The world has gone digital due to advancements in technology, innovation, and research. It’s safe to say we are in the digital age where virtually everything is carried out online. Digital assets are one of such things that are 21st century relevant in all industries and sectors of the world, the business sector inclusive. The most important strategy is having a digital asset management software which creates an enabling environment and is also user-friendly. And when you need all these perks, look no further than Daminion. Once this software specification is found your digital assets management dreams can finally come to fruition.
What are Digital Assets?
Like the name connotes, digital assets are contents that are stored digitally. They can’t be touched physically but they hold a lot of value and benefit. One characteristic feature of digital assets is usage rights or licensing requirements. Texts, videos, images, pdfs, spreadsheets are typical examples of digital assets. The definition of digital assets is dynamic as it changes with the addition of different types of assets.
Digital assets may be in the form of JPGs, PDFs, PSDs depending on the type of asset in question. Digital assets are the soul of a business that wants to meet the industry-changing demands, increase competitiveness, visibility, and sales in the 21st century. With Digital assets, companies and businesses alike can create video and audio to sell their products to their target audience. They can create spreadsheets for their marketing campaigns.
Companies rely heavily on digital assets to form a connection with their audience in the form of visual representation. After all, a picture tells a thousand stories and storytelling is an essential part of business strategy.
Digital assets like every other value must be properly stored to ensure easy retrieval, access, distribution, and organization. Hence, rigid structures and systems must be put in place to ensure efficiency with these assets to prevent mismanagement.
What is Digital Assets Management?
As a result of the digitalization that has pervaded the business sphere, companies have to deal with a lot of digital assets often stored in different places, and it becomes a herculean task to keep up with the number of assets. This is where the role of digital asset management comes into the picture to solve the problems associated with unorganized digital content.
Digital asset management (system or software) is a structure that allows an organization to store, organize, find, retrieve and share its entire digital content catalog from a single source of truth. With an effective and efficient digital assets management system contractors, employees, clients, and key stakeholders would have access to their entire digital content including videos, pictures, presentations, and documents. Making an informed decision as regards the choice of software to be deployed shouldn’t be toyed with. In choosing right, several factors must be considered. Daminion is one software that ticks all the boxes in terms of features that automate workflow and manage digital assets effectively.
Creating an Effective Digital Asset Management Strategy
Creating an effective digital asset management strategy takes a deliberate and conscious effort. It involves a lot of proper planning, execution of such plans, and beneficial collaboration with team members. The importance of a D.A.M.S can’t be overemphasized as it makes the workflow seemingly easy and stress-free, strengthens security, and accelerates production timelines. The digital assets of an organization need to be controlled as not all assets would turn out useful. They would have to streamline the assets to the one relevant to the company’s need as data can be expensive to manage. An effective digital asset management strategy should include the following processes:
Audit Existing Digital Assets
The first step to creating an effective D.A.M.S is auditing the existing digital assets. In this phase, you analyze and evaluate the usefulness of some of these assets. Some of these assets are sitting in your company’s archives oblivious to your employees. Most times they are often undervalued or never found. You have to ask pivotal questions such as: Are labeling systems in place? Are your employees aware of the existence of these assets? Have you implemented any software to manage the assets?
Specify who has access
The D.A.M.S will also specify who has access to the digital content as well as who can modify or adapt it to meet specific needs. This can only materialize when a functional steering committee is established. The steering committee will ensure that the digital assets support the company’s business goals and visions. Another D.A.M.S is the steering committee working on security permissions as the company’s digital structure is not meant to be accessed by everyone. A specific set of people would be able to access, create, edit and view the data.
Ensure the asset meets the standard
One tactful D.A.M.S is ensuring that the said digital asset meets the standard. The assets must have a defined and purpose use. After all, what’s the use of keeping data which does not have any purpose.
Prevent copyright infringement
It is a faulted notion to think that the core of digital asset management lies in their storage. A Digital Asset Management strategy puts you in a safe space in terms of asset usage. Your team can easily verify if the assets you are about to make use of are legally permissible to prevent copyright infringement issues. You don’t want to land a controversial case of a data breach costing millions of dollars. In the same vein, you will be able to prohibit instances of unauthorized usage of your assets by competitors.
Specify document management system
Also, a digital asset management strategy specifies the document management system that will be deployed and how this digital content will be integrated into the assigned systems which make up the digital library of the organization. However, it should be noted that a digital asset management system would only be effective if there is a functional IT structure as its entire operation revolves around a solid IT department.
Implement naming conventions
A tactful D.A.M strategy is implementing naming conventions. During business, you will be exposed to a lot of files that may sometimes have the same names, therefore, it may become difficult to differentiate between them. With an efficient tagging and categorization system, discoverability and retrieval become easy. You can categorize assets based on their name, functions, a unique number assigned to them, and the product line.
Wrapping Up
The digital asset management strategy will introduce documents that would manage digital assets. They include digital asset standards, project handover standards, and engineering document naming standards.
The art of war lies in strategy and for any endeavor to succeed time-proven and tested structures must be implemented. An effective D.A.M.S will eliminate incidences of outdated or low-quality assets which may ruin the customer’s confidence in the brand.
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