What is digital asset management? Definition, examples, tips and action plan

As your company grows, managing its growing number of digital assets, such as contracts, documents and branding materials, can become a challenge.

Proper digital asset management ensures your team saves time and always has the most up-to-date information.

In this article, you’ll learn what digital asset management is and its benefits. You’ll also learn how to choose the right DAM software for your business and how to integrate it with your current IT setup.

What is digital asset management and why is it important?

Digital asset management (DAM) is a company’s system for storing, organizing, accessing and sharing digital content such as images, videos and documents from a central online space.

There are many ways to set up your DAM system to benefit your unique business, from dedicated solutions to adapting other purpose-built tools. However, most systems tend to have several core components in common.

Here are some of the key features of asset management solutions:

• Flexible central repository. Instant access to digital files from a central hub and integration with other tools, such as your CRM system, cloud drives and others.

• Consistent metadata. Tagging digital assets with valuable metadata like file type, format, project name and last edited makes files easier to locate.

• Version control. Tracking changes to files like media assets, marketing materials and social media plans.

• Team collaboration. Team members involved in content creation can leave comments and approve changes without shipping local files back and forth, streamlining the review and sign-off process.

• Access control. Set individual permissions for each person or team to control who sees and edits assets, keeping your data safe when sharing with internal and external stakeholders.

• Smoother workflows. Hooking up to other apps, like your Adobe design software, content management system and project management tools enables you to automate workflows and improve productivity.

Let’s look at an example of a DAM system in action.

All of this helps your business streamline workflows and maintain a professional service for customers.

Why is digital asset management important?

Small businesses already have lots of media to manage, from marketing files to contracts and sales enablement material. As your business grows and you create and receive more files, that collection expands.

The situation can become unmanageable without a proper system, leading to costly mistakes.

For instance, your sales rep might send outdated information to a client, hurting their chances of closing the deal.

Without a systematic process, finding the right files will be a challenge for everyone, slowing productivity across the business. Every business leader is also responsible for securing sensitive information, such as confidential or contact information.

Take control of digital asset management to avoid mistakes, stay consistent in your communications and ensure your team has quick and easy access to the files they need.

Key benefits of DAM systems

Digital asset management solutions can improve team collaboration and result in better performance.

A cloud-based, centralized system allows in-office, remote and hybrid workers to access the same vital resources and work more efficiently.

It also allows companies to maintain brand consistency at all touchpoints to deliver a high-quality customer experience.

Let’s explore some more benefits of DAM solutions:

• Reduced duplication. Archiving old files ensures employees can no longer access outdated or duplicate files when working on a task, saving time and reducing the chance of error.
  

• Instant brand asset access. Staff can easily find the exact logos, images and templates they need for their projects without having to verify if they’re up to date.

• Quick asset searching. Asset meta tagging and powerful search tools mean you can find the digital files you need quickly and easily, improving employee efficiency.
  

• Easy versioning. Teams can create, update, track, delete and archive versions of each asset, making only the final on-brand iterations accessible to their colleagues.
  

• Safe third-party access. External partners like vendors and freelancers can retrieve what they need to do their work while they’re walled off from sensitive, protected content.
  

• Secure storage. Keep business-critical information like intellectual property safe in a restricted online area, only granting authorized senior staff permission to view it.

The right DAM system makes it easy for teams across your business to quickly create, amend, share and use your company’s content. Your employees can work faster and more accurately while your digital assets are secure behind robust access controls.

The role of IT management in digital asset management

IT asset management is the process companies use to make sure they effectively track, use, maintain and replace their IT-related assets. Those assets could be hardware, software or cloud services.

Before implementing a digital asset management platform, your IT system must be ready to support it.

Here are the key areas to focus on.

Follow these steps, and your DAM solution will run securely and efficiently from the start.

Challenges SMBs can face without proper IT management

If you haven’t optimized your IT setup for a DAM system, you may face challenges when you launch. For example, you could have retrieval issues due to siloed storage systems.

Therefore, it’s important to centralize where you house your digital assets to make file sharing easier.

A single source of truth also ensures staff know where to find the latest files, putting everyone on the same page and saving them time finding what they need.

