Digital assets are both valuable and challenging.
Digital assets can be a company’s most valuable asset. While digital assets are usually mentioned in reference to marketing materials, they can refer to just about any data or file that a company has, including emails, documents, images, audio, video, and more. Managing this collection of data is certainly a priority for most businesses.
Because of the amount of content that businesses are generating – between internal emails, marketing collateral, training materials, and more – there are significant challenges with organizing and managing this amount of digital data. Find out how some businesses are working to overcome digital asset management challenges.
Common Digital Asset Management Challenges
The challenges your business or team faces when handling digital asset management might vary, but here are some common challenges that are causing organizations to switch to new DAM tools.
Access: Some files, including marketing materials for as-yet-unreleased products or sensitive HR documents, shouldn’t be accessed by everyone in a company or department. Protecting privacy and confidentiality can be a challenge.
- Usability: Digital assets may need to be able to be easily shared, changed, and tracked. Knowing what the latest version of a file is or being able to easily share a file without resorting to email is an important part of modern data and digital asset management.
- Storage: Digital assets can be huge files, like catalogs or long videos. This can take up a lot of digital space, and so traditional storage solutions, like networks and hard drives, can be challenging, slow, and unreliable.
Digital Asset Management Solutions
Once you’ve identified your organization’s DAM system challenges, it’s easy to find the best digital asset management tools. Many companies, like small businesses, use a solution like Dropbox to manage their files. This is works for managing a very specific type of file in the short term or for smaller businesses. For example, it’s a good solution for marketing departments who need to house their print ads. It might not be a robust enough solution for handling the digital assets generated by a marketing agency who’s churning out several types of assets for different businesses across dozens of different campaigns.
Luckily, custom DAM solutions have been created to help handle the unique challenges of media asset management. Canto Digital Asset Management is one such solution. Their cloud software lets users store, edit, share, and view digital assets and easily collaborate with other users. It also integrates with programs like Dropbox, Marketo, WordPress, and more, so that it’s much more than another digital storage repository.
Other digital asset management tools let businesses do similar things with data and files – store, manage, share, publish, and archive – while also incorporating features like analytics, reports, reminders and workflow management. Finding the right solution for your business will depend on the number of digital media assets that need to be managed. Do you need interdepartmental access to files? Reporting on files accessed or changed? Version tracking? A large archive space? Many digital asset management systems come with these features and more, making it easy to find the custom solution for you.
