10 benefits of digital asset management

Digital assets are at the core of every company. They help us brand our company, sell our products, and communicate with our audiences. Everyone needs a place for their digital assets to live—a place with permissions, restrictions, and organization. The solution? A digital asset management (DAM) platform like Canto puts everything at your fingertips in a neat, organized (and completely customizable) way.

Upgrading to a DAM is the natural next step in optimizing any tech stack, especially as organizations begin to outgrow their existing solutions, such as cloud storage systems like Dropbox or Google Drive.

There are more advantages of digital asset management than just organization. It’s time to wave goodbye to clunky processes and hello to a streamlined, future-proof digital ecosystem. Here are the top 10 benefits of digital asset management, as selected by our digital asset management experts at Canto.

1. Centralized asset management

Streamlining your digital asset management process is a game-changer. By centralizing and organizing your digital assets, you’re empowering your teams with the on-brand resources they need, from social media images to product videos and everything in between. With a DAM platform, everything you need is centralized and accessible from anywhere in the world.

Organized your content effortlessly

Are your digital assets stored on an external hard drive, shared drive, or cloud storage system? Perhaps you’re struggling to find files or folders with your current solution. With a DAM, you don’t have to worry about disorganization or unfindable files anymore.

With custom folders and a user-friendly interface, you can organize your assets in a way that makes sense for your team. It’s like Marie Kondo for your digital life, sparking joy (and productivity) one neatly organized file at a time.

Improve metadata management

Ready to play tag? DAMs have built-in auto-tagging, using AI to automatically tag your content by recognizing objects and colors. Additionally, you can add customized metadata tags for each piece after uploading. That way, you can find what you need quickly and efficiently.

Pro tip: See how you can organize your files faster with Canto.

2. Enhanced brand consistency

Imagine your customers receiving an old, off-brand document from one of your organization’s satellite offices. This is exactly what leading geo-data specialist Fugro was experiencing when they decided to fix their branding problem. Only a DAM like Canto could help Fugro unify their brand. They needed a DAM that empowered their team to maintain a cohesive and consistent brand identity across all channels. Now, thanks to Canto, their brand consistency has skyrocketed, and their brand has never looked better. A DAM can help you do the same.

Enforce brand identity using guidelines and brand controls

Brand management is about ensuring that all your content is accurate and being used correctly so that your audience can recognize your brand anywhere they see it. By integrating brand guidelines directly into your DAM platform, your team can ensure that everyone using your digital assets is on the same page and using the same branding. With these brand controls in place, such as approval statuses and expiration dates, you can always feel comfortable knowing that the right teams can access the right content at the right time.

Empower teams with on-brand resources

Version controls in digital asset management ensure teams always access the latest on-brand resources for their projects. By tracking changes and providing a history of edits, version controls ensure your team has visibility into projects. With that history, they can confidently work on materials, knowing they have the most up-to-date assets at their fingertips. Version controls boost efficiency and maintain brand consistency across all marketing materials.

Pro tip: Create standout brand guidelines for your organization.

3. Optimized asset discovery

The days of endlessly scrolling through cluttered folders, desperately trying to find the one file you need, are done. With a DAM, you can quickly locate any digital asset in your library.

Streamline content discovery and access

Most of us don’t have any time to spare at work, especially when juggling multiple projects and deadlines! With a DAM, finding and accessing your digital assets is easy. A DAM’s powerful search functionality acts like a search engine for your content. You can search by keyword, file type, date modified, or even custom metadata fields. And if you’re using a DAM with advanced AI search capabilities like Canto AI Visual Search, you can supercharge your search. Then, you can simply find just what you need by describing what’s in the photo or video.

Pro tip: See what else an AI-powered DAM can do now and in the future.

Find your people photos with facial recognition

Need to find a photo of your CEO, influencers, donors, or other prominent individuals from a recent company event? No problem! With DAM’s impressive facial recognition technology, finding people photos is a breeze. This AI-powered image recognition feature automatically identifies and tags individuals in your images, making your search quick and effortless.

