How to Build a Digital Asset Management Business Case

In this article, you’ll learn:

Action bias is a real thing.

Sometimes people want to do things just because doing things is better than not doing them or because others do that.

Doing things blindly, however, incurs a large price, especially in a business environment.

Hence why stakeholders and leadership tend to be hesitant about just doing things; they need to be convinced of the benefits that any new implementation will bring. You need to make a case for DAM system.

The same way with digital asset management software. For all the good and shiny things it does, you actually need to understand why exactly you want to implement DAM.

And besides understanding that thing yourself, you have to convince other decision-makers and stakeholders in your team that this will be a worthy investment and that costs and implementation time pale in comparison to the benefits you’ll reap.

So, how to accomplish that? This is what we’ll be talking about in today’s article!

Let’s dig in.

First Dimension: Do You Have a Workflow that Can Benefit From DAM?

Realistically, all companies can benefit from digital asset management. After all, there’s not a company in the world that doesn’t work with digital files. Whether videos, photos, or documents - looking for the right assets to work with is a mundane step for any member of a organization, regardless of their job title.

But is it enough? Sure, DAM can save you up to 10 hours/mo per user on asset search but that’s an upper limit. If just file search isn’t that big of a roadblock, this argument alone might not be convincing.

So make a business case for DAM and think how exactly it can help you. Maybe you’re working with third parties/need to share assets with clients frequently. Then, website functionality - the ability to turn folders into online branded portals in 2 clicks - is a great way to streamline that process.

Or maybe you have issues with unauthorized access and misuse of sensitive information, like somebody using NDA materials in marketing promos by accidents. Then robust roles & permission management functionality can considerably help you on that front.

Originally just about asset management, DAM software has evolved over the years to incorporate content distribution and project management features into its arsenal. It can be quite a handful, so if you're eager to learn more in detail, consider signing up for a free trial or booking a demo (also free) where you can discuss your team's business needs.

But if you're not ready for that just yet, consider asking yourself these questions as they can guide you in the right direction and help you build a business case for digital asset management.

How much time do you spend on average looking for required assets?
Is there a constant issue with brand consistency guidelines not being followed, losing brand content assets, or using outdated versions because there's no established metadata taxonomy?
Are questions like "can I use this picture?", "can somebody help me find...", "why didn't we do a cloud back up of this?" common occurrences in your environment?
Are there issues with managing an asset's lifecycle and do we need to have the ability to see and compare past revisions of the assets?
How are we handling asset distribution? Do we spend too much time ferrying assets from our storage to Dropbox and then to the client and backward?

Second Dimension: Potential ROI

The second part of the argument is quantifying DAM software benefits.

As you may have guessed from the above questions, DAM applications are numerous, and so are measures of ROI, the value you receive. An important part of building a business case for DAM is presenting a tangible return on investment that you can show to decision makers.

For example, if one of the main issues you have is "people spend too much time looking for assets", you need to do some math.

Take any given employee's hourly wage and then determine how much time per day they're spending on looking for assets. Let's say, the average hourly rate of a good UX designer is around $40/h. If they spend 10 hours a month looking for assets they need to work on that's $400! Considering that DAM's monthly subscription for a team starts at $150/mo, that's already $250 you will be saving.

And that's only on one employee!

Price can be a huge factor in building a business case for DAM

The same time consuming formula can be applied to other DAM features as well.

You may be spending too much time communicating with clients and external partners. Because you have assets in one place (like Google Drive) and communication in the other (IMs, Slack, emails), so you're constantly trying to cross-reference the two and sometimes you just forget about the conversation because that's just how life can be sometimes. Quantifying the time lost here and converting it to an hourly rate will be a similar shocker to the one above.

There are obviously other ROIs but each team and each niche has so many unique cases that it would be difficult to type out all the possibilities here. But the idea is gonna be similar across the board - understanding the challenges you have, quantifying monetary loss from these problems, and then looking at how DAM solves them.

Dimension 3: Disruption and Adoptability

No matter how good a piece of software is, it is people that will be using it after all. Some of them, might just not like the idea of change whatsoever, others might feel that the time and money spent on implementing DAM will be too disruptive to their current operations.

The former complaint is quite mercurial. After all, Henry Ford once said that if he asked what people wanted they'd say not cars but faster horses.

The second concern is quite valid, though. If you're currently working on a high-profile case or a task, introducing new cogs into a machine - no matter how better the things they make - the growing pains might actually slow things down not improve them.

Sometimes, it can be just a matter of the right time. A DAM might seem like a bad idea now but you can circle back to it on a later date once you don't have any pressing matters to attend do. Figuring out a timeline and not pressuring decision makers into adopting new solution now indicates that you care about long-term perspective and benefit and not just about doing things for the sake of doing.

Besides, if you create an adoption timeline, it will give you more time to explore all DAM vendors on the market, trial them to your heart's content and figure out which one is the right fit for you. It will aid in you making a business case for digital asset management later on.

Another good suggestion is to propose a test-run of the solution with a small team and a batch of assets as that will be less disruptive. You can migrate a small number of assets to a DAM trial account, where you and your chosen teammates will get to test everything that the product has to offer.

The time you spend testing the software will also give you ample opportunity to devise a proper DAM strategy that you can then present to decision makers when making your cause for adoption of digital asset management.

And, of course, before suggesting any DAM solution, you need to assess the quality of DAM customer experience . A quality customer support won't be there just to answer your technical questions but also can help to onboard your team and figure out your specific business needs.

Adoption of entirely new technologies is a stressful enough process as is, so any help that can make it more manageable and approachable certainly will be helpful for when you're about to make your DAM business case.

Conclusion

Once you've gathered all information you need - business application of DAM, ROI, adoption and asset migration plan - you can make a business case for digital asset management and present it to those in controlmaking decisions.

Far too often companies adopt new SaaS solutions just because it "looks neat." And then it ends up collecting dust, sapping your company's coffers without any benefit to show for it.

Construcing a proper digital asset management business case is not there just to convince stakeholders to buy a DAM subscription but it can also help you determine what exactly are you trying to do with DAM and whether the price of admission warrants the pains that you'll have to go through.

Sometimes, as you trying to answer that question, you might find out that DAM might not be just what you need. And that's fine!

That is why Pics.io tries to make this consideration process as painless as possible for you. With free demo, free trial, and ability to fully integrate with Google Drive (so you don't even need to move assets anywhere) guarantees that learning more about our product is easy and transparent.

So, if you do believe that it's about the time your team adopted DAM, feel free to book a demo with us or sign up for a free trial via form below. Hope to see you there ;)