Digital Asset Management Companies

What Is Digital Asset Management?

Digital Asset Management (DAM) refers to the process of organizing, storing, retrieving, and managing digital assets in a centralized and efficient manner. From creation to distribution, digital asset management tools help individuals and organizations manage their digital assets effectively.

What Are Examples of Digital Asset Management?

Any content, media, or information that exists in a digital format and has value for individuals, businesses, or organizations is considered a digital asset. These assets are typically created, stored, and shared digitally. Digital assets encompass a wide range of file types and forms, including:

  • Audio

  • Documents

  • Forms

  • Images

  • Text

  • Video

Why Do Companies Need Digital Asset Management?

DAMs provide tremendous benefits for businesses. Let’s take a look at a few of the reasons why companies need a DAM. 

  • Centralized Location -  DAMs provide one location for company-wide management of digital assets. 

  • Ability to Tag - The ability to tag digital assets is essential to teams to help them discover the content they need fast. 

  • Searchable - Team members can quickly type in a keyword, title, or tag to find the digital asset they’re looking for. 

  • Instantaneous Updates - Any time the asset is changed, it is automatically updated in digital experiences like your website or product catalog. 

  • Ability to Create Brand Portals - To share a curated collection of digital assets with other users, such as team members, agencies, or channel partners, most DAMs let you build brand portals so marketing teams don’t have to give these outside stakeholders access to their DAM. 

Where Is Digital Asset Management Used?

Companies that sell products can and should use digital asset management software. 

Manufacturers deal with a wide range of digital assets, including product images, marketing materials, videos, and more. DAM solutions provide a centralized location where all these assets can be organized, stored, and easily accessed by approved users. This eliminates the need for assets stored in disparate locations and prevents assets from being lost or duplicated.

Product Experience Strategy 

Digital asset management is used as a part of an overall strategy called a product experience strategy. 

A product experience strategy is a well-thought-out strategy that details how a company intends to create and deliver a positive, consistent, and memorable experience for its customers throughout the entire lifecycle of a product. 

A product experience strategy focuses on aligning all aspects of the product, from design and development to marketing, sales, support, and post-purchase exchanges, to ensure a consistently positive customer journey.

Key components of a product experience strategy include:

  • User-centric Approach - A successful product experience strategy starts with a deep understanding of the customers’  needs, preferences, pain points, and behaviors. It involves gathering user insights through research, surveys, and feedback to inform the product's design and features.

  • Consistency -  A consistent experience across all touchpoints is essential. This includes maintaining a unified brand image, messaging, and visual elements throughout the product's website, mobile app, packaging, and promotional materials.

  • Omnichannel - Today’s customers interact with products through various channels, such as websites, mobile apps, social media, and physical stores. A well-thought-out product experience strategy makes sure all channels have consistent messaging.

  • Personalization - Tailoring the product experience to individual customer preferences, use cases, or products can significantly enhance a customer’s opinion of a brand. This can be carried out through analyzing data to offer personalized recommendations, content, or features.

  • Post-Purchase Support -  The product experience doesn't end at the point of purchase. Providing exceptional post-purchase support, such as helpful customer service, troubleshooting guides, and updates, contributes to a positive long-term relationship with customers.

  • Continuous Improvement - A product experience strategy should allow for ongoing updates based on customer feedback.

What does this have to do with DAM tools? 

All of these aspects of a product experience strategy relate back to DAM software. In order to consistently deliver personalized digital product experiences for one’s customers, brands need to have a centralized location where they can store their digital assets and provide the digital touchpoints their customers need to develop a positive feeling towards a brand.

Digital Asset Management Software

Manufacturers have a ton of digital assets that need to be managed and organized efficiently. DAM software can do just that. These tools offer a range of features to help manufacturers centralize, organize, and streamline the management of their digital assets. 

According to a study, marketers who have recently implemented a DAM solution save on average 34 percent more time looking for content and digital assets compared to when they did not have a tool to organize these items. 

Think about what you could do with 34 percent more time in your day. 

List of Digital Asset Management Companies

Here are some DAM tools available for manufacturers to consider:

  • Lumavate: Lumavate’s DAM enables you to store images, documents, videos, and more and easily use these assets in digital product experiences or share them with team members, agencies, or channel partners.

  • Brandfolder: Brandfolder focuses on enabling businesses to maintain consistent branding across all digital assets. It offers features like customizable portals for external partners, dynamic asset collections, and usage analytics.

  • Bynder: Bynder is a DAM platform that offers tools for organizing assets, customizing brand guidelines, collaborative review and approval processes, and seamless integration with design and marketing software. 

  • Adobe: Adobe offers a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution known as Adobe Experience Manager Assets. 

  • Canto: Canto offers a DAM solution that simplifies the organization and distribution of digital assets for manufacturers. Its features include metadata management, AI-powered tagging, customizable branding, and integrations.

If you’ve researched digital asset management examples, you might be thinking “Where is Google Drive or Dropbox on this list,”.  Let's discuss why these companies were not on our list of DAM software examples, as both of these solutions often appear in DAM software search results. 

Is Google Drive a Digital Asset Management System?

