Daily production and consumption of data and content is unstable in today’s digital age. People and business organizations are managing a growing portfolio of digital assets, ranging from spreadsheets, catalogs, PDFs, brochures, presentations, documents, and various multimedia files like music, videos, and pictures.
The effective storage, arrangement, and retrieval of these digital assets become vitally essential, greatly impacting decision-making procedures, collaboration, and productivity. This is where Digital Asset Management systems designed by fintechs such as Swissmoney come in handy.
Undoubtedly, Digital Asset Management (DAM) has become a game-changer, bringing new innovations and possibilities in the sphere of digital assets storage and management. Part of this game-changing solution is seen in the way digital assets are streamlined and utilized.
Assets have become more streamlined than before and have enhanced overall utilization. Whether you are a business owner trying to efficiently handle an array of digital assets or a person seeking to keep a digital footprint well-arranged, understanding Digital Asset Management and accurately leveraging its tools can make significant benefits.
In this guide, we explored digital assets, briefly discussed DAM, its impact, how to select a DAM solution, and lastly, secure your individual or business digital assets.
What are Digital Assets?
Simply, they are considered to be anything you or your company owns that can be stored digitally. These may include videos, PDFs, music, spreadsheets, presentations, and many other valuable things.
One thing about these assets is that they can be lost. By that, we mean there is the possibility to run into two faulty situations – 1) they can be lost or corrupted due to external factors such as network failure or data breach, and 2) due to internal mismanagement by people who have access to them.
What is DAM?
This is simply a business process of arranging, retrieving, or storing multimedia files and managing their permissions and rights.
It also involves the act of cataloging, ingesting, annotating, and distributing digital assets. Digital Asset Management can store multiple digital assets and provide swift and quick access to them when needed.
The Impact of DAM
Digital Asset Management offers multiple opportunities and benefits to people and business organizations alike. In this digital age, DAM has become a very important tool to enhance business proficiency and productivity by providing strategic opportunities and advantages.
On a large scale, DAM benefits can be traced to strategic, operational, and collaborative levels. On the strategic level, it plays a significant role in enhancing competitive advantage and facilitating decision-making, especially among company marketers who can easily access the company assets through the centralized repository.
On the operational level, DAM promotes operational efficiency by minimizing the time spent searching for assets and recreating digital assets.
Criteria for Choosing the Right DAM Solution
Selecting the right DAM solution can be challenging because many options are available. Each key is designed for a specific industry and must be rightly applied.
However, some universal criteria should be considered when evaluating different DAM solution options that are available to you.
Below are some of them;
Scalability: Your digital assets increase the way your organization grows. Hence, selecting a DAM solution that can grow as your assets increase is very vital. The strength of a good DAM is the ability to handle rapidly growing assets with malfunctioning.
Features: Look out for features such as version control, automated workflows, advanced search options, and other things you may consider useful for your business operation.
Usability and Integration: Select a DAM solution that is users’ user-friendly and innovative. Also, ensure the option you opt-in for can be integrated seamlessly with your organization’s other software apps and systems.
Compliance and Security: When it comes to selecting a DAM solution, security is non-negotiable. A good DAM should have robust security features such as audit trails, encryption, and user access control. Also, you should ensure the solution complies with the provision of regulatory bodies in the industry.
How to Secure Your DAM
Now that you’ve understood the universal criteria for choosing your DAM solution, the next thing is to know how to secure your DAM. DAM security is very important, considering the nature and sensitivity of the data you store on it.
Loss of data may affect many things in your organization. Therefore, it is important you follow the basic tips below to protect your DAM.
Step 1: List All Your Digital Assets
It is the first, simple, and preliminary step you should do to prevent data loss. So, gather all your assets so you can have a comprehensive overview of all the information you have in your digital database.
Step 2: Put your Asset under Version Control
After gathering your digital assets, you may prepare for data loss that may come as a result of your or another person’s mistake. In other words, plan for people making mistakes or errors; it may happen.
Ensure the audit log is accessible to everyone in your organization so that potential errors can be traced and addressed.
Step 3: Improve Log-in Protocols and Password Protection
You can guard against data loss by stepping up your password protection or log-in protocols game. The best way you can do this is to create strong passwords within your internal structures. That way, people without the secret code would be prevented from accessing your digital assets database.
Step 4: Ensure Only the Right People Have Access
It is crucial you know that only the right persons have access to your digital assets besides you. It is costly to lose important digital assets, especially larger businesses. Losing important digital assets may be the end of a company if care is not taken.
So, you need to assign appropriate roles, rights, and responsibilities only to those you think deserve them.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you don’t secure handling of your DAM, you risk losing them. This may mean you’ve to spend time recreating them, or you risk them getting into the wrong hands, who may further abuse or misuse them.
With businesses increasingly facing digital asset breaches, it is becoming essential for organizations and individuals to invest in effective tech tools that can help them secure their digital assets from loss or getting into the wrong hands.
