I can say that digital asset management is a solution designed to make your life easier. It improves your team's ability to organize, manage, and distribute digital assets (pictures, videos, photos, etc.)
But, it wouldn't explain why you should care about DAM in particular. After all, give me one SaaS solution on the market that doesn't promise to make your life easier in this or that way.
So, the justification should be more concrete. Thus, this article.
Today, let's talk about the specific advantages of digital asset management and the exact ways how it makes your day-to-day work easier.
Advantages of Digital Asset Management
Find assets easier
It's easy to find one file among a hundred. What if you have thousands and multiple team members, each with their idea of what makes an asset "easy to find"?
DAM lets you add keywords, visual tags, and other metadata tags to your assets which accomplish two things:
- You don't need to remember what the asset looks like or its name. You just need to know what you're looking for (e.g. is it a picture of a cat, of a specific product, etc.)
- You can get immediate access to your assets, regardless of where they are in your media library. So, you don't need to be a file tree guru and navigate through dozens of nested folders.
Automate permissions and access to assets
Can I use this picture? Can you give me access to x? How do I find this photo?
Organizations, especially with new hires, can be dragged down by bureaucratic procedures that don't contribute to your business goals. These are just hurdles that users need to go through to actually start doing their job.
Pics.io DAM has a granular role & permission management. So, you can specify which assets each role can use, access, and see from the get-go.
As soon as they're invited to DAM, all these procedures are taken care of. You can just @ them on assets they need to work on, and there are no more redundant questions.
Easy way to receive and distribute assets
Obviously, assets aren't just for internal use.
There are situations where you need to share assets with third parties:
- clients
- stakeholders
- prospects
DAM strives to be the single source of truth for your digital assets.
So, instead of relying on third-party solutions to host, distribute and showcase your assets, you can use websites.
These branded portals have multiple customization options, for each sharing need.
Do you want to discuss and work on the assets together with third parties? You can use a proofing template that retains the comment and revision section. So, third parties can comment on assets and you will receive notifications about it inside your DAM.
Pics.io Team
Perhaps, you need a flash presentation to wow your clients and prospects? You can use one of the gallery templates. What's more, you can embed this gallery directly on your main domain for an easier way to update and manage your gallery.
Automate mundane tasks with AI
When you have thousands of assets, it can be daunting to tag them with keywords. Plus, you will inevitably get input mistakes due to human errors.
AI Keywording lets you generate metadata for thousands of assets at once, using computer vision to recognize and name objects on each asset.
Teams that work with talent or simply care about who is in the photo can use face recognition to quickly detect and recognize all photos with the same person.
Pics.io Team
Consolidate ALL information you need in one place
One issue with solutions like Google Drive is that they cannot store everything.
Some data formats either cannot accept at all or can only act as simple storage without any meaningful way to preview or engage with the assets.
Pics.io DAM supports virtually all popular existing formats, be it simple JPEGs, or more intricate ones.OBJ or Sketch files.
Constantly work with PSD files in Photoshop? Not only Pics.io has integration with Photoshop but you also have the option to preview and edit PSD files straight from Pics.io, without opening any other app.
Our external links functionality takes this consolidation one step further. You can upload links to websites as assets to Pics.io. Once it's done processing such an asset, you will get a searchable, interactive copy of a page inside your Pics.io that will behave like any other asset that you upload directly.
Pics.io Team
Digital Asset Management Benefits
The benefits of digital asset management that your organization will gain stem directly from the advantages outlined above.
By tapping into DAM's full potential, your organization will be able to...
Save more time on looking for assets
According to our DAM benefits report, Pics.io saves our users 10 hours/mo per user on search.
It may seem that looking for assets only takes you a few minutes at a time. But these minutes add up fast.
So, multiply the hourly wage of any of your team members by 10 and you'll realize how much time (and money) DAM will save you. And, this time can be then instead spent on doing things that are actually productive.
Win-win for everyone.
Ensure brand consistency
With all your assets consolidated in one place, it's easy to guarantee that your brand guidelines: tone of voice, colors, and up-to-date logos - are accounted for.
Besides the mentioned metadata management options, you have the ability to link assets together, so you can make a distinct connection between all of your brand assets.
Additionally, the version control system lets you compare versions of assets side by side, so you can be 100% confident that new asset revisions still adhere to all of your brand specifications.
You don't have to build your asset library from the ground-up
With Pics.io, one of the more unique digital asset management software benefits is that you can keep your existing storage and existing data structure.
Whereas the majority of DAM vendors are keen on providing only their own storage (to ensure vendor lock), Pics.io can easily work on top of your existing Google Drive or Amazon S3 storage.
So, there's no need to transfer your assets from here to there, or anything complicated. You can just connect your existing storage with a Pics.io account, and sync them together.
That way, all of your assets will remain in your full control, and you will use Pics.io as a way to interact with them in a more meaningful way.
Why is Digital Asset Management Important?
The digital asset management importance will only grow with each year.
The Internet moves further and further from text-based content, as video and other visual formats dominate the scene.
And while the readymade solutions, such as the people's champion Google Drive, have more than enough features to manage and search through text files, its capabilities to look for and retrieve videos and images are lacking.
Pics.io Team
Digital asset management, Pics.io included, is built from the ground up to make it easier for you to find and work with your digital assets, letting you do all the things you need through one, convenient interface.
Experience the Benefits of a DAM System With Pics.io
We, @Pics.io, believe that the benefits of digital asset management system aren't just a luxury thing but a future and a necessity.
This is why our mission is to build long-term partnerships with our users, so we can build a better asset management solution for everyone and we want to make the transition to DAM world as seamless as possible.
So, besides the features and integrations we have outlined above, we also offer a transparent and competitive DAM system cost, which you can see for yourself on our pricing page.
Pics.io Team
And, we also offer free demos and (for paid users) free training workshops to help you recognize your existing business processes and devise your digital asset management strategy.
Conclusion
The importance of the digital asset management solution is hard to understate.
With each year, the importance of original, high-quality digital assets grows exponentially. And with it, the number of assets in your media library.
DAM software ensures that all your assets are always at the hand's reach, and can be easily distributed and managed, both inside your team and with third parties.
Did you enjoy this article? Give Pics.io a try — or book a demo with us, and we'll be happy to answer any of your questions.