Outdated tech, like local servers and old operating systems, can interfere with DAM integration. Replace legacy systems that don’t communicate well with other tools, as they often don’t work with modern DAMs and can limit their functionality.

Address these IT challenges to drive the most value from your DAM system.

Choosing the right DAM solution for your SMB

Asset management software comes in many forms. Choose a system that meets your specific business requirements, enhances your company’s productivity and improves your internal organization.

Here are key features for SMB owners to consider when selecting a system for their company:

• Scalability. As your business grows, the volume of digital assets you manage will increase, too. Choose a system with storage capacity that meets your current needs and projected future requirements.
  

• Security. Look for a vendor offering custom permission settings, as this lets you control who can access your assets and what they can do with them. Another useful tool is single sign-on (SSO), which simplifies secure logins across multiple devices.
  

• Interoperability. Make sure your DAM connects with your other business apps. If it doesn’t, your staff will have to switch between apps to get the asset they want, wasting time and frustrating your team members.
  

• Simplicity. Prioritize an excellent user experience. The more intuitive your DAM system is, the faster your staff will learn how to use it. Choose a capable platform that the least tech-confident employee would find simple to use.

Before you invest in specialist software, check to see if the existing apps in your tech ecosystem can replicate some or all of the functionality of a DAM. Later in this article, we’ll show you how to do that with Pipedrive.

How to implement a DAM system: 3 easy steps

Collaborate with your IT team and other departments to plan how you implement a DAM system into your company. Here are some tips to help.

Step 1: assess your current digital assets

Start by auditing the assets you use today to get an idea of what you currently have, where the gaps are and how you’ll organize everything.

List every asset important to your business that you want available on-demand for your colleagues.

The audit might include:

• Product descriptions
  

• E-commerce images and product pages
  

• Multimedia like audio files, video content and other rich media
  

• Logos and fonts
  

• Color palettes
  

• Vital company documentation
  

• Contracts used by sales teams

A comprehensive list helps you establish a thorough organizational system. Although inventorying your assets may seem like a lot of work, it can save you time in the long run when creating a hierarchy.

In this step, you’ll also want to search for missing files and delete duplicate assets to free up storage and reduce clutter. With a cleaned list of your digital assets, you’re ready to develop your system.

Step 2: organize current assets

Organize your digital assets into categories for your asset library. Think of these as high-level folders that make sense for your team.

For example, you could categorize your assets by:

• Type (e.g., images, videos and documents)
  

• Purpose (e.g., sales enablement or marketing)
  

• Use (e.g., internal or external)

Create your top-level folders with these categories. A digital marketing agency, for example, might have several top-level folders, including:

• Growth (for its own sales and marketing activity, like sales playbooks and internal brand guidelines)

• Operations (for assets related to daily operations, like meeting notes and document templates)

• Clients (for client information like client guidelines, logo graphics and strategy planning)

• Delivery (for client project deliverables, like blog drafts, marketing videos and social media graphics)

Create sub-folders within each folder for specific projects, campaigns or asset types, such as social media content or product descriptions.

In the marketing agency example above, the client folder could contain a folder for each client, with sub-folders by deliverable type called Blog Posts, Social Media, PR and more.

Setting a standard for your naming conventions is critical. Develop a system for naming, tagging and adding metadata to each file so it’s easier to manage and search for.

For example, your file names could include essentials like the client, project name and type and version number:

Set up permission protocols simultaneously so people can only access the files and folders they need.

Involve key stakeholders

When establishing a DAM system, get employees from all parts of your business involved.

Include leaders and front-line staff from departments that regularly use digital assets, such as your marketing, customer service, IT and creative teams.

If you’re using new software to organize your assets, allow stakeholders from different teams to try it and offer feedback. Remember to check with the IT team to ensure they can cover your system from a security and accessibility perspective.

When everyone is involved in decision-making, they feel more invested in the outcome. Having everyone on board will also streamline the roll-out process.

Step 3: plan for a smooth implementation

The final step involves moving your assets to the DAM system and training your team to use and maintain it.

You could offer one-to-one sessions for each staff member if you have a small team.

However, many businesses will find that general training and access to a knowledge base (with documentation and video walkthroughs) will cover most questions.

