As we head into 2024, businesses face a critical transition: digital transformation. It’s a comprehensive shift that goes beyond technology adoption, by integrating digital technology into all aspects of business. The goal is to change how organizations operate and deliver value to customers, with customer-centricity at its core.

Digital transformation reshapes business strategies, ensuring they are agile and responsive to customer needs and market changes. It’s about creating a digital, customer-centric approach, where understanding and responding to customer behaviors and preferences is key.

Businesses are not just changing though; they are undergoing a complete digital overhaul. The most successful businesses of the past few years have embraced digital means to enhance customer experiences and streamline operations.

This transition is increasingly vital as companies face tightening budgets, the need to expand campaigns and digital reach, and the proliferation of digital channels.

Let’s uncover how digital transformation will impact 2024:

• Why does Digital Transformation Matter?
• Key Trends in Digital Transformation
• How to Prioritize for a Successful Digital Transformation
• The Role of Digital Asset Management (DAM) in Digital Transformation

Why Digital Transformation Matters Now

Staying competitive means being able to quickly adapt to evolving customer expectations and market conditions. Digital transformation enables businesses to leverage technology for better customer engagement, operational agility, and integration of digital technologies, leading to improved efficiency and innovation.

The impact of digital transformation varies across industries. In healthcare, for instance, digital technology is revolutionizing patient care through telemedicine and electronic health records. In finance, it’s reshaping customer interactions with mobile banking and personalized financial advice using AI. These industry-specific transformations underscore the versatility and necessity of digital strategies in today’s diverse business landscape.

But while embracing digital transformation is critical, it’s not without its challenges. Businesses often struggle with integrating new technologies with existing systems, managing data security, and ensuring employee adaptation. Overcoming these hurdles requires a strategic approach: prioritizing user-friendly technologies, investing in cybersecurity, and providing comprehensive training for employees. Addressing these challenges head-on ensures that the digital transformation journey is smooth and productive.

As organizations grow and expand their reach, their tech stack needs to adapt. But to successfully do so, it’s important that a technology stack:

1. Aligns with Business Goals: The chosen technology should align with the company’s strategic goals and the evolving digital landscape.
2. Ensures Scalability: Technologies should scale and adapt as the business grows and as the market evolves.
3. Optimizes Customer Experience: Tech solutions should enhance customer engagement and satisfaction.

Applying this method can help to ensure each piece of technology chosen serves an organization, but an awareness of key digital transformation trends is foundational to a successful transition.

Key Trends in Digital Transformation

Understanding key trends can enable organizations to leverage technology for innovation, efficiency, and competitive advantage.

It’s crucial to understand trends to make informed decisions that foster long-term success, adaptability, and resilience in a rapidly changing digital environment.

Trends include:

Increased Emphasis on Data Management: Effective management and analysis of data are critical for making informed decisions and personalizing the customer experience.

Adoption of Cloud Technologies: Cloud technology offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency, aiding businesses in their digital transformation efforts.

Enhanced Focus on Customer Experience: Utilizing digital technologies to enhance customer experience is a priority. This includes personalized marketing and responsive customer service platforms.

Growth of AI and Machine Learning: These technologies are being increasingly used for predictive analytics, customer service, and personalization.

Rise of Digital Asset Management (DAM): A crucial trend is the growing importance of DAM systems in managing digital assets efficiently and effectively.

How to Prioritize for a Successful Digital Transformation

Technology is constantly evolving and revolutionizing how businesses operate. This future landscape calls for frameworks that are not only adaptive to current trends but also flexible enough to embrace future technological breakthroughs.

The digital transformation journey should encompass several key elements and be based on:

Customer Experience: Focusing on the customer experience is paramount. It’s about understanding and responding to customer needs at every stage of the journey, and your tech stack should centre around this.

Operational Agility: Being able to respond rapidly to market changes and internal demands is crucial. This involves optimizing processes and incorporating agile methodologies. Technologies should serve several departments, if not entire organizations.

Digital Technology Integration: This involves integrating digital technologies into all areas of a business, resulting in fundamental changes to operations and how value is delivered to customers. Ensuring your tech stack integrates seamlessly across your organization and enhances your workflows is key.

The Role of Digital Asset Management (DAM) in Digital Transformation

One of the main challenges in digital transformation is managing the volume and variety of digital content. A DAM system addresses this by offering a central, structured, searchable platform for easy asset accessibility, crucial in a fast-paced digital environment.

This centralization ensures consistency in branding and messaging across various digital platforms and facilitates better collaboration among teams by providing easy access to needed assets which are crucial for maintaining a strong online presence.

When it comes to digital transition, DAM plays a multifaceted role. In marketing, it’s about ensuring that digital assets are easily accessible for creating consistent, engaging content across all channels. In sales, DAM systems facilitate the quick sharing of updated resources, ensuring that the sales team represents the brand accurately. In internal communications, DAM ensures that employees have access to the latest training materials and company updates, fostering a well-informed workforce.

These varied applications highlight DAM’s essential role in streamlining and enhancing various facets of a business.

And while a DAM system streamlines the process of managing digital assets, saving time and resources, there is so much more a DAM solution can do to positively impact an organization’s digital transformation.

Brand Consistency: DAM ensures that all digital assets are aligned with brand guidelines, maintaining consistency across all channels.

MediaValet’s Branded Portals enable organizations to securely share on-brand, approved assets with external stakeholders to ensure correct asset usage across a multitude of channels.

Improved Asset Utilization: By having a central repository, the reuse of assets is promoted, ensuring that resources are fully utilized.

