DAM Guide – Optimize the management of your digital assets with DAM

This optimization is necessary due to the ever-increasing volume of digital data used every day by these organizations.

To carry out its function of optimizing the management of digital assets, DAM software like Ephoto Dam enables the management of files throughout their entire life cycle. The life cycle of a multimedia file is divided into four major phases: creation, management, distribution, and storage. This includes many actions pertaining to files, like administration, collecting, sorting, indexing, modifying, viewing, sharing, searching, archiving, etc.

Optimizing the management of these many tasks related to handling digital assets not only helps companies and public-sector entities save time, but also makes work more convenient and saves money. Of course, DAM software can only achieve its objective if it’s adapted to the needs of the various teams using it. Certain electronic document management (EDM) solutions allow you to manage all types of files, whereas others, namely DAM software, are specially designed for the management of multimedia files (images, photos, videos, audio files, etc.). In particular, this is the case for Ephoto Dam, which is specifically designed for the management of photos and videos. That said, Ephoto Dam can also handle other types of multimedia files, including audio files, PDFs, and PPTs, for example.

Optimizing digital asset management naturally includes effective sorting of the multimedia files created and stored. Such a system centralizes storage so that files can be easily found and reused at any time.

First and foremost, the sorting of digital assets results from organizational choices made by humans, not from choices made by the digital asset management software. Indeed, the sorting of digital assets in a DAM platform is derived from the sorting plan established by the company or public-sector entity. In the software, a hierarchical list is established, generally resulting in a directory that can be used for navigation. In concrete terms, data are sorted by placing them in different collections, organized using a directory of keywords or a sorting plan (also known as a thesaurus), according to the organization’s needs.

Proper sorting is essential for optimizing digital asset management since it later affects the efficiency of processing and searching for data, accessing files, etc.

Depending on the application and the user’s preferences, there are two different ways to sort files. File sorting can be automated using metadata, as long as the user has included said metadata in their sorting plan. It’s also possible to sort files manually, meaning that the human user will personally sort the files.

The digital data centralized in the digital asset management application can be viewed directly in the software using dedicated tools. That means you don’t have to extract your digital assets to view them. When viewing digital assets this way, the term used is “pull mode.”

Digital assets can also be viewed with external tools that are totally independent from the DAM system. In that case, the data are “distributed,” the technical term being “push mode.” To view digital files in push mode, you first have to export them from the DAM system.

DAM systems offer both of these options. The choice to use one or the other to view a file will depend on the user’s needs. A user generally only needs to export a file when they want to use it, or simply view it, in an external system.

While we distinguish between archiving and storage, they are really just two ways of preserving digital assets.

Archiving is a way of preserving digital files considered “dormant.” These are digital files that are no longer used regularly, but which you want to preserve in case someone wants to view them in the future. Sometimes files must be archived due to legal obligations for preserving certain documents.

Storage, meanwhile, is a way of preserving your digital assets used regularly. The purpose of storage is mainly to enable the sharing of multimedia files with coworkers, partners, journalists, customers, etc. Storage also allows you to find files across multiple devices: computers, tablets, etc.

In both cases, all files can be hosted by the provider of the digital asset management system.