What Do You Mean By Digital Asset Management?

Products are the lifeblood of any manufacturing company, and knowing how to store and access product information helps drive better sales, marketing, communications, and digital experiences. However, most manufacturers use woefully inadequate and out-of-date systems like spreadsheets and personal server files to store critical product information. 

In addition to basic product knowledge and data, many manufacturers also have a large library of associated digital assets that help support and bolster the information available about their products. These digital assets can also be left in inaccessible places, like individual hard drives, or even out of a network altogether. Having a system to organize, manage, and locate these important files is core to the success of manufacturing companies in today’s competitive business world.

What Do You Mean by Digital Asset Management?

Digital asset management, also known as DAM, is a type of software solution where a company stores all of its digital assets such as documents, images, audio, video, and more. Digital asset management solutions are typically managed by a marketing team since those files are most often used to help support campaigning and the development of digital experiences for customers within the customer journey funnel. 

The digital asset management software should, however, be accessible by other departments and teams as well. Departments like sales, supply, operations, and even research and development will use the assets stored in a digital asset management tool. The files within the DAM can also be shared outside of your internal network with business partners or channel partners who need access to those files kept in the DAM solution.

What Is an Example of a Digital Asset?

Digital assets come in many shapes and sizes. However, they must be digital, not physical assets. However, a digital asset could include a scan or digitized file of a physical asset, such as a scan of a printed pamphlet or a taped recording of an in-person demonstration. Digital assets include things like: 

• Audio files

• PDFs

• Excel spreadsheets

• PowerPoint presentations

• Word documents

• Forms

• PNGs

• JPEGs

• GIFs

• SVGs

• Plain text

• Rich text

• Video files

These digital assets are then used to enrich the customer experience and create more effective touch points when guiding them through the customer journey. For example, you can use these digital assets to support product onboarding, in-aisle education, product information courses and guides, event planning, and more.

What Is an Example of a Digital Asset Management System?

There are many DAM vendors on the market, including digital asset management companies like: 

• Lumavate Digital Asset Management

• Filecamp Digital Asset Management

• Airtable Digital Asset Management

• Wrike Digital Asset Management

• MediaValet Digital Asset Management

• Cloudinary Digital Asset Management

• Adobe Digital Asset Management

• Canto Digital Asset Management

• Bynder Digital Asset Management

• Brandfolder Digital Asset Management

The last digital asset management examples, Adobe, Canto, Bynder, and Brandfolder, are all standalone DAMs. That means that they still require you to use a third-party solution or other agencies and developers to create digital experiences using the stored digital assets. In short, you would need to pay additional fees and costs on top of the expense of the digital asset management tools by themselves.

In addition, tools like Adobe come with a very high price tag. Combine that with other agency or development costs, and you could be paying far more than expected for digital asset management functionality. Unlike the best DAM systems, Adobe also has a lengthy implementation time. That increases your losses while the new system is being implemented and takes more time away from your team for training and onboarding to the new tool.

The best digital asset management tool available is Lumavate. Lumavate not only offers a DAM, but also includes a full Product Information Management (PIM) and Digital Experience Platform (DXP) in the PXM platform. That provides seamless integration that is built-in to the DAM for users to create digital experiences. It’s more cost-effective and quicker to implement than other solutions.

The assets in Lumavate’s DAM can be associated with product records in only a few clicks, making organization and storage that much easier. Digital experiences can be built in a matter of moments by pulling associated product records and attached files, meaning teams can create digital experiences without any technical resources or advanced development work.

What Does a Digital Asset Manager Do?

A digital asset manager job description will explain that a Digital Asset Manager is responsible for the overall management of the Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution. They are the person who is ultimately responsible for the DAM within the organization. Even though there may be multiple people who are responsible for uploading and tagging digital assets or associating them with existing product records, the digital asset manager is still the last person who is responsible for anything that happens within the system.

Many people may also have permission to access files within the DAM. The digital asset manager would need to ensure that the files they need to find are stored in the right places, associated with the right record, and are up-to-date and accurate with the information they contain. This role typically resides somewhere in the marketing department.