The Benefits of a DAM system
Why a Digital Asset Management system could help you work better, smarter and harder
Efficient image and artwork file storage has always been one of the biggest headaches in the industry. Your assets are valuable, worth the time and effort you’ve put in to have them shot or created, and their storage should be taken seriously.
A Digital Asset Management system, or a DAM, is the ideal solution to managing and safely cataloging those assets. It provides a safe and clearly catalogued filing library to store your assets, and supports easy and hassle-free distribution that doesn’t rely on valuable management time. To distribute, you simply grant access via a login to whomever needs to access your material, and they can download whatever it is they need through the web portal service. It can be that easy. A DAM can literally save you hundreds of hours in management time because it removes the need to have someone readily available to respond to image and content supply requests.
Make curating your files as easy as 1, 2, click…
A DAM system makes curating your content easier than it's ever been. Long gone are the years of images saved to hard drives, which can easily get lost in transit, or even in the office. By storing all your essential files in one single, online resource, you can easily see all your assets and curate them as necessary, removing out of date imagery, old campaigns, and previous revisions of artwork, as required.
With more advanced systems, it can even be possible to set timers against imagery that has copyright or legal considerations, so that they become blocked for download after a certain date, ensuring that you’re meeting your compliance requirements.
A DAM can save you studio time as well, by allowing your colleagues and partners to download imagery or content in a variety of formats, such as jpegs, tifs or pdfs, again saving you hours of manpower through automation. Sizes can be chosen too, with options to download low res placeholders, lower dpi content for web applications, and high res images for print. This is perfect for companies running multi-platform advertising, where you may be sharing the same campaign imagery across print, TV, web banners, social media and other outlets.
Practical uses every day
From a studio point of view, a DAM system can be used to streamline all kinds of publishing and project work. Whether you’re populating a catalogue, brochure or website, having a singular DAM system to store, manage and distribute images can make a wealth of difference to the time and money you pour into production. Keep your unedited, raw images away from approved, colour corrected collections, and ensure that only the best imagery available is used.
The 360DAM System
At WK360, we’ve harnessed the power of the DAM into our workflows, allowing us to benefit from all a DAM has to offer in our fast-paced and busy workspace. When we shoot photography for clients in our dedicated Image Studio, we kickstart a process that streamlines content creation and review.
Each shot we take is immediately uploaded to our 360DAM as raw, unedited files, with every click of the shutter producing a new image on the system. Clients logged into the 360DAM can then review these images literally as they’re created, either on site or remotely, and select and dismiss them as required. Those images that are selected are then moved through the system to our team of repro operatives, based just across the road, who can download the raw files and work on them immediately, retouching, balancing and making any amendments as requested by the client.
Resaved as tiffs or jpegs, they’re then reuploaded to the 360DAM for a second review, and either edited further or signed off, wherein they are move into an approved folder and made available for whomever the end recipient is, be that our own artwork department, or an exterior agency or partner. In harnessing this technology and moulding it to our processes, we have produced an extremely effective and innovative workflow that benefits both our clients and our own employees, with full tracking, accountability and accessibility that makes everyones’ lives easier.
Who benefits from a DAM?
Literally everybody! DAM systems are beneficial to every size, type and corner of commerce, from new start-ups who are hungry for new content, to franchises who have multiple distribution points, to clients with literally decades of assets and files who need to bring their storage and management facilities into line.
We store artwork files and assets for some of the biggest multinational clients, everything from packaging templates, to campaign rollouts, and everything in between.
We take the strain of the management and storage to free up their staff and systems for better efficiency and cost reduction across the board. No client is too big, and no file system too daunting!