According to the 2024 DAM Trends Report, 64% of DAM users have increased their use of on-brand assets due to DAM integrations, and 71% spend less than 5 hours a week searching for assets.

Security and Compliance: DAM systems offer secure storage and management of assets, ensuring compliance with copyright and data protection regulations.

MediaValet has the highest security rating of any DAM vendor, as ranked by SecurityScorecard.

Scalability: As businesses grow, DAM systems can scale to meet the increasing volume and complexity of digital assets.

MediaValet offers an unlimited package of users, categories, user groups, training, and support to ensure that our customers’ growth is always supported.

Integration with Other Tools: DAM systems can integrate with other digital tools, enhancing the overall digital ecosystem of an organization.

MediaValet integrates seamlessly across the tech stack ensuring streamlined workflows and processes.

As businesses navigate the digital transformation wave, the role of Digital Asset Management systems becomes increasingly crucial. They not only enhance efficiency and productivity but also play a key role in maintaining brand consistency and ensuring effective use of digital assets. As part of a broader digital transformation strategy, DAM systems like MediaValet provide the foundation for a robust and dynamic digital presence, crucial for business success in the digital age.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems are increasingly becoming a cornerstone for banks and financial organizations aiming to enhance their operational efficiency, secure sensitive information, and maintain a consistent brand identity.

In a world where digital assets are as valuable as physical ones, especially in the financial sector, the strategic implementation of a DAM system can provide a competitive edge.

This blog post will explore:

• the benefits of DAM systems for financial organizations, and
• real-life examples of DAM benefitting financial institutions.

The Benefits of DAM Systems for Banking and Financial Institutions

1. Enhanced Security: Safeguarding Sensitive Information

In the financial sector, security is not just a feature; it’s a necessity. Financial institutions deal with sensitive client information, transaction details, and proprietary financial data.

A MediaValetDAM system provides robust security measures like SSO, encryption, access control, and Forensic Watermarking providing an additional layer of security over traditional file storage systems.

MediaValet is ranked the #1 DAM vendor for security by SecurityScorecard and is SOC 2 certified and compliant with numerous industry standards, including HIPAA, GDPR, and more.

2. Branded Portals: Maintaining a Cohesive Brand Identity

Financial organizations often operate across multiple channels and regions, making consistent brand representation a challenging task.

Whether it’s for marketing, communication, internal use, or alignment with the organization’s brand guidelines, centralized management of all brand-related assets is essential. But sharing these, especially externally, can be challenging.

MediaValet’s Branded Portals ensure that every stakeholder has access to the right content, ensuring consistent branding to help build customer trust and recognition among clients.

3. Scalability and Flexibility: Facilitating Growing Operations

The financial sector is dynamic, with organizations often undergoing changes in size, structure, and operations.

Whether it’s increasing storage capacity, adding new users, or integrating with emerging technologies, DAM systems can evolve without disrupting existing workflows. This flexibility is crucial for financial organizations that need to stay agile and responsive to market changes.

MediaValet offers unlimited users and training to ensure that as you expand, your DAM can scale with you.

4. Improved Workflows: Enhancing Collaboration and Productivity

Collaboration is key in any financial organization, where teams often work on complex projects requiring a high degree of coordination both within and outside of core teams.

DAM systems facilitate smoother collaboration by providing tools for quick asset discovery, version control, workflow management, and real-time asset sharing. These features ensure that everyone is working on the most current version of an asset, reducing errors and saving time.

MediaValet’s AI-powered metadata and Advanced Search allow you to discover the right assets, in seconds, while MediaValet analytics to make smarter, data-backed decisions with detailed reports, straight from the DAM.

Use Cases for DAM for Banking and Financial Institutions

ACAMS is the largest global membership organization dedicated to fighting financial crime.

Spread across three main locations; Miami, London and Hong Kong, ACAMS found it increasingly difficult to manage its growing library of digital assets.

They began searching for a DAM platform in 2019 and have since been a client with MediaValet.

At the beginning, they use their DAM to store mostly brand assets like JPGs, PNGs, PDFs and Microsoft files like Excel, Word and PowerPoint.

Eventually, they started to incorporate their creative team‘s work including production files into the DAM to enable collaboration across the creative team. With the addition of Audio/Video Intelligence, they’re also focusing more on video assets.

ACAMS has seen massive returns on their MediaValet DAM, it has saved them time on asset discovery and limits colleagues having to recreate files.

Why did ACAMS choose MediaValet as their DAM provider?

What really made MediaValet stand out was the unlimited support and training. It’s so valuable for us and we’re still taking advantage of it!

James Langan, Senior Global Brand Specialist, ACAMS

Want to learn more about ACAMS DAM Journey? Read their full story here.

A DAM system for banking and financial institutions is not just a tool for managing digital assets; it’s a strategic investment that can enhance security, improve efficiency, and foster a stronger brand identity.

Investing in a robust DAM system can yield significant dividends in terms of operational efficiency, compliance, and competitive advantage. As the financial sector continues to evolve, the role of DAM systems in supporting and streamlining these changes becomes increasingly vital.

When companies first start looking into DAM software to better organize their content, understanding digital asset management pricing models can quickly become complicated. What most organizations don’t fully realize in these early stages of searching for a DAM vendor is that their needs may change over time.

This means the initial price tag for a DAM may not stick for very long. It’s important to fully understand DAM pricing. What the initial cost includes, and what kinds of increases you’re looking at as you grow as a company.

But before you start planning, let’s explain digital asset management pricing in detail.

