DAM Executive Summary

Digital Asset Management (DAM) has been used to describe many types of content management systems. We live in a world where digital assets will outvalue fixed assets at most corporations in the immediate future. With this value comes the necessity to manage these assets to retain and increase their value.

Digital files come in many formats: images, text, word processing, spreadsheets, animations, videos, logos, web pages and more. Digital content represents many things: advertising, marketing, web presence, financial reports, publications, news, research, documentation to name but a few.

DAM systems exist to separate content from format, so that a single asset can be re-purposed in many ways. The system consists of a database to organize these assets, hold searchable metadata (information about the assets) and interfaces to provide workflow automation, reformatting, links to legacy systems, and links to the outside world. For instance, you could have a single image asset that appears on your website, annual report, marketing collateral, product packaging, billboard, TV commercial etc. Most organizations have many copies of these assets in many places. This becomes a problem at most corporations i.e. redundant storage as well as control, or authorized use of approved or copyrighted assets.

DAM can alleviate these problems by offering systematic organization of reusable assets and referencible metadata for rapid retrieval and/or insertion into a work process, resulting in the transformation of assets into new media with brand equity that increases business value.

The benefit of DAM systems to an organization's bottom line is the good news. However, each company's solution is unique, and the research and decision-making process can be complex. Choosing an experienced partner early in the process may be the most important decision impacting speed of deployment and savings.