Where can an online image library be used?

Electronic images are used in almost every area of a business, and the benefits of bringing these images into a central location increase as the number of pictures increases.

Businesses need to manage digital images to make them useful. Assets such as corporate brochures, designs, images of products, photos of your staff and pictures supplied by agencies accumulate quickly - and in many different formats and resolutions. This creates a challenge for those managing the assets.

For more links about DAM, please click here.

For some examples of where IMS can save you time and money, please click here.

To study Digital Asset Management vendors and compare features, visit www.capterra.com.

Digital Asset Management Explained

Digital Asset Management (DAM) is the practice of storing and managing electronic media (such as photographs, documents and videos) in a structured database, where users can conveniently deposit and retreive the files for future use.

Using a DAM system is one of the essential signs of a well-organised and sustainable business, particularly any business having more than a few thousand assets of commercial value.

Provided the architecture and the interface to the system is convenient and easy for staff to use, using DAM offers a leap forward in productivity and a reduction in costs that may be dramatic compared to the hidden costs of ad hoc file server storage.

Efficient And Trouble-Free Searches

A lack of centralised asset storage is a common pressure point for businesses. According to GISTICS research, around $8,000 per head is spent every year on activities such as searching, organising, backing up and protecting electronic images. In a typical business, a creative person looks for a media asset or file 80 times a week and fails to find it 35% of the time. Lost assets lead to unnecessary replacement costs as well as being a poor use creative time.

Digital Asset Management improves efficiency and avoids frustrating manual searches: files can be browsed, indexed, annotated and categorised - not merely stored and forgotten.

Tracing And Accounting For Assets

Formalising the process for retrieving images ensures brand consistency. It means originators can qualify whether pictures and assets can be reused, whether there are fees and how the asset has been used in the past.

A Digital Asset Management system can log creator's notes in its database as well as captions, keywords and other information. When an image leaves the system, electronic audit trails provide accountability and eliminate duplication.

As time goes by the depth of information about each asset stored improves. If the file were stored on a file server, its details would be gradually lost or forgotten over time - Digital Asset Management reverses this trend.

Client And Supplier Workflows

Digital Asset Management helps to build better working environments, since it gives staff a simple means to share files over an extranet (for example, with clients and suppliers who may need to see just a particular project). It is this ability to share, review and collaborate conveniently that encourages communication and better business relationships.

The enhanced speed and ease of working enabled by DAM is a direct, sustained benefit to the company's brand and reputation.

Eliminating Costs

DAM avoids expensive and slow proofing and CD-ROM/DVD origination steps. By removing the need to physically ship these media via couriers, the overall turnaround on exchanging files is dramatically improved.

DAM systems can also convert assets between formats, avoiding the unnecessary burden of installing complex graphics tools just to open and convert files. With improved access to a definitive media library, re-use and sharing of existing media also improves the bottom line.

How to Build a Digitial Asset Management System

Third Light offers an especially intuitive DAM solution which can be installed and working quickly and affordably - off the shelf. No programming and no long IT projects, just a ready-made solution that is valued by professionals the world over.

If you would like to benefit from installing or upgrading a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, please get in touch for a free consultation and demonstration, or take our product for a free 30-day trial.