What is digital asset management?

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Digital asset management (DAM) is software that lets you easily store, organize, find, and share digital assets — brand collateral, creatives, and more — in one centralized location. Digital asset management libraries serve as a single source of truth on all things brand-related. 

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You could store all digital assets on the cloud through digital asset management platforms such as Artwork Flow, making them easily accessible and highly secure.

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Advantages of digital asset management

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One of the key benefits of digital asset management solutions is that your entire team and all associated stakeholders can access brand assets from a single central location. A digital asset management platform like Artwork Flow has several advantages. These include:

- 24/7 accessibility to creatives.

- Smart tags to find assets instantly.

- Public links to share assets to anyone. 

- User-level permissions and access to protect brand reputation.

- Version control to access all asset versions from one place. 

- Annotations, checklists, and creative proofing tools to accelerate approvals.

- Smart proofing tools to ensure compliance with regulations.

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Digital asset management solutions also ensure you are always using the most updated asset, and even cut down on all the operational costs that go into maintaining a content library.  

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It also gives you the creative freedom to focus on your work and makes brand management a breeze. 

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Digital asset management best practices

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The right approach to your DAM tool ensures smooth day-to-day operations of your creative workflow. To ensure you get the best out of your DAM platform, here are five best practices to keep in mind.

1. Perform an asset audit.

An assessment of your current assets is one of the most crucial initial stages in DAM deployment. You must be aware of the assets you manage, their nature, and their intended uses. An audit will assist you in defining your goals for digital asset management and is an essential step in choosing the DAM system that best suits your requirements. 

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2. Use DAM to collaborate.

Do not revert to emails and messages when your digital asset management software itself offers collaboration features. Artwork Flow, for instance, provides creative collaboration features that help you share and manage digital assets, making the entire creative workflow efficient. 

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3. Consider what your DAM offers.

Always make sure the tool you choose has all the digital asset management features you need to make your life easier. Features such as version control, smart tags, branding, flexible sharing, advanced search capabilities and an intuitive UI are crucial for a seamless workflow. Artwork Flow also helps you ensure label compliance with its smart checklist and AI proofing tools.

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4. Utilize access control & user-level permissions.

If you've acquired rights-managed stock images for a particular campaign, you can limit access to the team members who actually need to utilize them. Artwork Flow offers user-level permissions and access control so you can limit access to only people to avoid unintended use of an asset.

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5. Set up a system for naming assets.

To improve searchability, provide a clear, standardized procedure for classifying digital assets and producing metadata. You'll put useful information at the fingers of your users when everyone uses the same procedure for categorizing and tagging assets. Artwork flow offers auto tagging and custom tagging capabilities so you can name and organize your assets with much more flexibility and ease.

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Why is digital asset management important?

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Without a digital asset management system, businesses end up depending on emails, Slack, direct messages, and more to collaborate on creatives across teams. As businesses grow, the tech stack needs to scale with them. A simple task such as finding the most recently updated marketing collateral should not take more than a few seconds. And yet, it does when one doesn’t have access to digital asset management tools. To avoid bottlenecks in the creative collaboration process, you definitely need cloud digital asset management.

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Who uses digital asset management software?

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You need digital asset management for designers, marketers, legal teams, and any other stakeholder who collaborates on creatives across the organization. A DAM library helps businesses of all sizes to store, organize, and share digital assets securely and reliably. Every stakeholder from Marketing and Design to Legal and IT can make use of digital asset management solutions. Several food and pharmaceutical industries also use DAM to ensure label and packaging compliance.

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What is the difference between DAM and CMS?

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A DAM system manages assets for your entire organization and enables distribution across numerous channels, while a CMS is responsible for managing content for your website.

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Digital asset management (DAM) is a comprehensive software tool used to store, manage, and exchange digital assets such as  images and videos.

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A content management system, or CMS, is software that enables people to generate, manage, and update website content—typically without the need for extensive computer expertise.

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What are the types of digital asset management?

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DAM systems provide a variety of features that assist different marketing strategies. 

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Here are some examples of the different kinds of digital asset management systems that marketers frequently use.

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1. Brand management software is most commonly used to strengthen brand identity and ensure brand consistency by consistently using imagery and messaging that aligns with the brand. A DAM system can be used to store and manage various brand collaterals from a single location.

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2. MRM, or marketing resource management, is a type of software that integrates marketing people, procedures, and technology into a single framework. To maximize resources and deliberate processes, firms can use an MRM solution to measure, manage, and report on marketing operations.

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3. Video asset management software allows for the storage and management of video files at all stages of their existence, from production through archiving. VAM software makes it easier for teams to access, share, and publish video files because they are frequently very large.

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4. Product information management or PIM software compiles and distributes the specifications, explanations, and content required to market and sell a product. Additionally, it assists businesses in creating accurate, eye-catching product listings for their diverse e-commerce platforms.

