Here is an explanation to the most common terms you’ll run into when looking at digital asset management systems:
Digital Asset Management
Digital Asset Management simply means consistently storing, organizing, finding, managing, creating, distributing, and analyzing all digital content. It helps you keep control of your brand identity and improve your overall marketing performance.
Digital assets
Digital assets refer to all your content that is digital. Assets can be any type of file in any variant. Examples of assets are documents, illustrations, videos, logos, animations, spreadsheets, images etc.
SaaS
SaaS, or Software as a Service, is a Cloud solution. Software as a Service is the perfect solution for businesses with multiple offices. Users have access where ever since all information can be found online in a secure environment.
Digital Asset Management can also be installed ‘On Premise’, meaning it is location-based. However, it is preferred to have an online, or SaaS solution because A Cloud-based solution allows easy but secure access from any location.
Create and Publish
Create and Publish is a part of Lytho’s DAM system that enables you to efficiently create, publish, share and print marketing collateral. The benefits is twofold: 1. Your designers can only focus on creating beautiful templates for the rest of the organization instead of doing minor edits 2. Marketing/Sales/Comms can easily produce their own content without design skills or fear of brand inconsistency.
Metadata
Metadata is often used to find content quickly and efficiently. Data exists of different components, metadata describes these characteristics. Components of product information are for instance descriptions, prices, product lines or categories. By adding metadata, or tags, you categorize information and you can easily retrieve it at any given moment. Instead of searching through multiple folders and files, the right content is easily found with the added metadata.
Albums vs. collections
In DAM-software, these terms often come hand in hand and can sound the same. But there is a difference: in albums, you decide the structure of your assets. Meaning, you store assets under the same subject. Collections are refined when you group assets on basis of metadata. For instance: albums are categorized according to product lines and you would like to share illustrations with a similar category such as size, taste or color. By assembling these images, you create a collection.
Asset variants
Asset variants are different ‘versions’ or ‘editions’ of an original asset. These can be logos in different editions or resolutions, or documents in several file types. Asset variants are not literally versions of assets. Versions can be innovations or improvements of content, variants are alternatives of the original. Other terms for variants are renditions, proxies or surrogates.
User Rights Management
Rights management is a way to implement an efficient workflow. In DAM software, users can be assigned different roles, meaning everyone has different access rights. This is very convenient for companies with partners that need access to content that is relevant to them.
Assigning roles is beneficial when created marketing material need approvals before publishing. It ensures consistency, prevents errors and protects the brand’s identity.
Brand Identity
Your brand identity, not to be confused with brand image, is how you wish for others to see your brand. Your brand image is how your brand is actually perceived. DAM software helps you strengthen your brand identity and therefore your brand image.
Other related articles
Digital Asset Management
- What is digital asset management?
- Why use digital asset management?
- Features of a digital asset management system
- Digital asset management in 60 seconds [video]
- Digital asset management terminology
- What is the future of digital asset management?
- Digital asset management benefits
- Digital asset management checklist
- Digital asset management security
- Digital asset management ROI
- How to choose a digital asset management system
- Digital asset management taxonomy
- Digital asset management implementation guide
- Digital asset management customer cases
- Digital asset management vs. document management
- Digital asset management vs. brand asset management
Digital Asset Management for industries
Originally published at https://www.lytho.com.