Remember that some users may find it harder to adapt than others, especially when you add new features and workflows. Consider offering top-up training and choosing DAM champions on each team for day-to-day support.

You’ll need to maintain it regularly, ensuring things are stored in the right places and monitoring for software updates.

You can also use your system’s built-in tools to see how staff members use it. Find out what features people like the most and where users might need help. These are useful clues for discovering where you may need to provide additional training or improve existing automations and workflows.

Using Pipedrive as your DAM

A dedicated DAM system like Dash or Bynder might be best for large data management firms. These systems have advanced features like customizable workflows, search capabilities and advanced metadata.

SMBs probably won’t need to invest in a separate DAM platform. You may be able to adapt tools like your CRM and Google Drive to create a streamlined system for organizing and accessing your digital assets.

Here’s how you can use Pipedrive as a digital asset management system.

Document and template management

Pipedrive’s Smart Docs feature allows you to manage access to documents and templates from one central location.

Smart Docs can connect to cloud storage drives like Google Drive, OneDrive and SharePoint, enabling you to access your files from your CRM.

If your sales staff wants to send out a proposal, quote or contract (and collect signatures), they can grab what they need to progress the deal from within Pipedrive. To save time, the document populates automatically with the prospect’s details.

When you connect Smart Docs, you’re automatically assigned a custom shared drive folder in Pipedrive, or you can create your own.

You can also save these files against contacts, deals and organizations to manage your digital assets within your CRM.

Creating and sharing documents

Click the Documents tab in a deal or contact’s detail view to create a document (you can set yourself up as a contact to create one not associated with a client). You can create a document from scratch or from a template.

You can also import documents from your device or linked storage account (you can additionally upload locally saved documents as a PDF).

Sharing documents is easy from within Pipedrive. You can set custom permissions for templates, allowing other staff members or contractors to use or edit a document or template.

Your cloud storage provider hosts your documents and templates, but everything is visible in Pipedrive. You can share files from your storage provider or send a trackable link through Pipedrive.

Version control

Smart Docs has version control, meaning when you create a link for a document, Pipedrive saves it as a version under the original. You can see how many times someone has viewed it and when someone created it.

If you need to update a document, edit the original and create a new link. The new version will show up as Version 2 in your shared folder. You can also track views and receive email alerts when someone opens the document, so you always know what’s happening.

Security features

Pipedrive also offers robust security features, including 2FA and SSO. This is what SSO looks like on Pipedrive:

The future of DAM and IT management for SMBs

DAM software is still in its infancy and on its way to becoming more integrated and intelligent.

One key area of change is AI-driven asset tagging and automation. Companies like Adobe have started integrating this into their tools, such as the ability to find an asset based on a color HEX code used in the project.

AI and machine learning can reduce mistakes made by human error, help teams work together more efficiently and ensure everyone on your team can find the right file when needed.

You can also expect to see DAM solutions become more mobile-friendly. Some of that will come from vendors improving their dashboards, while others will come from integrations to apps like company CRM systems.

For example, you can see contracts, emails and assets shared within your CRM in Pipedrive’s mobile app. You can also attach documents to a deal, contact or organization and share them from your phone.

Flexibility like this is great for SMB owners and their teams. Your employees can stay productive when visiting prospects and remote and hybrid teams can work together seamlessly from anywhere.

Likewise, IT management’s focus will likely be protecting company networks and their data in the coming years.

Cybersecurity will continue to grow in importance. In 2023, 73% of SMB owners experienced a data breach, cyberattack or both, according to a survey from the Identity Theft Resource Centre (ITRC). That figure is up 43% year on year.

B2B data protection laws, like GDPR and CCPA, require you to improve your technical and human firewalls. Training your staff is particularly important because, according to Verizon, human error is responsible for 74% of successful breaches.

Digital asset management FAQ

Final thoughts

One of the greatest benefits of digital asset management software is that it helps your company keep its content safe and organized. Your team can quickly and securely find up-to-date files.

Find a system that fits with your current tools and can expand as you grow your business.

Involve your colleagues in choosing the system and train them to use it when it’s up and running. Leverage AI to categorize the assets you already have and create a naming system everyone uses to make search and retrieval easy.

Discover how Pipedrive’s range of features could be part of your solution to digital asset management. Register for a 14-day free trial.