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Mega Trends Driving Digital Asset Management (DAM)

As enterprises continue to strive to deliver trusted and relevant information at every touchpoint in a customer journey, both interest and adoption of digital asset management solutions are growing fast. Many DAM capabilities are standard in most systems, but we are seeing some new growing trends. This insight talks about megatrends shaping DAM systems.

Digital Asset Management – Perspectives on its Future

Digital Asset Management is a crucial component for the connected enterprise and an accelerator for marketing teams and their affiliated network of the content recipient. Traditionally, DAM was used as a repository solution for storing and accessing images in printing applications and other high-resolution production. Today, organizations realize that Digital Asset Management (DAM) is more than a system of record for images. It is now integral to operational efforts responsible for brand consistency and other creative processes.

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DAM is no longer just tagging and sharing media assets but a central content hub for managing, classifying, and optimizing an ever-growing amount of digital media assets and distributing that content to diverse channels and user groups. Today, digital asset management systems provide a robust structure to distribute content to various devices, systems, and repositories. Through application programming interfaces (APIs), any type and size of assets can be managed and distributed quickly and efficiently.

With the acceleration of digital competencies development into the company’s core, new megatrends are emerging in the DAM segment. 

Top 5 Free and Open Source DAM Software in 2023

What’s Changing the Perspective of DAM Providers

Evolving Technology Landscape

Marketing leaders see enhanced targeting and content customization as keys to improved brand performance and boost sales.

Digital asset management is now a key driver to marketing technology stacks for supporting marketing strategies. Along with that, ML and AI, including image and facial recognition, are revolutionizing the world of DAM.

Looking Beyond Experience

Brands are focusing on integrating behavioral patterns and customer insights with content delivery logic to deliver appropriate content at the right time.

DAM platform helps brands take control of all kinds of digitized media for delivering targeted, dynamic experiences. It also allows for more extensive, relevant experiences to be constructed from smaller content elements.

Emphasis on ROI

Revenue generation, productivity savings, and brand value generations are areas where organizations majorly focus.

A significant driver for adopting digital asset management (DAM) solutions is its growing contribution to generating higher ROI. As a result, DAM solution providers are focusing on value-driven features and functionalities rather than traditional benefits.

DAM Deployments Across Industry Verticals

DAMs are an effective repository for the multiple image assets for the various products that many brands must maintain. With their product information and imagery already tagged in a DAM, organizations are better positioned to take better advantage of personalization initiatives. As shown in the image, most organizations believe in the full deployment of digital asset management systems.

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DAM Mega Trends to Watch

Post-COVID-19, when returning to the strategy whiteboard to decide how to play the “new normal,” it will be essential to understand the key megatrends that will shape business opportunity in the decade ahead. 

In the DAM segment, new trends are also emerging, and some are already visible. The increasing recognition of digital assets across the world creates new opportunities for brands to improve their customer experience and engage more potential buyers. Here are some digital asset management trends that we believe will play a vital role in the near future:

The Digital Asset Management Market (henceforth, referred to as the market studied) was valued at USD 2541.8 Million in 2019, and it is expected to reach USD 7756.1 Million by 2025, registering a CAGR of 21.23%, during the period of 2020-2025.
- Mordor Intelligence

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1. Transition from DAM to the Content Hub

Organizations are tremendously focusing on centralizing information and digital assets for operational excellence, better decision-making, and improved experience. The agility and flow of information become critical because the volume and variety of data will only expand from different information sources such as ERP, CRM, and more.

This is where DAM becomes more holistic in creating a 360-degree view of your products by connecting master data, rich product content, and digital assets through the utilization of PIM solutions that integrate data from many sources including MDM, and DAM. DAM will act more like a Content Hub for managing digital assets for brand consistency and fantastic experience.

  • Central place for curated media assets for all customer groups.
  • Flexible platform to find, share, and curate media content.
  • Central portal for consuming product information, master data, and media assets.
  • Customer-facing portals as a result of bringing together PIM/MDM/DAM and CMS.

Pimcore is the only open-source Content Hub framework. The upcoming Pimcore Experience Portal and the Product Experience Portal are highly configurable out-of-the-box content hub products.

2. DAM Data Enrichtment & Tagging Become More Intelligent

Data quality and data readiness are core to all digital initiatives crucial for multi-channel conversion rates. Data enrichment varies from users to users, such as different resolutions, conversion of bit-rates, DPIs, color profiles, and responsive states. There is a growing trend for intelligent data enrichments due to classification, categorization, tagging, and third-party data.

Digital asset management enables data enrichment and automated tagging of assets to drive greater operational efficiency and increase accessibility and reusability.

  • Tagging based on machine learning and artificial intelligence is bringing in more efficiency.
  • Automatically tagging assets not just by objects but also by colors, emotions and progressively, facial recognition.
  • Make it easier to reuse and repurpose assets for a wider variety of content asset types.

In the DAM industry, Pimcore is awarded for having the most advanced data enrichment and tagging functionalities. The open-source version of Pimcore supports most basic data modeling requirements. The Pimcore enterprise subscription has various advanced features and functionalities to power even the most individual data model.

