Wondering what digital asset management consultants can do for you?
Digital Asset Management (DAM) can be defined as the development, implementation, governance, and evolution of all the tools, standards, and processes involved in the effective utilization of digital and creative assets. It's a complicated activity that requires significant experience and expertise to do well.
Want to learn more about the basics of Digital Asset Management? Check out our Introduction to DAM.
It can be difficult to know where to start your DAM journey. Additionally, understanding how your DAM program should change as your organization grows can also be challenging, especially for those lacking extensive DAM experience.
In either case, digital asset management consultants may be a good place to turn for help. They can provide expertise and experience in DAM to your team. This includes assisting in the identification and development of the tools, solutions, and processes your organization needs to put its assets to use more efficiently and effectively.
WHY DAM MATTERS AND WHAT IT COSTS
What’s the core reason that people don’t turn to consultants when they have questions or need support? Consultants cost money. To justify the costs associated with engaging a DAM consultant, you must identify the value of effective digital asset management to your organization, as well as the cost of ignoring it.
The Cost of Decentralization
One of the most common problems that digital asset management solves is the decentralization of assets.
When important files are spread across an organization, finding specific digital and creative assets when they’re needed can be tedious and difficult. Whenever teammates have to ask one another for help locating assets, hours and even days can be wasted.
Gathering and migrating all digital and creative assets into a single, shared location eliminates this problem. Since this is a time-consuming process with many moving parts, there’s a significant risk that things could go wrong if proper care isn’t taken.
The Value of Effective Search
Even if an organization already has a DAM program, the files held within it may not be easy to locate if it's not well organized, lacks the proper standards and workflows, or doesn't reflect the complexity of the brand. Without access to metadata or thoughtfully built permissions structures and workflows, searching the library may yield little or no results.
Employees can easily find the best asset for a specific need when an organization utilizes custom metadata and is methodical in how it accesses, distributes, and utilizes content across its entire Martech stack. This not only saves valuable time but also ensures that the brand stays consistent and its identity is clear to consumers.
The Benefits and Liabilities of Collaboration
External searches, collaborative editing, file sharing, and asset approval are all hugely beneficial features of a well-organized digital asset library. These processes allow teams across an organization to easily locate specific assets and create content for both internal and external audiences.
However, without clearly defined infrastructure and standards, these same processes can expose an organization to massive liability. Sharing files with the wrong people, exposing IP addresses, and losing track of who has access to assets are all dangerous and costly errors.
The Risk of Disorganized Assets
Besides the cost of the time and money wasted by your team searching for, sharing, and storing assets outside of a DAM program, there are other potential expenses associated with failing to arrange your assets systematically. These center around the risks posed by disorganized assets.
When assets aren’t secure and the information related to them isn’t visible to your staff, it’s far easier for assets that are out-of-date, off-brand, or have expired copyright, licensing, or usage permissions to be used the wrong way. This not only hurts your brand but puts you at risk of legal disputes.
Another large risk is to your personnel. Regardless of whether your assets are organized in a DAM program, someone on your team is responsible for them. Typically, this is an employee with a full-time job who also carries the burden of finding and sending assets to those who need them. These people are rarely happy with an additional time-consuming role they didn’t ask for and weren’t trained to do. Without them, however, everything falls apart.
Don’t risk losing key staff members by not implementing DAM. Get the help you need to transform chaos into calm, mitigate risk, and make life easier for your team.
WHAT DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS ARE FOR
The value of effective digital asset management and the costs of not implementing it are quite clear. It’s vitally important to identify problems and develop solutions that fit the current and future needs of your organization.
This is a complex process that requires input from many user groups and stakeholders, as well as an awareness of what's possible with DAM. This is why hiring experienced DAM consultants to provide expertise is a worthwhile investment. Below, we've outlined some practical solutions consultants can offer and some resources to help you get started.
Developing Custom Solutions
When it comes to metadata, permissions structures, governance guidelines, DAM platforms, and core workflows, every brand has different needs. Remember, there's no one-size-fits-all solution.
DAM consultants can help you determine what solutions would best fit your organization, structure, and culture. They do this by analyzing your current workflows, goals, and asset lifecycle and collaborating with your team to develop custom solutions that ensure you achieve your goals both now and in the future.
Understanding Best Practices
While every business case is different, there are standard DAM solutions across industries and markets that have proven to be effective. DAM consultants have the benefit of working with many clients across a wide range of organizations. This means they can offer knowledge of what other organizations in your field are doing, how it’s working, and how it could work for you.
Staying Informed
A consultant’s job depends on being up to date with the latest developments in the digital asset management space. Partnering with a consultant means you'll always have knowledge of the newest technologies, solutions, and trends in the industry, as well as how they could be implemented into your workflow.
Implementing Solutions
Digital asset management consultants, like consultants in other industries, are sometimes criticized for failing to take ownership of their recommendations. This stems from the perception that some consultants simply give their clients advice and don’t help them make changes and implement solutions.
There are, however, some consultants who take ownership of their recommendations and are willing to allocate the necessary resources, time, and detail-oriented personnel to make them a reality.
Become a Long-Term Partner
When you begin a relationship with a consultant, it can be for the short term. However, this professional relationship can extend beyond a single project, becoming a partnership wherein your organization continuously benefits from the consultant's expertise. This not only saves you the headache of hiring and training additional staff to manage your DAM program, but it also ensures that your DAM program doesn’t become obsolete.
If you’re interested in learning more about working with a DAM consultant, contact Stacks today!
DAM RESOURCES
Digital Asset Management is a rapidly-growing and ever-evolving industry that can be difficult to navigate. Partnering with a consultant can help your team design and implement solutions built specifically for your organization. Here are a few helpful resources to help you get started:
- A list of Digital Asset Management Resources
- An amazing DAM ROI Calculator
- A helpful DAM Health Score Survey, which will produce a custom, branded report
- An insightful Case Study to help understand the practical applications of DAM
- More posts just like this on our blog
For more information about DAM solutions, contact our team!
