Who Uses Digital Asset Management?

Digital asset management (DAM) helps brands maximize the value of their digital assets by efficiently storing, managing, and publishing them across channels. This system ensures that brands can effectively organize their digital files, improving workflow efficiency and sustaining brand consistency across touchpoints.

Without a DAM system, organizations struggle to keep track of assets, leading to wasted investments and time spent searching for or recreating files, which can significantly hinder campaigns and timelines. In today's digital landscape, effective asset management is not just advantageous; it is necessary for maintaining competitive advantage and ensuring swift adaptability to market demands.

DAM systems provide critical analytics that can inform better decision-making and strategic planning, thereby enhancing overall organizational performance. We'll explore how different roles and businesses benefit from DAM, highlighting its transformative impact on asset management, operational efficiency, and brand integrity.

Who needs DAM?

• Creators use a DAM system to centralize files and streamline workflows. It provides easy access to assets, eliminates duplication, and facilitates sharing and approvals through automated workflows. Final files are distributed via portals, saving time for creative work.
• Marketers use DAM software to manage media assets for campaigns and content initiatives. With DAM, they can search content, convert formats, publish to various channels, and share with collaborators. Platform analytics show asset performance and usage, helping marketers prioritize efforts and improve content investments.
• IT professionals can keep assets accessible, governed, and trackable while reducing storage costs and security risks by using pre-built integrations and APIs.

Which industries use DAM?

Digital asset management isn’t valuable for just one type of organization in one type of industry. The structure, process, control, and efficiency that come from DAM — and the systems that support it — benefit a diverse range of industry types. 

Agencies

Agencies use DAM tools to protect client assets, increase productivity, and ensure easy access to approved content for marketing campaigns. These tools help manage digital materials efficiently, allowing creatives to focus on innovative work instead of searching for files. DAM systems curate and update assets across platforms, enabling quick adaptation to changing needs and improving service quality. They also integrate with other software for seamless collaboration, ensuring consistent brand presence across channels. Some agencies use DAM systems in-house to manage assets and workflows for clients.

Financial services

Regulatory compliance and risk management are of utmost importance to banks, insurers, and other financial services institutions. DAM helps these organizations ensure only compliant, approved assets are in circulation, reducing legal risks associated with the dissemination of outdated or non-compliant information. DAM also helps financial organizations, like Zurich Insurance, enforce brand guidelines to maintain a cohesive and professional representation of the brand across all customer touchpoints and regions– a critical factor for building trust and credibility.

Food and beverage

Food and beverage companies have many dependencies to get accurate product labels, creative, and promotions out to market. They use DAM to relate assets to products and standardize their complex creation and approval workflows. They also rely on the DAM to integrate with their product information management system to connect their product assets to product data before sharing with distributors and e-commerce channels.

Government

DAM assists in improving communication between federal, state, or local governments and their constituents by centralizing and making accessible the assets needed for campaigns, community outreach, and public service announcements. This helps government employees carry out their roles more efficiently and effectively by offering better control of when assets are available and when they should be removed from circulation, making it easier to showcase the impact of government projects and programs in the community.

Healthcare

Whether healthcare organizations are promoting their services or educating the public, DAM helps them control the accuracy of the information they share. With its permission-based access and rights management controls, a DAM solution ensures that only the right content is used by the right people, regions, and departments. If information changes, system admins simply update the revised assets in the DAM system, and the changes are automatically reflected anywhere those assets live online. This helps the healthcare industry manage compliance and prevent mistakes that could impact their standing as a trusted and reliable brand.

Higher education

Colleges and universities rely on DAM to organize digital assets in a central library, ensuring brand governance for all users. This system enables sharing between departments while protecting sensitive assets. Institutions like the University of Georgia and the University of Kansas benefit from DAM by streamlining content workflows and reducing costs from lost assets.

Manufacturing

Manufacturers like Simpson Strong-Tie use DAM software to organize assets, enhance online branding, and distribute content efficiently to global teams. Combining DAM with product information management ensures product data and marketing content are aligned and accurate.

Media and entertainment

Media and entertainment companies use DAM systems to streamline workflows. DAM supports bulk imports and edits of live event assets, ensures only authorized access via permissions, and reduces risk by enforcing licensing terms.

Nonprofit

Nonprofit organizations use DAM to optimize marketing with limited budgets. DAM systems boost content ROI by saving time and reusing assets, often covering their own costs. Nonprofits use DAM tools like templates to enable volunteers and staff to create on-brand materials. YMCA England & Wales effectively utilizes DAM technology.

Print and publishing

The print and publishing industry uses DAM tools to streamline production. A digital asset management system allows easy file sharing for proofing or printing. Edits or version reverts can be made efficiently. Updated content is shared via links, eliminating the need for uploads and reducing delays.

Retail

The retail industry uses DAM for omnichannel e-commerce, centralizing product visuals in one place for consistency across all channels. To see DAM's impact, explore our case studies from sectors like cosmetics, tech, luxury goods, and more.

Sports

The sports industry must capture game day excitement through photos and videos, then use them to engage fans and create revenue. A DAM platform provides a central, searchable repository for these assets, enabling teams like the Houston Texans to quickly access and utilize the content. This technology revolutionizes how assets are managed post-game.

Travel and tourism

“A picture is worth a thousand words” — just ask any transportation, recreation, dining, or hospitality business in the trillion-dollar travel and tourism industry. The right DAM software gives businesses in this vertical the tools, brand control, and insights needed to put their most impactful, must-travel-here-now imagery forward. A digital asset management system helps these organizations control the quality of their assets and streamline their workflows, so they can get their best content in front of potential travelers, faster. Just look at The Mariners’ Museum and Park, who use their DAM system to help museum staff streamline internal access to digital assets and share their collection with a global audience.

Where to go from here

The advantages of digital asset management (DAM) systems stretch across industries, bringing scalability and flexibility to each unique organizational structure. While individual use cases may differ—ranging from centralizing digital assets in marketing industries to enforcing regulatory compliance in financial services—the overarching benefits are clear and compelling. DAM solutions enhance accessibility, ensuring every team member can seamlessly locate and utilize necessary resources, which fosters an environment ripe for collaboration and efficiency.

As organizations increasingly emphasize brand consistency across multiple platforms, the ability of DAM systems to maintain up-to-date, unified branding elements across channels is invaluable. These systems not only optimize the effectiveness of daily operations but also position companies to swiftly adapt to the ever-evolving digital landscape, thereby preserving their competitive edge.

To learn more about how Acquia DAM can fit into your organization’s digital ecosystem, request a demo today.