Digital Asset Management for Small Businesses: Everything You Need to Know

On average, workers spend 2.5 hours per day searching for up-to-date files - resulting in a loss of $2.5 million per year. These inefficiencies adversely affect overall team productivity.  As a result, when digital assets aren't kept in one place, images get stale, and the creative team gets swamped with requests for items they've already designed. 

This is where DAM comes into play. Using a digital asset management (DAM) solution, all visual assets can be approved and kept up to date in one central location. Digital asset management also helps the design team increase efficiency and focus on what matters.  

But what is DAM and why do you need one? Let’s get into the details. 

What is Digital Asset Management? 

Digital asset management is a software and systems solution that makes it easy for an organization to store, organize, manage, retrieve, and distribute its digital assets. DAM can be viewed as both a business process and a form of information management technology. Many organizations use DAM to make it easier to access their media assets in one location including: 
 

• Documents 
• Images 
• Audio content 
• Video
• Animations 
• Media files 
• Graphics 
• Presentations 
   

Digital asset management streamlines the management of assets and optimizes the production of rich media, especially within the marketing and sales departments, by creating a centralized management system for digital assets. One of the latest examples of DAM is ioMoVo.  
 

ioMoVo is your cloud manager that manages your digital assets in a simple way. However, why would you want to manage your digital assets?

Using digital assets - such as images, videos, music streaming, catalogs, e-books, and other types of media - small businesses can reach potential and existing customers. Thus, small businesses need DAM systems to find these assets easily and, in turn, create, track, organize, and distribute them.  

Who Can Use Digital Asset Management? 

Each business has valuable information it needs to store securely. It can include confidential information when processing consumer payments or passwords for the company website. Some businesses might, however, gain more from it than others. Check it out. 

Freelancers 

Many freelancers handle a variety of documents for multiple clients, such as writing articles, designing logos, or consulting on HR compliance. The DAM platform like ioMoVo allows companies to keep track of these files without cluttering up files across different firms. 

Marketers 

Providing B2B marketing services generates documents for numerous clients. They may include video footage, photos, music clips, vectors, marketing brochures, or even e-books. Marketers can use DAM software to organize documents and information for their clients, companies, or teams, making assets and projects easier to manage. 

Accountants 

Professionals who file taxes and manage financial records of organizations have access to a great deal of valuable, confidential information. DAM helps them store, organize, and protect a variety of information, from receipts to tax returns. 

Healthcare Businesses 

Businesses in the healthcare sector also produce and store a lot of confidential data. These businesses comply with strict HIPPA regulations. DAM facilitates compliance, organization, and security. 

Startups 

Starting a business requires organizing a lot of files in the beginning. With DAM software, you can reduce the risk of future compliance and organization issues. 

How Does Digital Asset Management Benefit Small Businesses? 

Digital Asset Management isn't just for large companies. Businesses of all sizes are increasingly using DAM in their business strategies, from publishing to government and nonprofit organizations. Plus, including DAM software in your business plan will demonstrate to potential partners and investors that your firm has the right systems in place for success. The following are ways successful companies leverage DAM to maximize productivity, flexibility, and growth potential. Take a look. 

1. Saves Time 

The use of digital asset management software automates tasks the average human can't handle. There may be a marketing expert on your team who spends hours a day organizing photos, videos, and web content for distribution. You can streamline this process with a DAM so that your team can spend more time on creative tasks that benefit your business. 

2. Increases Productivity 

Your employees may be limiting their productivity as they search through hundreds of files to find what they're looking for. A searchable database for these files can eliminate this barrier to productivity. Adding a library database to your company can increase productivity. If you and your team have access to all your digital assets, you can complete tasks faster and maximize your creative output. You can expand your database according to your business's growth and expansion once it is in place.  

3. Content Collaboration 

Using a centralized management system for all your company's files and assets, collaboration is easy for all employees. For example, designers can use a DAM library to quickly locate images for email campaigns, complete their designs using your brand's fonts and logos, and send them directly to your social media team. With DAM, these tasks can be handled instantly, even from mobile devices. 

4. Security 

A company's digital assets are probably its most valuable asset, and data loss could ultimately harm it. Digital asset management software can improve your business' security by allowing you to manage access to and storage of data. With DAM software, you can maintain version backups of all your most important projects, protecting your business from internal errors. When your designer makes changes, a DAM program can manage versions, saving new versions and preserving old versions for later use. 

Also read: Why Does a DAM System Make Sense for Photographers? 

What Exactly Can Small Businesses Do With a DAM Platform Like ioMoVo?  

DAM software such as ioMoVo enhances essential aspects of a brand’s operational efficiency with digital assets: creation, organization, collaboration, distribution, storage, and integration. 

Let's examine how ioMoVo, your advanced DAM can improve each of these areas.

• Create: The DAM system allows teams to scale projects by using integrations with creative tools like ioMoVo, so new assets can be created without switching platforms.

• Organize: ioMoVo DAM serves as a central point of truth for organizing and tracking digital content. To quickly retrieve files from libraries of any size, you can use tags, filters, and advanced search capabilities, such as in-document search and image recognition.
• Collaborate: When assets are uploaded, users can make comments, add annotations and edits, and streamline the review and approval process. You can collaborate with any type of asset or media content, including PDFs, design files, and videos.  
• Distribute: An asset management system makes it possible to publish content anywhere from one location. You can distribute assets directly from your DAM using public or private links, and you can set an expiration date for the links for extra security.
• Store: With ioMoVo DAM, agencies, and brands can store unlimited files of any size, in one secure, cloud-based location. It is crucial when storing larger files like high-res imagery, videos, and audio files. Although storage is unlimited, users can set asset expiration dates, so they can reduce the amount of virtual clutter.
• Integrate: ioMoVo, for example, provides an add-on called Integration Hub that allows you to integrate other cloud-based platforms such as Drive, Box, OneDrive, Dropbox, and even Amazon Web Services S3 - all in one place.  

Conclusion 

Having digital asset management is important as it can provide a lot of benefits to your small business. With reliable DAM software like ioMoVo, your business can store all digital assets in one secure location, organize them systematically, and improve your overall efficiency.

So, if your company is having a hard time keeping up with your digital assets, sign up with ioMoVo and secure your digital assets. ioMoVo offers a cloud-based DAM solution where you cut down on time and costs, letting you focus on other crucial areas of your business. Start your free trial now!