There’s an acronym hovering around global brand and marketing departments at large enterprises today that succinctly describes a particularly annoying problem: DAM, which stands for Digital Asset Management.

DAM represents the notion that digital ‘piles’ of valuable content created from marketing and other communication efforts must be organised so they can be easily repurposed for multiple communication channels; support brand consistency across channels, divisions and geographies and strengthen decision making.

At first glance, DAM seems easier said than done. Business units and geographies often have different IT systems, processes and suppliers for the same thing. It’s harder to adopt best practices when there are multiple sources for the same information, hampering both innovation and standardisation efforts. So how can large organisations overcome these obstacles, save revenue and improve campaigns for the long term?

It’s a process that many are yet to master but the use of an enterprise-wide system for consolidating and standardising digital assets makes it much easier to integrate content into systems and processes across a business. It unlocks the potential for more efficient marketing operations and faster digital innovation. And it helps enterprises avoid losing track of valuable information and safeguards the chance of digital assets leaking to counterfeiters.

The best way to start is to take manageable steps. In marketing terms DAM involves segmenting materials in a single, shared location. This approach has been proven to deliver short-term impact and lay the foundation for future improvements.

The current state

The current state in many large organisations is either there’s no formal approach to digital asset management, or there’s multiple approaches and repositories across the business.

This causes operational inefficiencies: source files can get lost, the wrong versions can be used, making brand changes becomes more cumbersome and content is reinvented.

For multinationals the problem is compounded by the need to manage localisation of content for different countries and markets. Although central brand or marketing agencies may create the master content, country teams will often handle translation and localisation, with a variety of digital teams or agencies managing production. It's a way of working that can add delay and inconsistency to the process of getting content out into the public domain.

Consolidating company assets

There are a number of best practices that can be followed. Here’s how to ensure DAM consolidation projects are successful:

1. Lose repositories. When a new, single repository is created it's vital to close down all the old ones to avoid their continued use. That way users will quickly understand there's one central store where they can find all the assets they need.

2. Tell users why it’s important. Continuing to use out-of-date assets is a business risk. Users need to understand why using correct, up-to-date and on-brand assets matters. For example, if a pharmaceutical company uses the wrong labels, it could lead to serious repercussions for its business and its customers.

3. Make finding information easy. Tagging assets appropriately and ensuring you have a really good search function in the DAM will encourage people to use it, as they'll be confident of finding what they're looking for quickly and easily.

4. Avoid the DAM “dumping ground”. Monitor the assets stored in the DAM regularly. Remove duplicate or out-of-date items, and create a clear folder structure.

In today’s digital business, making the decision to standardise marketing outputs, consolidate company content and scale digital excellence is a wise move – it’s all too easy to lose track. Putting a DAM system in place ensures the cost-effective and consistent measures are in place to reach the summit ahead of the competition.

 

By Mark Halford, European VP of Communication and Marketing Services (CMS) for Xerox

 


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