4. Accelerated content production

Every minute counts when it comes to getting your content to market. One of the advantages of digital asset management solutions is that they help speed up your time to market. How? By improving content production, collaboration, and eliminating those pesky bottlenecks that slow you down.

Accelerate content production to reduce bottlenecks

Bottlenecks can bring your content production to a screeching halt, whether caused by a delay in approvals, difficulty finding the right assets, or a lack of communication. With a DAM in place, your team gets everything they need to accelerate production at every stage of the content lifecycle. Take an idea from iteration to distribution faster than ever, all while ensuring transparency for all stakeholders involved.

Connect content, teams, and tools together

DAMs often have numerous integrations with work management, creative tools, productivity, collaboration, file storage, marketing automation, CMS, and social media platforms, to name a few. With these tools easily accessible right inside your DAM (or your DAM accessible from these tools!), you can save time and boost productivity while empowering your team to deliver exceptional results.

Pro tip: Canto integrates with 40+ platforms. See if your favorite tool is on our list.

5. Better asset utilization

You’ve undoubtedly recreated a missing asset or only used a piece of content once. That ends after implementing a DAM. You’ll be able to get the most out of your creative investments and more bang for your creative buck. With a DAM, you can finally unlock the full potential of your assets by making them easily accessible, shareable, and trackable.

Improve content ROI

Who says you can’t be in two places at once? With content repurposing, you can give your best content a second life, extending its reach and amplifying its impact.

Remember that killer blog post that got tons of traffic? Turn it into a video! That eye-catching infographic? Transform it into social media snippets! A DAM makes it easy to find existing content and repurpose elements like copy and designs in new ways and on new channels. When you repurpose content for different platforms and audiences, you maximize your content marketing efforts and bolster your content ROI

Pro tip: Find out the best way to repurpose your content.

Make data-driven decisions

It’s time to embrace the power of data-driven decision-making. A DAM gives you robust analytics and reporting features to optimize your asset use and shape your future content strategy.

By analyzing asset performance, usage patterns, and audience engagement, you can gain a deeper understanding of what works (and what doesn’t). This valuable information empowers you to refine your content strategy, segment your marketing efforts, and create even more impactful content that resonates with your audience.

Pro tip: Canto’s reporting and analytics tools can help you understand what content is being used the most and what content might be missing that your teams need.

6. Maximized productivity

Enhance your team’s productivity by leveraging the power of digital asset management to reduce manual workflows. It’s just that easy.

Automate content workflows

With a DAM in your tech stack, you no longer have to worry about manual processes. It simplifies workflow and task management by keeping teams informed about tasks in progress.

As projects run through pre-determined linear workflows with specified task owners, DAM notifies each person when it’s their turn to contribute. It’s one way to set up your team for success so they meet all their deadlines.

Pro tip: Learn how to build better workflows with Canto.

7. Improved internal and external collaboration

Remember the days of endless email chains, confusing file-sharing systems, and the dreaded “reply all?” Let’s face it—collaboration can sometimes feel more like an Olympic sport, but it doesn’t have to be hard! Transform your team into a well-oiled collaborative machine with a DAM on your side.

Collaborate in real-time

Real-time collaboration features built into a DAM take teamwork to a new level. With a DAM, your team will have shared workspaces, in-platform messaging, and editing capabilities (thanks to integrations). It’s like having a virtual office where everyone is always in sync, no matter where they are.

Streamline approval workflows

Getting feedback and approvals from stakeholders can sometimes feel like navigating a maze. A DAM streamlines your approval workflows, making it easy for stakeholders to review, comment on, and approve assets—all within one centralized platform. And everyone stays in the loop with automated notifications and a clear audit trail. So, everyone’s always on the same page, and projects move forward at lightning speed.

Pro tip: Canto can help you plan, create, and collaborate better than ever.

