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Digital asset management

Written by Ana Canteli on February 25, 2022

Lately, the demand for digital assets has not stopped growing. People have less and less time to read, so if you find information in multimedia format, it will be much easier to win over a new client than if you only provide text about your products and services. This new reality makes it more important to organize the set of digital content that the organization manages. As organizations dive into digital transformation, they become more and more digitized. Your creatives, graphic designers, marketers need a platform to manage all digital assets - videos, audios, visual resources, etc. - which is constantly growing.

What is a DAM system?

A digital asset management system, or DAM software for its acronym in English, is a management software that is responsible for storing, managing, organizing, processing, and distributing digital assets. A digital asset is any resource that exists in digitized form and can be owned and used by someone. Treated like property, digital assets can be the subject of any commercial activity, as long as they are legitimately held. A movie is a digital asset; however, a copy obtained illegally does not, since the possessor may have the technical ability to possess it but does not have the legal right to use it. Usually, the right of use is specified in the metadata of the digital resource. The managed asset's value is only realized if it is accessible to authorized users; hence, the objective of digital asset management software is to facilitate access and use of them. The dam system can be applied both to manage a person's file libraries an organization's database or fulfill the functions of an enterprise content management system.

What does a digital asset management system do?

Among the tasks of a digital asset management system are:

• Creation of digital contents: From the insertion in the system to the online edition in a dam.
• Storage: Whether proprietary or software-as-a-service, a digital asset management system dam hosts the collection of digital assets owned by an entity.
• Indexing: essential element when organizing the repository of digital assets. The dam system must have the option of assigning a pre-established order to the assets, based on the vital characteristics of the organization (type of asset, date, author, etc.)
• Format conversion: strategic functionality will help the organization protect itself against technological obsolescence, affecting the formats in which information is stored.
• Format compression: this is an appreciable quality of digital asset management software since the repositories can reach such a magnitude that said functionality could maximize the space's performance.
• File renaming: the digital resource management system must guarantee the controlled renaming of files. If, in turn, it maintains the UUI of the asset, this will serve to ensure traceability.
• Backup copies: the system must have the capacity to contribute to the organization's backup policy when protecting its digital assets.
• Audit: the digital asset management dam is used to track the access and exploitation of the resources it houses.
• Resource search and retrieval: Users must use the system to search for and access content to which they are entitled. The search engine will display the results, depending on the security policy defined in the system.
• Categorization: when creating or managing the repository of digital assets, the possibility of assigning categories to the resources is valuable and essential since it provides users with one more attribute when searching for the asset they need.
• Resource distribution: The system must provide the necessary functionalities to distribute and share the resources among the user community: subscription service, sending notifications, authorized download tokens, etc. It can even be used to facilitate the trading of digital assets, for example, through e-commerce.
• Workflow: when an organization has defined business processes, the digital asset management system must have the necessary tools to standardize them. Regulatory compliance is facilitated thanks to bpm engines or automation, and the number and seriousness of possible human errors are lessened.

Benefits of a DAM software

• Collaboration: the digital asset management dam facilitates the access and sharing of any digital resource. In addition, when remote work is becoming more and more common, providing the possibility of working from anywhere is an added advantage.
• Organization: with the use of a digital asset management system, the aim is to facilitate a transparent and straightforward administration of resources. Searching and finding what they need is not the marketing team's job.
• Planning, production, review, and distribution of digital content summarizes any marketing strategy's steps, and a dam system contributes directly to achieving this goal.
• Version control: in addition to reviewing and approving digital files, controlling the life cycle of resources is vital.

OpenKM's digital asset management system has all the necessary features to help you manage your digital assets. To see it, you just need to request an online demo.