Digital Asset Management Costs

How much does a DAM cost? There are various factors at play when it comes to determining the cost of a DAM. The size of your organization, your unique use case, storage needs, and more can determine the DAM solution you need. Although there is a lot of information out there about the costs of DAM solutions, there are three main components:

• Subscription costs,
• Upfront costs, and
• Ongoing costs.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these costs below.

Subscription Costs

All DAM solutions have a base subscription cost, which is usually dependent on a combination of things. Storage needs, user numbers, administrators, and user groups. To receive an accurate quote for the subscription price for your DAM solution, you’ll need to answer these four questions:

1. Storage: How many terabytes (TBs) of digital assets will you store?
2. Users: How many people will use (or could use) the DAM?
3. Administrators: How many people will manage the library?
4. User Groups: How many different customized user groups will be needed?

Each DAM vendor has a slightly different approach in how they price their base subscription, as well as what they include with it. For example, MediaValet’s core DAM subscription-only charges for storage, and includes unlimited users, administrators, and custom user groups.

Understanding This Cost

This is often the most variable cost, so it’s important to consider how each vendor’s digital asset management pricing structure will impact your organization’s long-term growth. Some pricing structures can prevent organizations from extending DAM access to other users, such as additional departments or marketing agencies, as it would increase the price of the DAM’s base cost substantially. A subscription model that’s based on just storage, with unlimited users, can greatly improve the scalability and reach of your DAM. This should be a priority if you’re expecting to grow your user base.

Want a more personalized understanding of dam pricing? Check out our MediaValet Pricing page here.

Upfront Costs

There are often one-time fees to cover the upfront costs of implementing the DAM. First, an onboarding fee is an extra cost associated with the initial DAM setup for your organization and may increase with additional storage or integrations. Another is a consultation fee. Many DAMs will either offer consultation internally or have partners that can provide additional support with navigating more complex DAM implementations. Both of these fees are normal but can vary across vendors and quickly add up if they’re estimated based on an hourly rate. With MediaValet, the onboarding fee is a flat rate that covers the entire onboarding process, followed by unlimited training and support over the customer’s lifetime. We also have several partners that can help with additional implementation needs.

Understanding This Cost

In many cases, implementations can take longer than expected, so take care to understand what’s included with these fees to avoid getting caught with an unexpected bill. Make sure you understand if the onboarding and consulting fees are based on a set number of hours and the implications of going over and above what’s included. Understanding the kinds of services that are included also set clear expectations between the DAM vendor and you, the customer.

Ongoing Costs

A typical ongoing cost is for DAM training which involves booking time in with the DAM vendor to train new users on the platform or update users on how to take advantage of new features. This can be in the form of one-on-one training or group training sessions and is usually priced based on a set number of hours and/or sessions. Another ongoing cost is for DAM support, which covers technical challenges with the DAM (system bugs, setting up new users, recovering deleted assets, etc.). Like training costs, support costs are usually bundled or billed hourly. Both DAM training and support are critical to the adoption and usability of the platform, so it should be an expected cost. Again, with MediaValet, unlimited training and support are included in the base subscription cost.

Understanding This Cost

While “optional” training and support can be tempting to pass up, ensuring new users understand how to use the platform ensures better long-term adoption and increased ROI. It can also save you from wasting valuable time trying to solve technical problems yourself, only to make matters worse. In most cases, investing in training and support inevitably saves you time and stress down the road. With this in mind, consider using a vendor that offers unlimited training, or be sure to thoughtfully budget for this additional cost.

Digital Asset Management Cost Comparison

When shopping around for DAM solutions, it’s important to ensure you’re comparing apples to apples. In this section, we’ll cover all the basics you should know about DAM costs before you start comparing digital asset management pricing structures. The three major considerations you’ll need to understand prior to comparing DAM prices are:

1. Features and Integrations,
2. User Needs, and
3. Ability to Scale.

Let’s take a closer look at each consideration below.

1. Features and Integrations

Since every organization has unique needs, the DAM you decide to go with should reflect that. A very important part of comparing the costs of different DAM solutions is only looking at systems that have the features you’ll need. Be sure to deep dive into the DAM’s features on asset organization, search capabilities, distribution solutions, archiving, security, and the ability to scale—and don’t forget to look into their training and support.

What’s the use of investing in a DAM if it doesn’t work with the rest of your tech solutions? Running into a problem with the right integrations can be a major roadblock in choosing a successful DAM. MediaValet integrates with many of the most-used programs like Microsoft 365, Adobe Creative Cloud, and much more.

2. User Needs

The right DAM partner will take into account how the DAM needs to work for your team, and how they can offer ongoing support that will boost user adoption, and foster confident usage. MediaValet offers a customer success program where you’re partnered with one of our customer success managers to make sure your DAM works the way you need it to with unlimited training and support.

3. Ability to Scale

Where you’re at today is not likely where you’ll be six months, a year, or five years down the road. Most organizations are looking to grow, making scalability an important factor to consider when comparing DAM vendors. It’s important to take into account how your costs may grow as your business does. Are these costs are sustainable? MediaValet offers unlimited users and user groups at no extra cost to help our clients who are looking to scale.

Whether you have a library of digital assets already, or you’re starting fresh, MediaValet works with you. We work to develop an intuitive and future-proof taxonomy that will scale and grow along with your business.

Get the Full Picture

When embarking on a digital asset management pricing comparison, it’s important to understand how each vendor’s pricing works, as well as what features and benefits they provide. This will help optimize productivity, get the most out of your DAM, and avoid any unforeseen costs.

