What is Digital Asset Management? Digital Asset Management (DAM) is the process of managing digital assets throughout their lifecycle, powering dynamic, progressive workflows. Users use DAM systems to manage, locate and retrieve specific digital content objects for use and reuse throughout diverse media.
Media Asset Management (MAM) is another term for Digital Asset Management (DAM).
What are the benefits of DAM? As a workflow process, you reap benefits at several levels when you implement Picdar’s Digital Asset Management systems.
On a functional level, Media Mogul® allows you to systematically and efficiently find, archive, use, and repurpose your media files (digital assets).
Operationally, this allows you to
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create a reliable shared repository of digital assets
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obtain the ability to reuse digital assets for originally intended and new purposes
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reuse these assets in a new medium for which they were not initially targeted
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take control over internal processes and resources
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retain your organisation’s collective knowledge
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decrease
- time spent looking for files
- file transfer times
- duplication of work
- file name disorder
- network bottlenecks
Financially,this means that you can
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achieve greater return on investment in creating content
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significant cost reductions by
- decreased duplication
- lower expenditure on materials
- streamlined media production functions
- enhanced communication among all company stakeholders
- less resources spent on administration
Why can’t I simply use a conventional database?
Picdar Media Mogul’s® foundation on free text search is much more appropriate for managing digital assets as that technology mirrors the unstructured and often lengthy free-text indexing of your assets. Digital assets are variable in sizes and come in a wide range of different file formats. Mainstream databases are not geared to hold this variety of objects, or to display them visually. Back top
What is Brand Asset Management?
Brand Asset Management (BAM) concerns the development, implementation and control of all logos, icons, banners, packaging, representations and collateral connected with your company’s communication to the marketplace, distributors, and business partners. Digital asset management smoothes the progress of BAM because it
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improves consistency and quality of work across disparate locations
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shortens the time to get to market, and
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co-ordinates concurrence of elements in the marketing mix.
What is Media Asset Management?
Media Asset Management (MAM) is another term for Digital Asset Management (DAM). Back top
What is a “digital asset”?
A digital asset is any digital media file that has a value to your company. Digital assets include, for instance, images, graphics, logos, video and sound files, web pages (HTML, XML), PDF documents, Quark and Illustrator files, adverts, marketing collateral, brochures, product packaging designs, MS Office files, free text files, etc. Back top
What should I look for in a Digital Asset Management system? Demonstrated scalability because your assets will continue to grow, whilst the old ones will remain relevant. Your system must be able to support this growth without compromising speed and functionality.
Advanced security because assets have great value to your organisation and must be protected from unauthorised use internally and externally. Your system should give you full control over who has access, in what circumstances, when, and for what purpose.
Workflow empowerment is vital, not just because functionality and usability can make all the difference, but because the DAM system must go beyond mere archiving and truly power a dynamic workflow.
Automated asset ingestion is essential so that you can rapidly collect assets en masse and don't have to rely on inputting assets from desktops.
Supplier track record and support capability are important points because your assets will still have value in the longer term and you don’t want to go through the inconvenience of changing the system. Back top
What is Metadata?
Metadata is information about the asset itself, enabling the life and value of the asset to be controlled. Linked to the asset itself, metadata could, for instance, be data about copyright and how it may be used, past usage, location, authorisation, version, information about when the asset was loaded, its format and size, etc. Back top
What is XML?
An acronym for eXtensible Markup Language, which is a universal format for representing structured data.
XML is rather like the HTML that web browsers understand, but whereas HTML only describes how data should be displayed, XML deals with what the data actually means. To do this, the language can be customised ("extended") to exactly suit the structure of the data that it represents.
XML looks like ordinary text interspersed with special tags, and this structure makes it ideal for automated processing by computer. It also makes it possible for a human to read and understand, without special software.
Each customisation of XML can be precisely described in a "DTD" (Document-Type Definition). Although anyone can create a DTD, various industries have produced 'standard' DTDs for their own use. Some examples of these are NewsML for news distribution, SVG for graphics, WML for wireless communication, and FIX for financial transactions.
XML is not tied to any one vendor and is managed by an independent standards body (the W3C). This, and XML's other advantages, have helped make it the obvious way to represent and exchange data in the 21st Century. Back top
What is Content Management?
The strategy and technology for storing and indexing information from and about analogue or digital media. Back top