While Google Drive is a widely used platform for file storage and sharing, it is not the most suitable choice for manufacturers seeking a centralized solution to manage their products’ digital assets. Here's why:

  • Lack of Advanced Features: Google Drive offers basic folder structures and file organization, but it lacks advanced features and integrations necessary for large companies to manage their digital assets. 

  • Security Concerns:  Google Drive's security features might not meet the brand standards required in manufacturing. DAM platforms enable admins to customize user permissions so they know exactly who can access their brand’s assets. 

  • Integration Issues: Manufacturers use various tools such as Product Information Management (PIM) systems and Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) to create engaging digital touchpoints for their customers. Google Drive does not offer seamless integration with these tools, which makes pulling in digital assets to these digital experiences difficult.

  • Scalability: Manufacturers create a large number of digital assets over time. Google Drive's storage capacity and scalability might not be as well-suited to handling massive amounts of assets as dedicated DAM systems, nor do they provide the features necessary for marketing teams to quickly sift and sort through these assets. 

  • Searchable: In manufacturing, quick access to the correct assets is crucial. Google Drive's search capabilities might not be as advanced as those offered by DAM systems, which could lead to the same amount of search time for marketers as they had when they didn’t have a DAM system in place to organize their content. 

  • Customization Needs: Manufacturers often require custom attributes tailored to their unique processes. Google Drive's generic structure might not provide the customization necessary for manufacturing-specific asset management.

Is Dropbox a Digital Asset Management Tool?

Dropbox is a cloud-based file storage service. Dropbox offers features that are commonly associated with digital asset management, such as the ability to organize, store, and share various types of digital assets, including documents, images, videos, and more. It often gets confused for a DAM because users can create folders to organize their files and assets in a structured manner. Dropbox allows users to collaborate on files by sharing them with others, setting access permissions, and enabling real-time collaboration features. 

But it’s not quite considered a DAM. 

Dropbox does not have the features and capabilities of a specialized DAM solution that manufacturers need to manage a large amount of digital assets. For that reason, it is not considered a DAM. DAM tools offer more advanced features for managing, organizing, and distributing digital assets, particularly in enterprise or professional settings.

So now you know why these were not the best digital asset management examples. Let’s talk about the best DAM tool your company can invest in next. 

Best Digital Asset Management Software

Wondering what makes the top digital asset management systems list?

To be one of the best digital asset management systems, a solution has to be more than just a DAM tool. 

The best DAM tool out there is Lumavate because Lumavate is a Product Experience Management (PXM) Platform. The purpose of a PXM solution is to deliver rich product experiences across numerous channels to deliver a cohesive product experience for the customer.

Lumavate has the following capabilities within its PXM platform

We say the best DAM tools aren’t just DAM tools because these one-off solutions need to be able to integrate into your other tech systems and you still need to invest in outside solutions.

With a PXM like Lumavate, you’re investing in one platform, which means you can reduce your tech stack and become a more efficient, all-in-one solution. In fact, Lumavate is 75 percent more cost-effective than comparable solutions.

Getting Started with a Digital Asset Management Platform

How you might get started with a DAM platform will vary based on the types of digital asset management systems out there. But for now, let’s discuss how you get started on Lumavate’s DAM.

Step 1: Plan Implementation

Map out the migration process, including tagging, folder structures, and how team members should name digital assets for consistency purposes. 

Step 2: Customize 

Configure the DAM to align with your company's branding, tagging system, and other processes. Customize categories and user permissions. Set up access controls so that only authorized users can upload, edit, and download assets.

Step 3: Organize Your Assets

Begin by uploading and organizing your digital assets within the DAM. Create a logical asset naming structure and apply relevant titles, descriptions, keywords, and tags. This will make assets easy to search and retrieve in the future.

Step 4: Train Your Team

Provides comprehensive training to your marketing team and other users who will interact with the DAM. Ensure they understand how to upload, search, and share assets, as well as how to maintain consistent organizational practices. Encourage the DAM solution across your organization. Highlight its benefits, such as time saved searching for assets, improved collaboration, and consistent brand representation. By highlighting how DAM tools help your team save time and provide an easier way to access brand assets, team members are more inclined to get on board with the new system. 

Step 5: Start Using

Once your digital assets are uploaded into your DAM solution and team members are adequately trained, it’s time to begin using the software. When you create a digital experience within Lumavate’s PXM platform, you can easily pull in the specific assets you want for each experience. All you do is select which specific image, video, document, etc. you want to include in your digital experience, and the software will automatically pull in the correct one. Plus, if you update any digital asset within the DAM, the most up-to-date version is reflected automatically within any digital experience using it, eliminating the need for you to update it manually. 

Step 6: Iterate

Regularly monitor how the DAM is being used and gather feedback from users. Identify any pain points or areas for improvement. Reevaluate if your titles, tagging, and other organizational processes are working as efficiently as you originally hoped. If not, it may be time to switch how you categorize items within the DAM 

By following these steps, a marketer at a manufacturing company can successfully implement a digital asset management solution and streamline their asset management processes.

Get Started with Lumavate

Schedule a demo with Lumavate to see how we can help get your digital assets easily managed and centralize your product data into one platform.

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