To avoid surprises and going over budget it’s important to:

• Map out features and benefits the DAM is providing,
• Take time to choose a partner that will help you find the right plan, and
• Make sure there’s room for you to scale up if needed.

Ensure you understand the subscription, upfront, and ongoing costs of your DAM. Also, clarify what’s included in what you’re paying for. It’s just as important to choose a DAM partner that you trust to find the right solution for you.

We believe in investing in the success of our clients by offering unlimited onboarding, training, support, users, and user groups. Why wouldn’t we help our customers get the most out of their DAM? Get your custom MediaValet pricing today.

Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has recently been changing the way we do many things. From the way we work, to the way we communicate, the surge in available AI technology has impacted us significantly.

But AI is not a new aspect to most digital asset management (DAM) systems. Over the past several years, AI has been quietly revolutionizing the way DAM systems manage and access assets.

At the heart of this transformation is DAM metadata.

But why is it important and how does it increase asset accessibility for organizations?

To further explain the purpose and benefits of DAM metadata, this blog post will delve into:

• What DAM metadata is,
• Why asset accessibility is crucial for organizations, and
• Why AI-powered DAM metadata is the key to accessibility.

What is DAM metadata?

DAM metadata is the descriptive information and data assigned to digital assets within a DAM. It plays a crucial role in organizing, categorizing, and retrieving digital assets efficiently. It provides context and information about the assets, making it easier for users to search for, locate, and manage their digital files.

DAM systems have evolved significantly, thanks to AI-powered features. Metadata, particularly metadata tagging, plays a pivotal role in making assets easily accessible.

Universal accessibility to assets is crucial to an organization

Imagine a scenario where your organization’s valuable digital assets are scattered across various servers, cloud storage, and individual devices. Finding the right asset becomes a needle-in-a-haystack situation.

Employees waste precious time searching for assets, recreating content that already exists, or using outdated versions. This not only hampers productivity but also creates silos within the organization, hindering collaboration and consistency.

Enabling easy, centralized, and secure access to entire asset libraries is the best way to facilitate universal accessibility. This can benefit organizations in a multitude of ways:

1. Removes Silos

Centralizing your digital assets, helps to break down the silos that typically exist within an organization. Everyone in your organization can access the same assets from a single source, ensuring consistency in branding and messaging.

2. Saves Time

Time is money, and searching for assets manually consumes valuable hours. With universal accessibility, employees can quickly locate the assets they need, leading to increased efficiency and reduced duplication of efforts.

3. Enhances Collaboration

Easy access to assets promotes collaboration among teams. Whether it’s marketing, design, or sales, teams can work seamlessly together, sharing and repurposing assets without friction.

4. Maintains Brand Consistency

Consistency in branding is crucial for brand identity and recognition. Universal access ensures that everyone uses the latest and approved brand assets, helping maintain a consistent brand image.

Now that we understand the importance of asset accessibility, let’s explore how DAM systems leverage AI to enhance this accessibility.

AI-Powered DAM Metadata is Key

DAM systems, enhanced by AI, provide organizations with a secure and streamlined approach to asset accessibility.

AI-powered metadata tagging and search capabilities simplify asset discovery, while robust permission controls ensure data security. This harmonious blend of technology empowers organizations to efficiently access and manage their digital assets while safeguarding sensitive information.

When it comes to DAM systems, MediaValet stands out with its AI-powered features that enhance DAM metadata and, consequently, asset accessibility:

Advanced Search

MediaValet’s Advanced Search leverages AI to provide robust search capabilities. Users can search based on keywords, content within assets, metadata, and even visual attributes. This makes finding assets a breeze, regardless of the size of your asset library.

Auto Tagging

MediaValet’s AI-driven auto tagging feature saves significant time in the metadata tagging process. It can automatically generate relevant tags based on the content of the asset, improving the accuracy of categorization.

Face Recognition

MediaValet’s face recognition technology simplifies the tagging of people in images and videos. Whether you’re managing a library of employee headshots or customer photos, MediaValet’s face recognition ensures accurate and consistent tagging.

Universal accessibility to digital assets is no longer a luxury but a necessity for organizations of all sizes.

DAM systems, especially those leaning in to AI powered features and robust metadata tagging, are the key to achieving this accessibility.

By honing it’s advanced AI-features MediaValet is at the forefront of the DAM market and ensures that customers’ asset accessibility is smoother and more efficient than ever.

If you’re looking to unlock the true value of your assets with AI, it’s time to invest in a MediaValet DAM.

As government teams struggle with the exponential growth of digital media and materials, and the need to distribute these across numerous new channels, efficient systems to manage these assets has become even more important.

There’s a solution. A DAM allows governments to securely take control of ever-growing asset banks and also protect historical assets.

Why is a DAM beneficial for governments and municipalities over other file management solutions?

Because digital asset management systems enable governments and municipalities to:

• Centralize asset libraries,
• Enhance brand consistency,
• Ensure secure asset distribution and access,
• Improve workflows, and
• Save costs.

DAM isn’t just a fancy tool—it’s a game-changer. Digital asset management benefits for governments are countless, but we’l break down some of the most important ones here.

1. Centralized Storage

Historically, government agencies have relied on multiple shared drives, often located in different departments and locations. This lack of centrality leads to duplication, loss of assets, and hours wasted in searching for the right file.

A DAM creates a centralized repository where assets are systematically stored, automatically tagged, and easily searchable. Whether it’s for municipalities or larger government bodies, everyone has access to what they need, when they need it, eliminating the chaos of traditional storage methods.

