OpenAsset Learning Hub
What Type Industries and Teams Use DAM Software?
Who uses digital asset management software (DAM)? Is DAM the right solution for your company? In this article, we take a closer look at which industries use digital asset management, and the benefit of adopting a DAM solution.
What Is the Purpose of Digital Asset Management Software?
Digital asset management software is a cloud-based solution that enables companies to store, organize, find and use their digital assets. Stored in a centralized location, DAM enables your team to securely access images from anywhere, at any time. DAM also streamlines workflows and helps you collaborate across the organization.
DAM Improves Brand Consistency
Digital asset management improves brand consistency by ensuring the entire organization has access to the most recent, approved assets. You can archive old assets, and control who can access images both internally and externally.
DAM Maximizes Productivity
Create efficiencies by reducing time spent searching for and managing digital assets. DAM software also improves workflows, so you’ll be able to spend more time on revenue-generating tasks.
DAM Helps You Maximize Value
Your company spends time and money creating images, digital assets and marketing collateral. DAM makes it easy to find and repurpose each asset, so you get the most out of your investment.
Why Do Companies Need a Dedicated DAM Solution?
Companies rely on content, digital assets and high-quality images to showcase their work, drive leads and ultimately grow the bottom line. And in a digital-first environment, those assets are rapidly increasing. We surveyed 500 AEC firms, and 48% report having 20,000+ digital assets. Seventy-four percent say their firm will create more images this year than last year.
A dedicated DAM solution is critical to managing this large volume across the entire organization. To win new business, all teams need access to the best digital assets quickly and easily.
Types of DAM Solutions
There are different types of DAM solutions, and it’s important to choose what’s best for your company. DAM software companies fall into two categories: brand-based DAMs and project-based DAMs.
Brand-based DAM
You may be most familiar with brand-based DAM companies that are built for B2C organizations. Brand-based DAMs organize assets around brands or products.
Project-based DAM
The alternative is project-based DAM. Project-based DAM solutions, like OpenAsset, are built to store and organize assets for projects or properties and often work best for architecture, engineering, construction and real estate firms.
Who Uses Digital Asset Management?
Both internal and external teams use DAM to collaborate, save time and reduce headaches. Internal teams use DAM to find the best, approved assets. They can also share those assets with external teams or agencies.
Marketing Teams
Marketers use digital asset management to store, organize and manage marketing collateral, including brand logos, whitepapers, sales slicks and images. They leverage DAM software to ensure that everyone in the organization can access the right digital assets, at the right time. Since everyone has access to the needed materials, DAM eliminates the need for marketing to be the middle man.
Marketing teams in the built world leverage project-based digital asset management solutions to store and organize project photos and respond to RFP requests. OpenAsset, the only project-based DAM company for the built world, even integrates with InDesign, further streamlining workflows for marketing teams that are under tight deadlines to complete proposals.
Sales and Business Development Teams
Sales and business development teams use digital asset management software to help close deals. With a sophisticated organizational structure, team members can find exactly what they are looking for when they have minimal time. They never have to ask marketing if images are approved to share, so they can spend more time making the final proposal or presentation perfect.
Business development teams for architecture, engineering and construction firms benefit more if they’re leveraging a project-based DAM. Winning new projects often comes down to pulling together the most relevant information for proposals, and having assets organized by project simplifies efforts.
Information Technology
Information technology (IT) teams keep the company running smoothly. However, this can be difficult when images are clogging up the server and team members, often marketers, are continuously asking them to fix broken links.
Digital asset management solutions solve this issue by storing images in the cloud, freeing up internal servers. DAM software also reduces the amount of time IT spends fixing broken links or giving team members access to the correct folders.
What Industries Use DAM Software?
Many industries use digital asset management to store and organize their assets. Let’s look at a few and the different benefits DAM provides.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing companies leverage DAM to access images, collaborate across the organization, improve operations and optimize workflows.
As manufacturers launch new products, they need a system for approved images and assets so the marketing teams can create campaigns quickly. They’re able to empower their team members and strengthen their brand through a library that enables search by SKU and product IDs.
Retail and eCommerce
A retail organization that uses digital asset management software is able to stay on brand and consistent across all channels. These companies typically leverage brand-based DAM solutions to store, organize and manage their materials across departments and teams.
Government Agencies
Federal, state, and local government agencies have a plethora of digital assets they need to manage including images, videos, documents and official forms. A digital asset management system helps these agencies keep track of all their digital files in one place with data security. It can also help them share files internally and with the public.
Healthcare and Education
In the healthcare industry, hospitals and clinics need to manage digital medical records, X-rays, and other images for example. They also need to be able to share files securely with patients and their families.
In education, digital asset management examples include keeping track of student records, transcripts, and ID photos, and sharing digital resources with students and teachers.
Architecture
Architects rely on beautiful photography to showcase their projects in marketing collateral and proposals to win new business. But managing an ever-growing image library can be time-consuming and frustrating. Project-based DAMs, like OpenAsset, allow firms to store their images in a cloud-based solution and organize them by project. DAM ensures assets are easy to find when firms receive last-minute proposal requests and ensures the firm is only showcasing its best work. In addition, digital asset management helps architecture firms maximize their photography investment and repurpose their images.
Learn how architecture firms, like Foster + Partners, leverage digital asset management to create photo libraries available to staff anywhere, anytime here.
Engineering
Like architects, engineers rely on project photos to win more business. DAM allows engineers to easily find images, improve efficiency and boost productivity. DAM solutions like OpenAsset integrate with ERP and CRM systems, allowing firms to retain a single source of truth and push data into OpenAsset. For example, Dewberry integrated their OpenAsset system with Deltek Vision, allowing them to easily find product information via OpenAsset search.
Construction
Digital asset management also solves time and cost challenges for construction firms. Our research shows that nearly 75% of firms currently leverage a DAM solution to manage their growing image library. Ninety-two percent of those firms report an increase in overall efficiency.
Some DAM solutions integrate with Construction Management Platforms to streamline workflows and strengthen collaboration. Follow the link to see how JHL Constructors leverages the OpenAsset-Procore integration to empower their marketing teams with prioritized project photos.
Does My Company Need DAM?
Your company needs digital asset management software if you have a growing image or digital asset library, and your images aren’t easily accessible.
Here’s a quick checklist to help you evaluate if DAM software could help your organization. If you can answer “yes” to any of the below, your company needs DAM.
- Your team wastes time searching for images.
- You can’t find all your images and digital assets.
- You lack brand consistency.
- It takes too much time to answer RFPs.
- You struggle with broken image links.
Making a Digital Asset Management Business Case
Once you’ve identified that your company needs DAM software, it’s time to make a business case for your leadership team. We’ve created a guide to making your digital asset management business case to make that process easier. It covers how to get the buy-in, shows who uses digital asset management software and showcases your return on investment. You can download it for free here.
The Only Project-Based DAM for the Built World
OpenAsset is the only project-based DAM solution built for architecture, engineering and construction firms. If you’re interested in learning more, let’s chat!