8. Highly secured digital assets

Protecting your digital assets from misuse is imperative. You might feel like you need a vault to protect your content so your teams aren’t sharing anything that might be out of compliance. A DAM works like a high-security library with the right tools and controls to ensure no one has access to files they shouldn’t.

Implement access controls and permissions

With a DAM, you completely control who can access, edit, and share your digital assets. It’s like having a team of vigilant security guards protecting your digital assets. A DAM allows you to set granular permissions for individual users and groups, ensuring the right people can access the right information.

Stop worrying about digital rights management

When using a DAM, you’ll never have to worry about infringing on copyright laws, licensing agreements, or usage rights. A DAM is like a digital librarian, keeping track of all your essential licensing information. You can easily store, manage, and track information about image rights, usage restrictions, and expiration dates directly within the platform.

Pro tip: Protect your digital assets with digital rights management built into your DAM.

9. Enhanced content operations

Businesses grow and evolve quickly, sometimes jumping from startup to global enterprise in the blink of an eye. No matter what stage your business is at, a DAM can help you adapt to your organization’s changing content needs.

Adapt to growing business needs

As your business expands, your DAM solution should grow with you. The beauty of DAM lies in its scalability—it can scale to handle increasing volumes of content, users, and usage demands. Whether you’re adding new team members, launching new products, or expanding into new markets, a DAM adapts to your evolving business needs at the speed of your business.

Expand your reach and audience

Going global? Launching a new product line? No worries—DAM has you covered! DAM helps you break down language barriers and connect with new audiences by simplifying the process of localizing and adapting your content. A DAM makes managing multiple versions of your assets easy, ensuring that your message resonates with your global audiences.

Pro tip: Get Canto’s best strategies to scale your content engine for maximum impact.

10. Automated distribution

Your team is creating some fantastic content—congrats! However, it’s time to accelerate your content to market. With a DAM, you get distribution tools that provide self-service access to on-brand content collections and can even automate distribution to sites and storefronts.

Distribute curated content collections

Simplify your content distribution process with portals designed to quickly and efficiently share branded content with your target audiences. These portals allow you to provide self-service brand asset collections that don’t need creative oversight. Portals are great for different audiences, such as partners, distributors, and sales teams. You have total control, including setting download presets so your content is always properly used. It’s time to boost your audience engagement by embracing the ease of sharing links, downloads, ans PDFs through intuitive portals

Automate content publication for all digital platforms

It’s time to stop manually uploading every piece of content to sites and storefronts, even if it’s just a different size. Many DAMs offer functionality to automate media delivery to websites and platforms. Your DAM will automatically resize the image to the best size for each platform. No more time-consuming uploads—just accurate, on-brand media instantly displayed across sites and stores.

Pro tip: Publish content instantly to your digital storefronts with Canto’s Media Delivery Cloud.

Canto is the leader in digital asset management

Ready to experience the DAM difference for yourself? Look no further than Canto, the best-in-class, AI-powered DAM solution designed to elevate your digital asset management game.
Canto makes managing your digital assets a breeze with robust search functionality, flexible organization options, powerful integrations, and advanced content controls. Canto empowers you to streamline workflows, improve collaboration, and maximize the value of your digital assets.

Ready to learn more about digital asset management? Download the Beginner’s Guide to Digital Asset Management.

Benefits of digital asset management frequently asked questions

Can digital asset management support video and multimedia?

Absolutely! Digital asset management systems excel at handling rich media. They’re designed to support video, audio, and other multimedia files, making it easy to organize and manage all your digital content in one central location.

Is it time to graduate to a DAM System?

Suppose your marketing team needs help with managing content. They may find it time-consuming to locate files or maintain brand consistency for digital experiences. In that case, it’s time to move from cloud storage to a DAM system.

Why is digital asset management important?

Digital asset management is crucial for maintaining brand consistency, ensuring secure sharing of digital files, and optimizing digital asset utilization across your organization, ultimately saving time, money, and resources.