Time Reduction

88%

Of MediaValet government customers reduced time searching for digital assets to less than 5 a week

2. Enhanced Brand Consistency

Governments, just like businesses, have a brand to uphold. With multiple departments and teams accessing and using brand assets, there’s a risk of inconsistencies cropping up.

A DAM ensures that every team has access to the same set of updated brand assets, fostering consistent branding across all communications.

3. Improved Workflows

Collaboration is at the heart of government functioning and when teams are each working from different tools, it can create chaos.

A DAM for municipalities and larger agencies can streamline workflows. Whether it’s reviewing a public campaign or updating official documents, DAM’s collaborative tools and integrations allow multiple stakeholders and external teams or agencies to work in tandem, reducing bottlenecks and improving efficiency.

Hours saved

400

DAM workflows could have saved The City of Kawartha Lakes weeks worth of work building websites

4. Secured Distribution & Access

More so than most businesses, digital asset security is paramount for government agencies.

With DAM, not only are assets stored securely, but distribution is controlled. User permissions ensure that only authorized individuals can access, modify, or distribute specific assets. This reduces the risk of unauthorized use or leaks.

5. Saved Costs

Though there’s an initial investment in setting up a DAM system, the long-term savings are considerable, especially when compared with other asset management solutions.

From reducing the need for physical storage to cutting down on lost man-hours searching for assets, the efficiencies brought by DAM translate to tangible cost savings.

Costs Saved

66%

Of MediaValet’s government customers have saved on asset creation

Why Choose a MediaValet DAM for Government?

In the 2024 DAM Trends Report, government and municipalities reported incredible feedback on MediaValet:

• 87.5% of government customers are satisfied with their MediaValet DAM.
• 80% of government customers achieved ROI in just 1 year, and 100% achieved ROI in just 18 months.
• MV government customers have a high approval with an average rating of 4.4 out of 5.

Want to learn more about how governments are benefitting from a digital asset management system? Get a free copy of the report here!

In an age where digital is omnipresent, efficient management of digital assets has become essential. For government agencies, this isn’t merely about convenience. It’s about upholding a standard of excellence in public communication, maintaining brand consistency, ensuring security, and, most importantly, serving the public more efficiently.

Digital Asset Management for government entities is more than just a tool—it’s a strategic ally in effective and transparent governing. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, government and municipalities that adopt and leverage DAM are set to be at the forefront, leading with efficiency and innovation.

A Digital Asset Management system or a DAM helps consumer goods organizations to build a more effective digital presence. An excellent online experience can help to establish a trustworthy brand and improve business bottom lines.

The last three years have seen a shift for almost every industry out there. The rise of e-commerce, social media, and other digital channels has created pressure to build an excellent online presence.

This digital permutation was always coming, but Covid-19 and the resulting business consequences have expedited the urgency of effectively managing digital assets.

Consumer goods organizations are no exception to this. There is a need to improve processes that organize, distribute and share digital assets to build a more effective online experience and ensure business longevity. This is where a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system comes to play.

Let’s explore how a DAM helps consumer goods organizations.

How a DAM Helps Consumer Goods Organizations

Consumer goods organizations need DAM to help them optimize their digital assets, but a DAM can help way beyond that. Let’s examine how:

1. To Manage the Explosion of Digital Assets:

Consumer goods organizations are producing and using more digital assets and require more stakeholder input than ever before.

From product images and videos to logos and packaging designs, to marketing materials, and more, it’s crucial to have a centralized system that ensures consistent, efficient, and secure asset management.

A DAM solution enables organizations to store, organize, search, and distribute their assets easily. This helps to reduce the risk of asset loss, duplication, or misuse.

2. To Enhance Brand Consistency:

The growing number of digital touchpoints and channels can be incredibly difficult to maintain, let alone keep consistent.

It’s imperative that organizations eliminate the use of outdated, unauthorized, or just wrong assets being shared across their online channels. Building a consistent brand with the correct messaging can help to build brand authority and establish trust with your audience.

A DAM can become a central repository for brand guidelines, approved assets, and templates, ensuring that everyone in the organization has access to the latest and approved versions of assets.

3. Streamline Collaboration and Workflow:

Collaborative teams and stakeholders are crucial to building an effective online presence for consumer goods organizations.

It’s important that all stakeholders, from internal teams like marketing to external collaborators like distributors, can communicate, work together, and approve assets in real-time.

A DAM should, ideally, integrate with other tools in your tech stack to facilitate better project management or creative workflows, ensuring that the entire process, from conception to asset creation to deployment is as seamless as possible.

4. Increase Efficiency and Time-to-Market:

The consumer goods sector is a rapidly changing one, and competition is rife. It’s essential that organizations consistently improve their time-to-market.

Ensuring internal teams, retailers, and distributors are quickly able to find the correct assets helps to speed up campaign and product launches and helps consumer goods organizations to effectively respond to market demands.

A DAM uses AI functionality, such as metadata tagging, and advanced search capabilities to enable users to quickly locate and retrieve assets, eliminating the time wasted searching through multiple folders or shared drives, and ultimately speeding up time-to-market.

5. Empower Personalized and Omnichannel Experiences:

To establish trust with an audience, consumer goods organizations need to ensure that customers are being met where they are and that they find value in the communications shared, I.E., personalized content is crucial to an excellent online experience.

By adapting content to speak to the relevant audience segment on the relevant digital channel, organizations can better cater to their customers expectations.

A DAM allows for effective repurposing of assets across different channels, formats, and target audiences.

