“Do I need Digital Asset Management Software (DAM)?” Good question.  Deciding whether to acquire a new business tool or service is often based on how much the organization as a whole will benefit from it. In the case of DAM, the question asked is often “will this provide everyone with a more productive way to collaborate with, store and source digital files?”.

That's all good and well, but we'd like to add a different perspective and show you how you can personally reap the rewards of using a system for managing your company’s digital images. The right DAM system has the potential to liberate you and your marketing team from a lot of time-consuming distractions.

Be Selfish

You spend a great deal of your working day supporting the efforts of other departments. So let us suggest you spend a little more time thinking about your own needs! Yes, introducing a DAM system is about providing a strong organizational structure everyone can follow, but the marketing team will benefit more than most. If you persuade management to invest in a DAM system, you’ll be helping the whole company to help you work better.

At most companies, the task of sourcing, and monitoring the use of, visual content across the entire company falls onto your overworked marketing team. This can be a huge administrative pain in the butt. You waste copious amounts of time searching for images for other people’s projects, and because you’re regular elite marketing professionals and not The Avengers, you can’t possibly do it all, no matter how good you are. Manually quality-checking every image in every presentation and piece of marketing material your colleagues use is just not an option. Not to mention worrying about the copyright issues of people stealing stuff from the internet.

Sound Familiar?

Of course beyond the gargantuan task of keeping rogue departments in line with your company branding, there are loads of other ways DAM will have you asking “where have you been all my life?”. If any of the following scenarios sound at all familiar to you, then you'll have one more answer to why you need DAM:

• DAM means one platform for storing, retrieving, and sharing all your files, both old and new.
• This means no more anxiety about people hoarding files on their desktop, or time wasted struggling to find old files buried in any number of places like overflowing inboxes or cloud storage.
• All your images will be stored in the same format, and new files are guaranteed to be of high quality - no more chasing people to convert images to the right format for your CMS or social media, no more purchasing files in the wrong format.
• It’s incredibly easy to search and use image files for anyone at any endpoint in the business - so people don’t have to pester you to source visual content for them.
• Control the content people use - DAM sets access permissions so people can use only the content you pre-approve for more consistent visual branding. Photo collections make organizing and approving content for people to choose from quick and simple.
• Marketing collaboration occurs via one workflow rather than combining email with multiple platforms. It combines project collaboration, reviews, and approvals with brand management and licensing management.
• Using DAM to manage your images provides automated processes for preventing copyright violations, so all your images are cleared. Say goodbye to stressing about all the stuff your people stole from Google Images while controlling and organizing all the intellectual property your company generates.
• DAM makes it really easy for your marketing team to track and analyze the images your company uses. This gives you more insight into types of content you need more of, along with making it easier to repurpose old images for new projects and content. Something that’s hugely practical when you need more and more content.

Convinced? And as if all that wasn’t enough, DAM will save your company a whole lot of valuable time and money. And as the marketing ROI starts to skyrocket, so will your reputation. Also,  management is sure to be impressed when they see that systematizing your visual branding has worked out for everybody. Just don’t tell them you did it all for you.