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3. Advancement in Data Orchestration

Data is both the lifeblood of a business as well as its greatest challenge. Digital Assets are not isolated company assets. They always relate to different type of master data such as products, catalogues, vendors, customers, etc. and are used for multiple purposes such as sales, marketing, and product management. 

The right asset has to be available in the correct format on the right channel at the right time. That’s why, automatic digital asset transcoding and the headless delivery of digital assets via APIs such as GraphQL is becoming critical. For this purpose:

  • Digital assets and their delivery have to be orchestrated.
  • Easily aggregate with other company master data.
  • Orchestrate with the personalized customer and product data.
  • Optimize the digital media supply chain for agile process.

Headless DAM is the way to go to make the enterprise-ready for the future. Pimcore provides fully integrated workflow capabilities to coordinate ingesting, editing, reviewing, and approving rich media assets.

4. The Demand for Open-Source DAM is Rising

Digital asset management is more related to the agile and creative process. Organizations need complete flexibility and freedom to innovate and try their creative ideas fast. The innovation benefits conferred by Open Source have a direct impact on the business value, particularly for early market adopters.

  • Open-Source is a fundamental and breeding ground for flexibility and innovation.
  • Open-Source fosters the TCO.
  • Open-Source allows for high agile customization and adaption of the DAM strategy to the enterprise's unique aspects.
  • Enterprise Open-Source provide both the flexible platform and the out-of-the-box enterprise extensions to get going fast.

Pimcore is an open source digital platform that aggregates, enriches, manages enterprise data, and provides up-to-date, consistent, and personalized experiences to customers. What makes Pimcore a great alternative to expensive digital experience platforms is its incredible flexibility, API-driven approach, plus the momentum of 100+ global solution partners.

Explore the Features of Pimcore DAM

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FAQs:

What Is a Digital Asset Management System?

Digital asset management (DAM) is the practice of storing, managing, accessing, transforming, and distributing quality and up-to-date digital assets across multiple customer touchpoints. Different organizations use DAM systems for various purposes, such as creative production, brand consistency, operational and administrative roles, and more.

How Does DAM Help Digital Commerce?

A DAM system provides a single trusted version of digital assets to help improve product experience across different digital commerce channels. It also enables marketers and creative teams to execute innovative campaigns by ensuring brand consistency with well-defined guidelines and providing seamless digital asset delivery across all mediums and devices.

What Is the Difference Between DAM and CMS?

A DAM system typically deals with images, graphics, text, audio, video, and rich media. Different departments can use it within the organization, such as marketing, sales, HR, customer support, legal team, and more. A CMS is a practice of producing and managing any type of content in any form within defined templates and standards. Both systems have different capabilities but serve the common purpose of enhancing customer experience. Read more

What Are the Benefits of Digital Asset Management?

A DAM enables you to eliminate digital assets silos across different departments, promote re-use of digital assets, and improve operational excellence. Besides that, you can better track digital assets distribution with set brand guidelines, user rights management, and legal compliance. It certainly helps marketers eliminate inaccuracies and inconsistencies and improve the digital experience. Read more

Why Do You Need Digital Asset Management?

Suppose you are facing the challenge of scattered and unmanaged digital assets. You are spending hours and days finding suitable images, videos or graphics for your next campaign. Or, you are not able to define business processes and editorial workflows for better management and asset tracking. By mitigating these challenges, a DAM system equips you with the necessary capabilities to help you achieve your desired business goals.

How to Choose a Digital Asset Management System?

You should choose a digital asset management system based on your primary business requirement. Next, you perform a deep analysis of how the system will solve your business problem. The best way is to ask for a demo and pilot test the system with your dataset of digital assets. License and implementation cost are other factors that you should compare before making the final call. Read more

How to Implement a Digital Asset Management System?

It would be best if you first start with your business objectives in mind. On top of that, you should buy a product that clearly resonates with your existing technology landscape. Then, you should build the right team and start implementing the DAM system in phases. If you are not implementing in-house, you can always choose the right implementation partner. Read more

Who Uses Digital Asset Management Software?

The beauty of a DAM system is that diverse departments and teams use it. It is generally used by marketing, sales, HR, manufacturing, legal, finance, customer support, suppliers, ad agencies, distributors, and more. Some organizations implement DAM locally, some implement it globally, or both as well.

How Much Does Digital Asset Management Cost?

The cost of a digital asset management system depends on various factors such as license cost, implementation cost, training cost (if required), and maintenance and support cost. If you are using an open source DAM system, it may give you some cost relief immediately. Want different DAM systems comparison? Contact our sales representative.

What Is Brand Asset Management?

Brand asset management is the practice of organizing, storing, and accessing critical brand-related information such as logos, images, videos, graphics, and other related assets to communicate and distribute as per defined brand guidelines and standards. It also helps in ensuring brand consistency and protecting brand identity.

What Is Metadata?

Metadata or meta-information plays a crucial role in a digital asset management system. It contains the necessary specifications of digital assets. Metadata stores details such as image descriptions, image caption, secondary asset details, copyright and license information, or any other metadata in a central place.

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