TDIndustries Elevated their Marketing Collateral with a MediaValet DAM

Before implementing a DAM, TDIndustries was operating across seven offices and were accumulating an unmanageable number of digital assets. Thousands of assets were stored on an in-house server and accessibility, discoverability, and efficiency were becoming excessively difficult.

Since the implementation of their MediaValet DAM, TDIndustries has:

1. Centralized their brand assets into a single secure media library easily accessed across all seven offices.
2. Improved asset discoverability with comprehensive metadata mapping and a well-designed, centrally managed category structure.
3. Provided mobile-friendly access for their remote teams and external stakeholders.

TDIndustries has been able to improve operational efficiencies and successfully manage thousands of assets. In fact, their MediaValet DAM has enabled TDIndustries to market more efficiently and has significantly increased access to external stakeholders whether they are remote or in-person – without compromising their security.

Learn more about TDIndustries’s DAM story here!

To find out more about how a DAM could positively impact your consumer goods organization, reach out to a rep and learn why MediaValet is the right choice for you!

While there’s no doubt that organizations using digital asset management solutions (DAM) achieve benefits in the marketing and creative department, there’s often a need to showcase the value of DAM to the business as a whole. The overarching key business benefits of DAM include:

• Mitigating risk of asset loss;
• Reducing asset requests;
• Speeding up time-to-market;
• Reducing duplication of assets; and
• Improving collaboration efforts.

In this post, we’ll touch on these key benefits above and how they impact the organization.

Mitigating Risk of Asset Loss

When assets live on a server or a solution like Google Drive, where only a handful of people know how to access them, how they work, and how they’re organized, you run the risk of losing the assets and associated knowledge of those assets if someone leaves your company. A DAM keeps all of an organization’s critical assets well-organized in one place, where they’re protected from unapproved use and deletion. This mitigates the risk of assets leaving an organization when certain individuals leave or out of the office. A DAM also enables you to provide tailored access to each individual person – specifying who can share, download and access specific assets. This provides an additional layer of protection to your valued content.

See how James Langan mitigated asset loss at ACAMS by replacing ad-hoc solutions with MediaValet.

Reducing Asset Requests

Anyone who’s worked in a marketing or creative department knows how frustrating it is to be asked for a copy of the most recent logo—again, and again (by the same colleagues). When a DAM solution is in place, employees across all departments can easily find the assets they need without having to ask someone in marketing where those assets are located. The DAM becomes a self-service tool where everyone can find what they need, giving time back to all those involved to focus on business-driving activities.

See how Naomi Pelkey uses MediaValet to reduce asset requests by 80% at the University of Windsor.

Supporting Faster Time-to-Market

Implementing a DAM speeds up the ability for all departments to find the assets they need easily, in the format they need, which allows campaigns or new projects to ship faster. This increased time-to-market frees up time for various teams to create more and better campaigns, increasing overall productivity and, inevitably, increasing revenue.

See how Amy Lofgreen met campaign deadlines at Basecamp Franchising, despite a 90% reduction in staff.

Promoting Asset Reuse & Reducing Duplication

When team members can’t find the digital assets they need to do their jobs, it’s common for them to spend time and/or money creating and buying new assets. A DAM allows you to take inventory of what digital assets you currently have and determine which of those are relative and reusable. Then, you can decide which assets can be quickly altered and stored as a new version—instead of buying new assets or spending the time to create more.

See how Anthony Petre uses MediaValet to prevent asset and solution duplication at the University of Wollongong.

Enabling and Improving Collaboration

A DAM solution enables, supports and encourages effective collaboration between diverse and potentially remote business sites, divisions, teams, agencies, partners, distributors, and other stakeholders. The features of a sophisticated DAM – such as custom category access and watermarking – also offer more controlled access to your assets, while enabling these teams to brainstorm and generate approved content. By integrating with other tools in your tech stack, your DAM can become the central content hub, meaning assets can be seamlessly accessed from other platforms, such as project management, CMS, social media and design solutions.

See how James Carter boosts Experian’s brand consistency across 45 countries using MediaValet.

Feel the Benefits of DAM

The beauty of a DAM is that as an end-to-end solution, it’s highly customizable for the organization using it – and its benefits to the business are indisputable. At MediaValet we love to walk clients through the day-to-day ease of use, benefits to business, and opportunities involved in implementing DAM. Talk to us today to see if DAM is the right fit for you.

MediaValet is a leader in cloud-based digital asset management that helps organizations manage, organize and share their digital assets, improving productivity and increasing ROI.

Implementing a digital asset management or DAM governance plan can improve searchability, future-proof your DAM against mismanagement, and enable a consistent user experience. As DAM usage grows in your organization, your governance policies and procedures will serve as the framework that keeps your DAM organized and contributes to sustainable scalability.

When putting together a DAM governance plan for your organization, there are key areas to consider. In this post, we highlight these key areas and considerations to help build a DAM governance plan for your organization.

Download your free copy of the 2024 DAM Trends Report to learn more about DAM

The 4 Pillars of DAM Governance

When building a governance plan, four key areas to consider are, users and user groups, metadata, assets, and upload workflow. We call these areas the pillars of DAM governance.

Below, we break down each pillar and highlight questions to consider for each area of your DAM governance plan.

1. Users & User Groups

Establishing governance around users and user groups is key to ensuring a positive user experience and maintaining a secure DAM. When evaluating users and user groups, make sure to consider permissions for both functionality (downloading, uploading, etc.), as well as category access. Questions to address include:

• How will we determine the level of access and permissions each user requires?
• Who will be responsible for creating, deleting, and suspending user accounts?
• Who will be responsible for training new users?
• How many DAM admins do we need? Who has the capability and capacity to be a DAM admin?
• Will we provide DAM access to external users, such as partners, vendors, and agencies?

