What Does a Digital Asset Management Software Do?

Images, videos, audio, and even documents are important assets that are necessary to create an engaging digital product experience for customers.

But when a manufacturer has hundreds of products, each coming with their own subset of digital assets, that can quickly become overwhelming to manage. 

That’s where a Digital Asset Management (DAM) software solution can help.

What Does a Digital Asset Management Software Do?

Digital Asset Management (DAM) software is a comprehensive solution used by organizations to store, organize, manage, and distribute their digital assets efficiently. Digital assets encompass a wide range of media files, including images, videos, audio files, documents, graphics, and more. 

Digital Asset Management systems are designed to streamline the management of these assets throughout their lifecycle, from creation and organization to distribution and archiving.

Is Dropbox a Digital Asset Management?

Dropbox is not typically considered a Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool, although it can be used to manage and store digital assets to some extent. Here's why Dropbox is not a dedicated DAM tool:

• Lack of User Permission - While Dropbox offers security features, DAM tools often provide more granular permission control over who can access, edit, and download assets.

• Inability to Easily Integrate -  DAM tools are designed to integrate with other software used in content creation and management ecosystems, such as Content Management Systems (CMS), marketing automation tools, and design software. Dropbox's integrations are more focused on file sharing and collaboration.

• Lack of Asset Management - Dropbox does offer folder structures and some tagging options, but it lacks the sophisticated metadata management that true DAM systems provide. In DAM, metadata is critical for efficient asset search and retrieval.

True DAM solutions are better equipped for organizations to manage their digital assets because they were built specifically for that purpose. 

Google Drive has a similar fate as Dropbox. Google Drive's primary focus is on file storage and sharing, meaning it was not designed to have all of the functionality necessary to meet manufacturers’ digital asset management needs. 

While Google Drive has search functionality and some filters, it does not have the capabilities to easily filter or tag content to a granular level that marketers need when trying to retrieve or access images, videos, or audio. Additionally, Google Drive does not seamlessly integrate to systems like a Product Information Management (PIM) solution or Digital Experience Platform (DXP), meaning it would be difficult for marketers to embed digital assets in landing pages, websites, mobile apps, etc. when using Google Drive as a DAM.

Overall, Google Drive is not the best DAM solution available, as there are other solutions that were purpose-built to help manufacturers centralize and manage their digital assets. 

Who Needs Digital Asset Management?

Who should use digital asset management tools? Short answer - all manufacturers. 

Manufacturers can greatly benefit from using DAM tools to streamline operations, improve collaboration, maintain brand consistency, enhance security, and reduce costs. Digital asset management can help manufacturers optimize their processes and better meet today's customer demands.

How Do I Choose a Digital Asset Management System?

Digital Asset Management companies all offer businesses the ability to organize their digital assets, but that doesn’t mean they all look the same. Let’s take a look at a few of the DAM solutions available: 

• Lumavate - Lumavate is a Product Experience Management ( PXM) platform that has all of the necessary functionality that manufacturers need to manage their product experiences including a DAM, Product Information Management (PIM), Digital Experience Platform ( DXP), and more. 

• Brandfolder - Brandfolder is a digital asset management platform that enables companies to effectively organize their digital assets. Brandfolder only has DAM capabilities so manufacturers would need to invest in outside solutions to create digital product experiences. 

• Adobe DAM - The Adobe Digital Asset Management functionality enables individuals and businesses to store digital assets under their Adobe Experience Manager solution. That being said, it is costly and takes an extremely long time to get onboarded to their solution.

Cost and ability to onboard to the DAM solution are important factors to consider when choosing a solution, but there are other things to consider before you purchase a system. 

Let’s see what the other components are that make up the best DAM solution. 

What Is the Best Digital Asset Management Solution?

Lumavate is one of the best Digital Asset Management platforms because we offer more than just a solution that helps marketers manage their digital content. Below are the additional functionality we offer to manufacturers in order for them to easily create a consistent and engaging product experience for their customers

• Product Information Management - A Product Information Management (PIM) solution enables manufacturers to store a variety of product data in a single, centralized location. PIMs are able to store product data including price, product descriptions, owner’s manuals, and so much more.

• Digital Experience Platform - Using a Digital Experience Platform drastically reduces the speed-to-market for an experience like a mobile app or a website to be created, especially if the DXP has designed pre-existing templates.

Ready to get started with Lumavate? Schedule a demo and our team will show you how you can centralize and manage your digital assets in one place.