendous benefits for efficiency and effectiveness
• Sharing assets throughout a team — no matter its size — is made simple with a DAM solution