Gone are the days of flyers, newsletters and standardised cataloguing structures. In today’s digital age, Australian brands experience an influx of  multi-channel products, campaigns and media. So, without an intelligent, centralised platform, organising media, licences, collateral images and video campaigns can quickly turn into a nightmare.  

Without intelligent brand asset management, organisations risk bottleneck time delays, off-brand (and often non-compliant) content and very little control over what assets are being used/re-made. As a result, up-to-date, on-brand and purposeful content is critical to maintain your brand’s story and vision to meet overall business objectives.  

To help avoid the clutter, Australian brands are turning to digital asset management to house, manage and collaborate digital assets. Here’s why.  

How Does DAM Help With Brand Management? 

An organisation’s brand is its most valuable asset. So, protecting brand identity and integrity is crucial. For marketers, brands and agencies, effectively organising brand assets is more than just dumping collateral into folders. It’s about ensuring the correct usage rights, approved access levels, digital content audits, guaranteeing compliance and eliminating lifecycle issues.  

DAM provides a solution to many of the ongoing pain points brands are facing with their digital assets. Users can now re-use assets, track rights and restrictions, improve collaboration for remote users and enhance searchability for fast access to any asset, at anytime.   

When it comes to Australian brands, DAM solutions don’t just organise, they  evolve, transform and enhance how teams work with brand content. Here’s how:  

DAM Keeps Assets On-Brand & Up-To-Date  

Think of a DAM as one large centralised hub for all of your brands digital assets. Everything – from campaigns, imagery, licences, multi-channel products, documents, media – the lot. Now imagine each asset is tagged with crossed-referenced data, relevant information and everything you need to know about the asset. It’s all accessible from the cloud, it’s all protected from unauthorised personnel and it’s uniquely customised to your organisation.  

Users can collaborate and edit any asset they need simultaneously, so all content is up-to-date at all times. No need to worry about compliance issues ever again.  

Better yet, because each asset is tagged with rich metadata, everything is tagged correctly – including the important stuff like copyright restrictions, flaggings and usage rights. Assets are kept agile, relevant and consistent with current brand messaging because users have the freedom to collaborate and save any updates instantly. Forget ongoing email chains and time-consuming back and forth of switching programs, everything is in one single source of truth.  

Having up-to-date content is one thing, but the true ROI of a DAM solution filters into streamlining workflows, optimising productivity and empowering teams across the board. Imagine that.  

Quick tip: The best DAM solution includes 9 levels of intelligent tagging using AI and machine learning to enhance the ability to find the content you need.  

DAM Maintains Consistency in a Scalable Platform 

When it comes to brands, consistency is key.  

So, it’s crucial for users to have fast access to the assets they need, when they need them. Cloud-based software makes this possible. Users can easily search any approved content, licencing, imagery and campaigns remotely without the hassle of logging into a server.  

As a result, DAM means brands maintain consistent messaging across campaigns – always and without fail. Better yet, remote access means franchises and branches in different locations (or even countries) can re-purpose any asset to suit their local market.  

The solution is simple, users avoid the need to recreate campaigns by eliminating the risk of losing files so brands are able to re-invest (and save) their existing assets. All collateral is intelligently tagged with rich metadata so no file is lost – ever.  

Quick tip: Collaboro’s DAM solution provides a scalable storage solution via both an online cloud platform as well as offline archival storage. Users never have to worry about restricting (and expensive) cloud-hosting costs or ever risk running out of space.  

DAM Minimises the Learning Curve 

We get it – phrases like intuitive language function and API Integration doesn’t mean much at first glance – but boy does it make a difference to the way users work.  

User experience (UX) is one of the key pain points for most organisations – if users can’t work efficiently, it can bog into company time, cause internal frustrations and (more importantly), disrupt productivity. 

When a brand grows, so does its digital asset collection. There’s not only an influx in content and media, but each department has their own internal systems to organise, share and collaborate with these assets. Imagine sifting and scouring through folders while endlessly transferring assets from one program to the next time-consuming, right?  

A DAM solution side-steps this entirely.  

With features such as intuitive language functions, the right DAM solution will adopt any internal language specific to your business and brand. Users won’t have to think twice about how to search. It’s simple, yet effective. Better yet, with “best in breed” integration, the right DAM solution is customised to better serve the organisation – including the ability to fit in with their existing  internal programs.  

Quick tip: The best DAM solution also alleviates admin tasks by providing post-implementation support by taking care of any onboarding, tagging and training. This means uploading and transcoding content to any size or format that’s required as well as further minimising the learning curve for employees.  

How Does DAM Add Value For Brands To Succeed?  

The design, functionality and features of a DAM is what makes it more than just a software and more than just a storage platform – it’s an end-to-end solution: intelligent, advanced and secure.  

