Universities are powerhouses of content, hosting endless volumes of physical texts, research and an ever-growing library of digital assets. Without a specialised platform, higher education facilities face challenges with storing and providing access to these assets for staff, students and third parties. 

This is where Digital Asset Management (DAM) comes in. DAM helps higher education facilities better manage their content, creating a central library for assets like logos, photos and course materials.  

Here’s everything you need to know about digital asset management for higher education. 

Why Do Higher Education Facilities Need A DAM Solution?

Higher education relies on digital content to drive funding, recruitment and engagement with students and alumni. To support these efforts, educational facilities require significant volumes of digital assets. 

DAM helps higher education better manage and distribute high volumes of content, visuals and communications across departments, campuses and partners.

Here’s how:

Adapt To Remote Learning With Cloud Based Servers

With staff and students now able to work remotely, the need for technologies to support remote learning, sharing and collaboration is more important than ever.

Cloud based DAM hosts assets on a secure network accessible through a web browser. For higher education, cloud based DAM gives staff, students and third parties the freedom to learn and collaborate instantly from any device, anywhere. This eliminates the need for restrictive on-site servers and creates a more user-friendly experience for all.

Scalable Storage That Grows As You Do

Higher education facilities possess vast amounts of digital content, such as educational resources, public collections, reference material and decades of research. To safely house this content, scalable and secure storage is a must.  

With Collaboro, you never have to worry about running out of storage. We cater for files of all sizes and formats, boasting both an online cloud platform and additional offline storage for large, raw and complex files. This means secure storage for all assets without extortionate cloud hosting costs. After all, the last thing you want to adhere to is storage restrictions.

Quick tip: Before purchasing DAM software, create an inventory of file formats and sizes your university uses. Ask your provider if their DAM system can support these storage requirements.

Premium IT Infrastructure and Security Keeps Assets Secure

Without a secure storage solution, there’s bound to be uncertainty about what assets are current and who has permission to use them. Add thousands of staff, students and partners to the mix and this becomes a big problem.  

Collaboro’s DAM software eliminates these compliance breaches entirely. Hosted on a highly secure Microsoft Azure network with custom permission level access features, Collaboro puts you back in control.  

With these features in place, higher education facilities can rest easy knowing their confidential assets like student profiles and exams remain secure. 

Quick tip: Microsoft Azure helps protect your assets with built-in multi-layered security and intelligent threat protection.

Locate Assets Instantly With Metadata And Tagging

Higher education facilities have thousands, if not tens of thousands, of digital assets. These files are vital for learning, marketing and telling your institution’s story, but without a proper system, organising and locating these assets becomes a nightmare.

Advanced metadata is the key to solving this common pain point.  

Collaboro uses a combination of manual and automated tagging processes that use artificial intelligence and machine learning to tag every item with the most intuitive metadata possible. The result? Search is possible by custom tags like course, faculty and year, and automated tags that reflect objects and actions – allowing assets to be found in seconds. 

Quick tip: The best DAM solution alleviates admin tasks by providing continuous onboarding, tagging, and training. Collaboro facilitates onboarding and tagging procedures to ensure all digital assets flow onto the platform correctly.

Maximise Asset Lifecycle On Minimum Budget

Higher education facilities require digital assets with long life cycles in order to maximise budgets. Event videos, campus imagery and past papers are all valuable assets that can easily slip through the cracks without intelligent organisation. 

With one central hub for content, DAM ensures assets remain agile, relevant and front of mind. This empowers teams to repurpose assets across departments, extending the asset lifecycle and saving time and money on new content creation. Now that’s value.  

Quick Tip: Don’t just look at cost savings to calculate DAM ROI, look at time savings as well as the potential to strengthen brand agility and reduce legal risks.

Consent And Lifecycle Are Important To Education

Education facilities often capture image and video assets of students and faculty in their learning environment. To publish these images across marketing campaigns and the like, campuses will need to gain consent from these groups – usually in the form of a signed document.  

Collaboro’s DAM system makes tracking these consents alongside their respective assets simple. How? By providing a robust system for storing, connecting and tracking consents alongside the assets they represent.

How To Choose A DAM Solution For Higher Education

With so many digital asset management providers on the market, it’s hard to choose which one is best meets your requirements. So, when investing In DAM software, there are three important factors to consider:

Build A List Of Requirements

When choosing a DAM system, understanding your must-have features is crucial. Start by speaking with staff, students and department heads to determine their key pain points when it comes to digital assets.  

From here, build out a list of key features your new DAM system needs to overcome these challenges. These features may include: 

• Advanced metadata 
• Scalable storage 
• Permission level access 
• Cloud-based servers 

Starting with a clear list of requirements sets your DAM up for long term success.

Think Beyond Quick Fix Features

All DAM vendors can organise your files, but do they offer help with onboarding, tagging, uploading, training, troubleshooting and reachable support as well?  

It’s these extra features that will make a big difference in the long run. Taking the time to select and implement a well thought out DAM solution is invaluable for higher education. 

Think beyond quick fixes and focus on how a DAM solution will create the most ROI for your university in the long run.

Understand DAM With A Demo

Every DAM software functions differently, so it’s important to request a DAM demo to see what’s right for you. With a demo, the provider will walk you through the software, its features and how their system can help solve your unique challenges. This will give you a feel for the software, it’s level of customisation as well as the customer service offering of the DAM provider.  

Why Choose Collaboro for your DAM System

Collaboro is an Australian Cloud-based DAM solution that empowers your teams 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.