2. Assets

Establishing asset governance will ensure your DAM stays organized and reinstates the purpose of the DAM to your users: acting as a single source of truth. Placing restrictions and guidelines around assets can also help maintain the scope of your DAM. Questions to address include:

• Will the DAM be used for both WIP and final files?
• Will the DAM store all historical files or only from a specific date?
• Who will be responsible for archiving and expiring files?

3. Metadata

Evaluating your organization’s metadata is key to a strong governance plan. Providing guidelines around metadata will enhance asset discoverability, remove user uncertainty, and improve asset ROI. Questions to address include:

• What type of values and information should be added to keywords, categories, and attributes?
• Will we use acronyms? Which acronyms will be acceptable?
• Who will be permitted to add and edit tagged metadata?
• Do we have a file naming convention?

4. Upload Workflow

Determining workflow governance is a great way to bring clarity to users on the upload process of the DAM, ultimately aiding in an organized DAM and reducing admin maintenance. Questions to address include:

• Will assets be uploaded through the DAM, via an integration, or both?
• Will assets need to go through an approval workflow?
• Who will be responsible for uploading assets and approving new asset uploads?
• If assets are uploaded incorrectly, who is responsible for correcting this – the admin or the uploader?

Implementing your DAM Governance

When you have finalized your DAM governance plan you should socialize it across your organization. This can help to maximize it’s efficiency. The socialization process may differ for each user group or stakeholder group. Customize it based on their involvement in the DAM. For additional tips on how to successfully communicate and implement your plan, be sure to check out our webinar “How to Increase Your ROI with a DAM Governance Plan“.

MediaValet is a leader in cloud-based digital asset management that helps organizations manage, organize and share their digital assets, improving productivity and increasing ROI.

MediaValet is now offering DAM professional services to all customers – find out why you might need them!

Building the right tech stack is no easy task. One drawback to taking on a new tech partner is the intimidation of learning a new system. A lack of qualified individuals within the organization to launch and integrate the system independently can make it more difficult. A huge value-add to working with a new tech partner can be when they offer individualized Professional Services.

Professional Services help bridge the gap between the resources a customer currently has to help integrate a new tech system, and what they need to make it successful. In this post, we address five questions to better understand when to use Professional Services:

1. What Are Professional Services for DAM?
2. Why Use Professional Services for DAM?
3. What is The Difference Between an External and Internal Professional Services Team?
4. Why Should You Look for a DAM that Offers Professional Services?
5. What Are The Benefits of Professional Services Teams?

Let’s take a closer look at what exactly Professional Services offer for digital asset management (DAM) solutions.

1. What Are Professional Services for DAM?

When it comes to technology partners, Professional Services are considered additional services from an industry expert to enhance a technology purchase. A professional service is performed by an industry expert who can handle what needs to be done—whether that’s launching the DAM, maintaining it over time, or performing a refresh project. On top of training and support offered by DAM vendors, Professional Services teams help customers ensure they get the most out of the DAM solution.

2. Why Use Professional Services?

Many companies choose to use Professional Services because they ensure you get the highest ROI for your software. They remove the burden of hiring someone internally or as a contractor. Using Professional Services ensures that you don’t need to have the expertise in order to start using a DAM solution and provides you with an expert who is a perfect fit for your specific use case, making the entire process run smoothly.

3. What is the Difference Between an External and Internal Professional Services Team?

To start, external services teams may not be familiar with your software, which means they need to get up to speed before starting the project. This would result in extra billable hours. Additionally, an external service would also have its own vendor contract and billing, putting more paperwork and invoicing. External software professional service companies are typically larger teams that are more likely to be able to scale up for large enterprise needs.

When a DAM company has its own Professional Services team, it will already be experts in the platform. There won’t need to be a separate contract with its own vendor approval and NDA; it will simply be another invoice once the scope of work (SOW) is signed. Many internal Professional Services teams can handle larger projects, but it’s always best to check.

4. Why Should You Look For a DAM That Offers Professional Services?

Professional Services help to ensure that clients get the DAM system they need. Providing DAM software is only part of the service. DAM partners should ensure customers are happily and effectively using the system. Sometimes they need an extra step to get there, which is where Professional Services come into play.

MediaValet has its own Professional Services team that brings valuable and diverse backgrounds to the table. They offer an array of services for companies of all sizes, including:

• Onboarding enhancement packages,
• Bespoke asset enhancement projects, and
• A la carte options—smaller services that solve niche challenges.

5. What Are The Benefits of Professional Services Teams?

The top 3 benefits of using Professional Services at MediaValet include:

1. Working With Experts in Their Field: Chances are an external contractor is offering more general services, not quite as specific to DAM. Our Professional Services team is specialized in DAM taxonomy and strategy. They never need to play catch up on what’s best for your system.
2. Working with Experts in MediaValet: We know the product and we know our customers’ use cases. It’s a challenge to find taxonomists externally who are intimately familiar with how MediaValet handles metadata. MediaValet experts can make more informed decisions on how to structure data. This saves everyone time and makes for a better final product.
3. Convenience: Adding another contractor to your roster is a time-consuming task. There’s the interviewing process, request for proposals, proposal scoring, and setting up billing. Using our internal Professional Services team takes away the burden of this process.

In addition to our internal DAM Professional Services team, we also partner with stand-alone, external service teams that can handle projects outside of our offerings.

Ready to Get Started?

If you’d like to learn more about Professional Services and how they could help your organization, we’ve got you covered. Learn more about our Professional Services Program, here.