When digital assets are more discoverable, more easily collaborative and when functions are custom to the organisation, the results are invaluable. Of course, every organisation is different, each with their own unique pain points. So when it comes to Australian brands – here’s how the right DAM solution can make all the difference:   

Increases Digital Asset Value 

When users can search, retrieve, collaborate and approve assets more easily, the job gets done faster. The right DAM solution creates an intrinsic value for each asset. It creates the opportunity for users to re-use, re-purpose and (of course) it’s easier to find so users spend less time searching and re-creating. 

Users have updated assets when they need them. It solves lifecycle retention issues, expands the lifespan of the asset, increases usage potential and saves organisation in time and production costs. DAM ROI doesn’t happen overnight, but the results are worth this investment.   

User-Centric Organisation 

The primary purpose of any DAM system is to make finding assets easier for uses. Choosing the right DAM solution, however, means tailoring the design, format and language to your organisation. Each organisation is unique, so it only makes sense that your DAM solution is too.  

Simply, this means tailored, intuitive navigation paired with “best-in-breed integration”. With these features, users have the advantage of instantaneous access to any category, product, campaign or collateral. 

Authorised teams from different departments, for example, have access to the same assets, regardless of their purpose or category. Sales teams can access their products, while marketing teams can access the same assets for their own unique purpose. Assets are cross-referenced so there’s no need to duplicate files for individual use.  

The DAM solution intelligently stores assets so they are easily accessible across all relevant departments.  As a result, users can enjoy a streamlined experience, unique to their own workflow – enhancing employees UX. 

Supports Corporate Strategy

DAM solutions can’t just solve challenges on features alone. It needs to also speak to the overall IT objectives and ongoing corporate strategy. This is also something that you need to sell to your executive team when making your business case.  

This might mean choosing a DAM system that uses Microsoft Azure because the cloud computing platform may help achieve business objectives. This may be through advanced-level security, scalability, state-of-the art IT infrastructure and cohesiveness with tools such as Office 365.  

Supplements Business Growth

A growing digital asset collection goes hand-in-hand with business growth. And the right DAM solution is all about focussing on the individual use cases. So, whatever the pain points are – whether it’s concerns about compliance errors, off-brand content, overexpenditure in time and resources – solving these problems can only enhance business growth.  

This means taking advantage of scalable storage, apply best-in-breed integrations and offline storage to facilitate growth by enhancing processes, procedures and user experience.  

What Industries Use DAM to Succeed? 

Marketers risk wasting up to 30% of their time searching for information and assets. As a result, many heavily-branded industries are turning to DAM solutions to solve their challenges. Here’s how other industries use DAM:  

Government

Governments need highly secure infrastructures to house their digital assets – they can’t risk any sensitive or private material being accessed by unauthorised personnel. The right DAM solution provides government entities the security they need with permission-level access structures that ensures all digital assets are kept safe and meet compliance measures. Solutions built on secure cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure, guarantees advanced level security. 

As a bonus,  with detailed tagging and rich metadata, DAM solutions are capable of housing masses of documents and files from multiple departments. Users can easily search and retrieve any asset – whether it be forms, licences, imagery, media or contracts or documents – from any local project or campaign.  

Higher Education 

Higher education facilities like universities and colleges use masses of visual, branded media to facilitate student learning, funding, campaigns and recruitment. On top of this, schools, tafes and colleges also deal with a large influx of digital assets from multiple departments, faculties, channels and teams – so effective and intelligent management is critical.  

The right DAM solution helps cohorts and faculty staff access, download and share files instantly. This not only maintains consistency but it also guarantees the security, relevance and compliance of all branding.  

Real Estate Agencies 

Real estate agencies heavily rely on their visual assets. So, any visual imagery, tours, campaigns, videos and templates need intelligent storage to house an ever-growing (and constantly changing) database. 

On top of this, some of these digital assets are more complex such as 3D models, or large or raw file types. This creates the challenge of efficiently connecting these across the team when they need it.  

A DAM solution combats this by providing a tailored, centralised library to facilitate easy access, collaborating and sharing content across the organisation.  

Marketing and Creative Agencies 

The marketing world is a highly competitive environment. So agencies need to stay competitive, agile and stand out to clients as well as meet client demands and deliverables.  

Agencies with high levels of productivity and streamlined workflows are better able to access projects and meet deadlines effectively and efficiently. DAM solutions help improve the creative production process and facilitate the constant need to access, edit and distribute content and on-brand material.  

eCommerce

The appeal of your products is what generates revenue. It has to intrigue, entice and prompt the consumer to take the sale. The trick here is, as brands grow, product collections, campaigns and anything associated with it grow as well. Sooner or later, you’re dealing with the burden of organising everything and brands often are faced with the challenge of jolting workflows and unmanageable content creation.  

eCommerce industries take advantage of DAM solutions to streamline this process to manage and share their assets across all departments. Consistency is guaranteed without congesting valuable company time.  

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.