When your company is investing in new equipment or software, you want to know who will be using it. Why? It’s crucial in determining what value it will add.
If it’s only useful to a small part of your business, it might not make that much of a difference and wouldn’t be worth the money as a result.
Digital asset management (DAM) is no different. So, who actually uses it?
In 2015, a survey of 123 business leaders from a range of industries looked at how valuable DAM was to their company. One of the areas of focus in the report, ‘Proving the Value of Digital Asset Management’, was who actually used the software within their business.
Overall, the report found that 36% of DAM users were marketers, while 23% were in-house creatives and 15% were listed as ‘other employees’. As expected, DAM is primarily used by those who require access to a range of digital assets. It helps them organise, store and retrieve their assets with easy on a daily basis.
A further 10% of DAM users in the survey were listed as agency creatives. That means in total, creative professionals account for a third (33%) of DAM users. However, this also shows another trend with DAM us – namely, collaboration.
Alongside the 10% representing agency creatives, 13% of DAM users are listed as partners. Together, external agencies make up nearly a quarter of DAM usership. According to the report, this is as high as 75% in some organisations.
Why? DAM makes it easy for both in-house staff and authorised partners and agencies to access the files and assets they need in an instant. There’s no need for a string of emails sending updated versions back and forth.
This seamless, instant access is also valuable when it comes to the ‘digital media supply chain’. In short, that’s the process from asset creation and development to the use of assets by marketing teams.
As well as providing access to external agencies, DAM allows different teams within a business to retrieve assets – at different stages in the ‘supply chain’. According to the research, 78% of businesses agree that DAM has been key to streamlining this end-to-end process from creation to delivery.
To back this up, 66% describe the role of DAM as a “collaboration system that streamlines workflow between creative services and digital marketers”. Interestingly, 47% also described DAM as a “source of data on asset use/consumption,” displaying the software’s versatility.
DAM is powerful tool for creatives, marketers and even managers who want to assess performance. But in truth, it can be utilised for any area of a company. If you want to discuss your requirements in more depth, the team at iBase is always on hand to help.
Our DAM platform provides everything you need to manage your digital files, whether it’s creative assets, contracts or client data. Get in touch with us today to talk more.
