Lots of clients and lots of files – sound familiar? It’s the day to day for creative and marketing agencies. However, staying on top of these assets across multiple clients presents one of agencies most challenging pain points. 

To organise the chaos, creative agencies are increasingly turning to digital asset management to house and manage their digital files.

Here’s why.  

What Is Digital Asset Management Exactly?

Before we begin, you might be wondering what digital asset management actually is.  

Digital asset management (or DAM) is a centralised platform to store, manage and share digital assets. While every system works differently, the concept remains the same – a convenient, organised, secure and centralised library for digital assets.  

When it comes to creative agencies, DAM solutions don’t just organise, they enhance, transform and streamline how teams work with client content. Further, a DAM presents an opportunity for an agency to build deeper roots that go beyond creative and production with the client. 

Why Should Your Agency Implement A DAM Solution?

DAM systems are specifically designed to meet the needs of businesses that work with large numbers of assets on a daily basis. Sound like you? Then let’s dive into 7 ways an effective DAM solution can benefit your creative agency.

1. A Centralised Library For Client Assets

For agencies, dealing with hundreds of assets across multiple clients is commonplace. However, when it comes to presenting or sharing these assets with clients, things can become complicated between the endless email chains, shared folders and file transfers.  

To solve this pain point, agencies require a single storage platform that makes sharing and collaborating with clients and team members easy.  

Enter digital asset management. DAM systems create a centralised library for client content, accessible from any device, anywhere. This gives agencies the freedom to view, edit and share assets all within the one secure and easily accessible platform. This streamlines agencies ability to present and share content, receive feedback and approvals – all without the hassle of email chains or switching between client interfaces.  

Quick Tip: “Cloud based DAM systems cater towards rapid growth and instantaneous collaboration in a way on-premises systems cannot”.

2. It’s Unique To Your Agency

Every agency is unique, so it only makes sense that your DAM software is too.  

Collaboro will work with your agency to create a customised, intuitive DAM platform from scratch. This means working with internal teams to customise interfaces and implement unique language functions and search terms – the lot.  

The result is a DAM platform that minimises the learning curve for employees, allowing them to easily access any campaign, client or project instantly using internal search terms. This allows agencies to both streamline workflows and present an agile and efficient façade to your clients. 

3. Grows As You Do

Agencies can’t afford to adhere to a limit on storage. Instead, they require a scalable asset hosting platform that grows as they do.  

Boasting both an online cloud platform and offline archive, Collaboro’s multi-tiered approach to storage provides the perfect solution. Our cloud DAM system offers scalable storage that can expand as your agency grows, while our media focused offline archive is ideal for hosting large, high-resolution files that can chew into this cloud storage. For agencies, this means reducing cloud hosting costs without compromising on what assets you choose to store. This means a true single source of truth. 

Quick Tip: “Collaboro offers additional offline storage for larger, raw and complex files before transcoding them into HD and content ready file formats suitable for the cloud.”

4. Meets Even The Strictest Compliance Measures

In an agency, keeping your clients happy is your main priority. So, the last thing you want is to accidentally leak their intellectual property.  

A secure DAM solution acts as a custodian, giving agencies greater control over how teams use and distribute assets. Partnering with cloud hosting network Microsoft Azure, Collaboro provides premium security for our users and their assets. Our advanced level security and permission level access features ensure only approved team members have access to certain files, safeguarding client material from improper use or accidental deletion.  

5. Eliminates The Risk Of Outdated, Expired Or Inconsistent Assets

Accidentally using an outdated client asset can damage both your agency reputation and relationship with the client. An expiry engine that manages the information of licensing, copyright, usage and expiry conditions, and provides automated alerts, is essential to a strong, agency focused DAM solution.  

With an effective DAM solution, agencies can ensure brand consistency across both in house content and third party partners. DAM does this by providing a single source of truth for approved content, licensing, imagery and campaigns. And with the help of features like expiration dates, ensuring content ready files stay relevant and up to date is easy. 

6. Offers Local, Reliable Support

Agencies are often juggling multiple deadlines, so the last thing you need is to wait days or even weeks for off-shore support teams. Instead, agencies require 24/7, on-shore support. 

As a solution, some DAM providers offer local support teams. Collaboro is an Australian based DAM provider, meaning we offer fast, local support when and where you need it. We provide your agency with a dedicated account manager, meaning you’ll experience continuous support for DAM troubleshooting. For agencies, having a dedicated contact that speaks the language of creative and production is an invaluable asset.  

7. Eliminates Admin Tasks

An effective DAM solution involves more than just software, it requires ongoing support and maintenance to keep it running effectively. However, maintenance work such as uploading, metadata tagging, transcoding and ingesting assets is a time consuming task. So, to save your system from becoming an unorganised disaster, look for a provider that not only offers DAM software but post-implementation support as well.  

Collaboro alleviates these admin tasks by providing post-implementation support, taking care of any onboarding, tagging and training. This means continuously uploading and transcoding content to any size or format required, as well as onboarding and training new employees. A DAM provider that streamlines admin tasks and minimizes the learning curve for employees gives you more time to focus on what’s important to your business.  

Quick tip: “Some DAM vendors offer continuous maintenance, support and additional services while acting as a partner to create an inclusive solution.”

What About Other Industries?

Creative agencies aren’t the only industry that can benefit from implementing an effective DAM solution. Some other industries that leverage DAM systems to succeed include: 

Brands 

Without intelligent asset management, brands risk costly time delays, off-brand content and little control over what assets are being used/remade by third parties. 

With an effective DAM solution, users can re-use assets, track rights and restrictions, boost collaboration and enhance searchability of any asset. In a nutshell, DAM allows brands to maintain consistent messaging across all customer touchpoints easily and effectively.   

Governments 

Governments deal with high volumes of sensitive and confidential information, so the need for secure asset management and fluid access and distribution is crucial.  

The right DAM solution offers governments an impressive ROI by improving the responsiveness and delivery of services while guaranteeing assets are kept safe and secure. As a result, departments, teams and branches reap the rewards of easily accessible content, secure storage and effortless searchability of every asset.  

Real Estate Agencies 

Real estate agencies rely on visual appeal for everything they do. And with so many assets in all sizes and formats, agencies require intelligent and scalable storage that can keep up with demand.  

An effective DAM solution combats these challenges by offering real estate agencies a scalable and centralised library for assets of all sizes. Additionally, keywords and advanced tagging means teams can easily search, locate and share assets from any project instantly.  

Why Choose Collaboro for your DAM System?

Collaboro is an Australian Cloud-based DAM solution that empowers agencies to do more. Our DAM platform will centralise all your digital assets, making it easier for your teams to organise, find and share all your digital media files, in one place, from anywhere.  

But a successful DAM solution requires more. This is where Collaboro brings local Australian expertise and support services to provide a customised end-to-end solution.