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What is workflow management?

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Workflow management is the process of organizing a series of tasks to produce a certain outcome. Workflows can include any number of tasks arranged sequentially or in parallel, with different stakeholders, assignees, and systems involved. 

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What is workflow management software?

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Workflow management systems help project managers automate repetitive tasks associated with day-to-day operations. Workflow management software like Artwork Flow let you build any complex creative workflow at scale to save you operational costs and staff hours. 

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For instance, with workflow management for designers, you can save a whole lot of time spent exchanging emails to get a creative reviewed and approved. Project management workflow software also helps you ensure seamless creative collaboration by breaking down silos and enabling cross-departmental communication on the same platform. 

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What are the best workflow management tools?

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The best workflow management tool always boils down to your business requirements. Popular tools include Asana, Monday.com,Trello, and more. For cross-media marketing and creative collaboration requirements, workflow management tools like Artwork Flow can help. Artwork Flow’s Flexi Flows feature provides enterprise workflow management capabilities and helps you build any kind of project management workflow efficiently and effectively. 

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What workflow management capabilities should I look out for?

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Choose a workflow management software that allows you to build flexible workflows at scale. The creative workflow management software you go for should have the ability to replicate any complex business operation you depend on on a day-to-day basis with ease. You should be able to manage any information management workflow, design planning requests, operational planning, and any other custom workflow project management request flawlessly using the software you choose.

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What are the 3 basic components of workflow?

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Every workflow consists of three basic components: a trigger, the work (or a set of activities), and the outcome. We'll go through each of these components in more detail below to make it easier for you to comprehend and spot them in your own flow.

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1. Input

A trigger is any occasion or action that starts the workflow and causes a particular consequence. A decision, an action, a set time or date, or a reaction to a condition or rule can all serve as triggers. 

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2. Transformation

Transformation is the most complicated of a workflow's three fundamental elements. That's just because it may call for a number of actors, inputs, or steps that must be carried out to produce the desired outcome.

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3. Output

The output of a workflow process is the finished product or deliverable. It is also known as the result. The next stage in a workflow can likewise use the output as its input.

- A workflow is primarily made up of four elements. These are states, actors, activities, and results.

- Actors can be either humans or machines that perform the work.

- Activities are the work or tasks that are carried out. It signifies a logical step in the process.

- The outcome of each phase are the results.

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When a project is in the middle of a process, it is referred to as state. Flow control is employed to make sure that processes take place in the right order.

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A streamlined workflow management system is crucial to complete a project or task efficiency. Artwork Flow offers a flexible workflow builder with 100% transparency that makes it easy for project managers and team members to stay on top of their task and work together with ease.

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What is the purpose of workflow?

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Workflow isn't just about getting the job done; it's also about getting it done as quickly and effectively as you can. Modern businesses now have every activity broken down into separate tasks, rules, procedures, and roles thanks to workflow automation. Workflows serve to reduce human mistakes in the task, but they do not completely replace humans in the workplace. Efficiency, quality, and consistency are key.

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What are the benefits of workflow automation for your business?

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Below we list down the top 8 benefits of automating your workflow:

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Eliminate redundancies: A workflow process helps to gain a better understanding of a company's everyday operations from start to finish. It can help managers and stakeholders immediately spot inefficiency and redundancies while also identifying areas that need improvement.

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Higher accountability: The entire team can understand what is happening and what has to be done, thanks to a clearly defined and effective process. Every employee is aware of their tasks, responsibilities, and deadlines. 

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Reduce expenses: Organizations often find they need fewer resources as workflow processes are standardized, resulting in closing deadlines faster. When you achieve more with fewer resources, it costs less and boosts revenue.

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Increase clarity: The responsibilities of each position are precisely defined via a workflow mechanism. When people are aware of what is expected of them, they are more trustworthy and satisfied with their work.

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Reduce micromanagement: Employee performance suffers when talent is exploited under micromanagement. With a workflow procedure, workers consistently carry out assigned tasks and finish them by the deadline. Managers can devote more time to making crucial company decisions rather than micromanaging employees.

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Better communication: Poor communication can result in goals being misunderstood, which can impact staff morale, productivity, and quality of work. With a workflow mechanism in place, employees are aware of the proper channels for communication and where to turn for information. 

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Knowledge transfer: Quality output depends on transparency. Sharing knowledge and information is essential to an organization's efficient operation. Withholding information can jeopardize the successful implementation of initiatives and the efficient operation of the company. Artwork Flow's intuitive DAM helps ensure that the right people have access to all the information they need to carry out their tasks efficiently. 

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Increased compliance: Automated tasks and standardized procedures reduce human error when workflow mechanisms are in place, which can otherwise turn costly. Artwork Flow also has a host of free proofing tools and smart checklists that helps businesses mitigate regulation and compliance issues in just a few clicks.

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