Why Re-Centralizing Your Global Digital Asset Management Is a Gamechanger for Modern Business
In the last few years, digital assets have gone through an age of incredible expansion globally. The universe for all kinds of content has grown exponentially as businesses have transformed and become more data-led and increasingly digital-first. The pandemic was a shot in the arm for such activity and also led to a proliferation of new cloud services and applications.
Assets are now spread everywhere. This age of decentralization has allowed enterprises, especially those that operate in multiple countries and regions, to tailor digital content to customers, offer unique experiences and grab local market share. This dispersed digital asset management (DAM) strategy worked in an expanding economic cycle. However, times are changing.
Now, re-centralizing digital assets is coming to the fore. Why? In tightening economic times, with the rising cost of managing dispersed content around the globe, organizations are looking to cut costs, make better use of assets across markets and slash duplicated work. The core aim of re-centralization is to drive efficiencies, save money and simplify processes.
But re-centralization is also about solving real business challenges, whether they’re tackling compliance issues related to digital assets, rolling out consistent global promotions, unifying digital content or keeping information up to date worldwide. Yet very few organizations and top decision-makers, aside from the most enlightened chief technology officers, demand DAM solutions.
What organizations are demanding is answers to their problems. By having centralized DAM capabilities and eliminating a siloed approach, businesses can achieve more and exercise better control.
Multiple Benefits, Multiple Wins
In its most basic form, a DAM is a centralized repository for storing your assets. Assets can be anything from images and video to documents and files — the list is practically endless. A typical use case is businesses storing assets locally, in file stores, or on Sharepoint or other third-party file services.
However, these solutions lack strong control over assets or governance for usage. This is where a modern DAM platform is vital. Not only does a DAM give organizations far better management and utilization of assets, but when coupled with advanced features, like taxonomies, digital rights management and edge publishing, DAM solutions put the power back in users’ hands.
By having one centralized DAM platform that employees can access from anywhere around the globe, organizations can make better use of their assets and collaborate more effectively. A centralized platform also enables businesses to benefit from a range of new services, such as generative AI tools.
However, there is a great deal of inertia required to begin re-centralizing digital assets. The larger the organization the more likely its assets are spread across separate jurisdictions, regions and teams, and the more difficult it will be to bring about change.
The technology on offer through DAM solutions has also improved over time. What’s now available is feature-rich, easy to use and quick to deploy, with highly intelligent and flexible tools helping tailor and personalize digital assets to any market effortlessly.
Therefore, building an organization’s asset management foundation with a centralized DAM solution is now critical for businesses. These solutions encompass a variety of assets, including images, video, audio recordings, PDFs, writing and other digital documents. And it’s not just customer-facing assets either, but internal documents like training modules, product data sheets and digital rights data as well.
A Time Saving No-Brainer for Asset Management
The strength of a re-centralized DAM is that it’s a powerful tool that allows organizations to do more with less. It can reduce time spent looking for assets by ensuring organizations have a single, up-to-date “source of truth” that is relevant to users. This can be a gamechanger for companies, especially those with distributed employees working from home or a globally dispersed workforce.
With a DAM tool, adjustments to a global set of digital assets can be done in milliseconds. With smart tools you can alter assets instantly within a single tool, making corrections to images, color, taxonomy and tagging, metadata and descriptions. Ingestion and processing can also be done quickly. In fact, with the right DAM, it’s possible to streamline a high level of activity, saving both time and money.
Another benefit of a centralized DAM is freeing up valuable resources. For instance, designers don’t need to tailor images to local markets. The process can even be highly automated or done centrally. Therefore, employees have more time to be creative or accomplish value-added tasks that make a difference to the bottom line.
Navigate Compliance Requirements Smoothly
More countries are implementing new, GDPR-type laws for privacy or similar legislation related to AI, like the EU AI Act. The way digital assets, especially user-generated content, are managed, distributed and utilized from a brand perspective matters more than ever. With a centralized DAM solution, businesses can also monitor all activity, including system access, asset views or downloads, changes made to assets and many other parameters. This is important for brand protection and integrity.
A single, less fragmented, centralized management system is also important when organizations, particularly multinational ones, consider digital rights management (DRM). DRM allows organizations to ensure that the right users have the right access to the right assets, at the right time, in the right locations, respecting embargoes, compliance and local regulations.
Impact the Business with Asset Management
A global repository also allows a single point of command from which to distribute or modify any asset, whether it’s content for the web, downstream channels, internal resources for employees or any other use or format. In many ways, DAM systems act as a multi-dimensional solution.
Re-centralizing assets with a DAM solution future-proofs digital assets and their management, and if organizations want to use the next generation of tools, like AI, they need solutions that are future ready. One of the biggest impacts a business can make today is to start making sure all its assets are in order and within one DAM tool.