CIO priorities include implementing initiatives that are going to have the biggest impact on the business. As leaders in the IT world, CIOs are faced with the challenge of implementing and managing the right technology and processes to support all areas of the business. In a world where technology is constantly improving, adapting, and changing, this is no easy task.

Last year, CIO.com released an article sharing the top 8 priorities for CIOs in 2022 – many of which still resonate. Our takeaway? DAM could play a big role for CIOs leaning into some of these trends—and with good reason. Review the trends and see how DAM fits in.

4 CIO Priorities in 2023

While CIO.com covered 8 trends in their article, there were 4 in particular that stood out:

Trend 1: Optimize Digital Dexterity

One of the top priorities of the article is the need to improve digital dexterity. Specifically, the need to lean into technology that helps teams to streamline processes, even when working in a remote environment. As highlighted in the article: “The days when a team member could simply walk down the hall with an important contract and have a colleague physically sign it are over.” This thinking isn’t just limited to contracts. The “over the shoulder” way of collaborating and communicating is now much more limited. This emphasizes the need for new solutions and digital transformation.

Trend 2: Transitioning to The Cloud

Central to the topic of digital transformation is the need to commit to the cloud. The past three years have seen many organizations transition from on-premise solutions to the cloud—a trend that CIO.com anticipates will only continue to grow. In fact, even Steve Hagerman, CIO of Wells Fargo, shared that the organization will be moving to the cloud this year, despite operating in a highly regulated and security-focused industry. He expects the shift will result in benefits including “a more scalable workload, innovative practices, and an enhanced customer experience“. Those that fall behind on this trend risk being outpaced by their more agile competitors.

Trend 3: Double-Down on Automation

As the world moved to a work-from-home environment, many organizations were forced to accelerate their digital transformation to ensure that everyone could work efficiently outside of the office. With this in mind, it came as no surprise to see that CIOs are prioritizing automating redundant tasks and processes. Oliver Saucin, VP of Global IT Solutions at Computer Task Group, shared his insights into automating cost-inefficient processes to better position yourself to meet increasing business needs. He emphasized the need to prioritize areas where automation is already built into the solutions, in order to see faster proof of success.

Trend 4: Prepare for The Hybrid Workplace

While many have focused on enabling employees to work effectively from home, the next challenge for CIOs will be to address the hybrid working environment. Moving into 2023 and beyond, CIOs are addressing the needs of both those that are working in the office and at home, ensuring that tech and processes aren’t isolating or inconvenient. Just as important is ensuring that security remains high. Rahul Mahna, Managing Director of EisnerAmper, shares that the next phase will be creating hybrid environments that “function effectively and still facilitate secure platforms and delivery systems”. While the article focuses primarily on the impact of COVID-19 on employees ability to come into the office, the hybrid work environment is becoming a norm for many organizations.

How a DAM Can Help Solve CIO Priorities

Whether you’re remote, hybrid, or otherwise, improving processes and agility across teams is top of mind for CIOs. Using on-premise solutions, like servers and hard drives, to store your organization’s high-value assets (logos, images, videos, etc.) can significantly hinder your ability to work efficiently. Investing instead in a cloud-based digital asset management (DAM) solution can bring several benefits to your organization. Examples include:

1. Access for Remote and Hybrid Teams: When your assets are stored in the cloud, they are available 24/7, regardless of where someone is located. This means your organization is able to lean into remote or hybrid work environments—or grow to multiple offices.
2. Reduced Manual Processes: A DAM can help reduce some of the manual work from accessing the assets you need. No more requesting logos from the marketing team or asking your neighbor if they know where the latest document is. Everything is instantly available in the DAM.
3. Automated Asset Discoverability: Relying on file names and folders alone can make it near impossible to find your assets. A DAM solution simplifies discoverability, allowing you to enhance your assets with keywords, custom attributes, AI auto tags, and more.
4. Tailored Library Access: A DAM ensures users only have access to the assets that are useful for their specific role, location, or department. With custom user groups and permissions, it’s easy to tailor how each person can use the DAM (download, upload, share, etc.) and which categories they can access.

Learn More about MediaValet’s features

Benefits to The CIO

A cloud-based DAM brings many benefits to an organization. But it also has features that make it CIO-approved and friendly, including:

Enterprise-Level Security
A DAM offers enterprise-level security measures, such as triple redundancy, geo-replication, single sign-on, and more. These features ensure that your company’s assets are safe from loss due to human error or natural disaster. Some DAM vendors, like MediaValet, are even SOC 2 compliant.

Comprehensive Compliance
Many DAM vendors are compliant with common geographical and industry-related regulations. Plus, cloud providers, like Microsoft Azure, deliver a large set of compliance certifications and attestations and offer data residency in over 60 regions across the world.

Scalability
A DAM is able to scale endlessly and adapt to internal changes easily, as the organization grows and changes. Taking this one step further, MediaValet offers an unlimited model, allowing you to grow and change with minimal constraints.

Support and Training
A DAM vendor typically offers support and training as part of their solution, allowing the IT department to focus on other initiatives. MediaValet offers unlimited support and training to all customers.

Reduced TCO for Storage
A DAM reduces costs for storage hardware and removes the costs for upgrades, maintenance, and disaster recovery.

Learn more about MediaValet’s security

Prepare for Your Digital Transformation

If the CIO.com article made one thing clear, it’s that the time is now (if not yesterday) to invest in your digital transformation and, with that, your transition to the cloud. If your organization works with a ton of media assets, digital asset management should be your first stop.