If organising your work documents and folders has been your New Year’s resolution for some time now, let’s face it — it’s not going to get done, especially if you’re still using a traditional file storage system. No one’s got time to sift through folders, structure an information hierarchy, and then drag and drop files where they need to be. That’s why you should take the easier path and offload this tedious job to a cloud-based digital asset management system.
A cloud-based digital asset management (DAM) solution encapsulates the best of both worlds for work organisation: the flexibility of the cloud and the speed and convenience of digitisation. It’s a must-have business enhancement that helps you find and organise files in seconds, as well as allowing you to control access permissions for faster and more frictionless collaboration. The less time spent on admin work, the better, so let’s take a closer look.
Don’t drown in files
When you need a digital asset, you probably needed it yesterday, which means speed is of the essence. But if you don’t have a good organisational system going, you can waste a lot of time and energy digging through different folders and guessing which one has the file you need. It’s even worse when you’re trying to find something that someone else saved; woe betide you if they’re prone to using numbers for their filenames or, worse yet, ‘Untitled’.
Save yourself the pain. cloud DAM solution does all the hard work for you by organising your assets according to predefined categories, then indexes them with keywords, tags, and metadata to make it easy for you to find what you need. For instance, maybe you want an image from last year’s Christmas campaign — just search for ‘Christmas’ or something you remember from the visual, like ‘presents’. It doesn’t get much easier than that!
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Make organisation easier
No one likes file organisation because it’s tedious, but the longer you leave it, the bigger the problem becomes with more files added daily. Plus, the more chaotic the asset organisation system, the more lax employees tend to be about how they store and organise their own files — many often save them to their own desktop by default. These files do get backed up if the employee leaves, but who’s going to volunteer to put the files in the correct shared folders?
A cloud-based digital asset management system’s value lies in its capacity to be a central repository that greatly simplifies asset storage and organisation, which encourages people to make using it a habit. Once you’ve set your custom categories, tags, and folders, all that’s left to do on upload is select the correct settings — the DAM solution will do the rest. Plus, being able to find correctly categorised assets quickly is sure to be added incentive to stay organised.
Streamline collaboration
Collaboration via email is still very common in today’s workplaces, but as every employee knows, it can be very confusing and time-consuming. Trying to get approval on a partnership press release via email from three different stakeholders can lead to you having to identify the updated version from amongst the duplicates hidden like decoys within the email chain. To top it all off, if you mistakenly distribute the wrong version, it’s your neck on the line.
Why put yourself through this? Cloud-based digital asset management systems have in-built collaboration features for everyone to access the same version of the document instantly. They can leave feedback and suggestions directly on the file, as well as see edits reflected in real time. This makes it much faster and easier to achieve consensus on an asset — and when the changes are all finalised, the file’s already saved in the proper place so you won’t lose it.
Don’t compromise on security
Cloud-based software is sometimes seen as less secure because it grants greater accessibility than its non-cloud counterparts. However, most types of modern cloud software are equipped with robust protection, including features such as multi-factor authentication, automatic backups, encryption, and more. A cloud-based DAM system is no different; in fact, it can be more secure than traditional file storage because it isn’t nearly as susceptible to hardware failure, which can be catastrophic for solutions like physical hard drives.
Access control is another area where cloud DAM solutions tend to shine. For instance, creative agencies tend to share or send marketing campaign assets to clients via solutions like WeTransfer and DropBox, which still means that version control issues may arise if the files aren’t updated. But with a cloud DAM solution, you can grant clients access to the assets within the solution itself, keeping everyone aligned with the least possible effort. You can also control the level of access that you give people, such as read-only, editor, or more.
Scale as you do
Traditional file storage systems tend to be static. This means that when you run out of space, you might need to purchase new hardware to expand your storage or manually spring clean your drive to free up room. Additionally, as your hardware hits capacity, it may start to suffer a drop in performance as a result. But if your company is growing, there’s probably a thousand and one other things that need your attention instead of server space and file storage.
A cloud-based digital asset management system is the perfect partner for growing companies because you can scale your storage as you need. Running a two-person consultancy and only need 50GB of storage? No problem. Grow to a 20-strong outfit in five years and need a lot more space? Done. You don’t even have to worry about migration — simply upgrade your plan and enjoy not having added scaling-related headaches like managing server infrastructure.
Designed to support a digital-driven workforce
Just as we moved from keeping important work documents in cardboard folders and boxes to storing digital files in servers and hard drives, the time has come for another paradigm shift. With robust features such as AI tagging, usage rights management, and multi-faceted search and discovery tools, cloud-based digital asset management systems are becoming a popular choice among organisations for their capacity to streamline asset management workflows.
Speed and accuracy are of the essence for organisations to keep pace in a digital era, which means companies need to work smarter, not harder. Leave the grunt work of asset management to the cloud DAM solutions and focus on doing what you do best — achieving those mission-critical business goals.
