Companies lost so much in terms of productivity every year because workers spend more than two hours of their day just trying to locate up-to-date creative files. Such inefficiency can mean a significant loss in revenue.
Images and videos grow stale, and a creative team can get overwhelmed because of being swamped by requests for materials they’ve already produced if there’s no central place where they can store creative files as well as manage them.
Fortunately, creative asset management comes in and offers help. It enables organizations to have a central location for all approved and up-to-date visual assets. It also gives the design team more time to focus on what really matters while cutting down on wasted time.
What’s Creative Asset Management?
Creative asset management is the method of storing, organizing, and managing digital files for easy access or retrieval when needed by an organization or company. To be a little more precise, it is essentially a digital library where animations, podcasts, presentations, videos, audios, and images are stored and organized. It makes all of your creative assets highly accessible and very quick to locate.
While creative asset management makes more sense in industries that deal with graphic design, advertising, and content creation, it can also be utilized in companies that deal with a high volume of files. In other words, the system can be used as an organizing tool and file-sharing platform.
The Benefits Of Creative Asset Management
The core benefits of creative asset management include:
1. A Highly Adaptive Solution
From simple solutions that will help companies organize digital files to robust systems with complex features like cloud storage and various permissions, creative asset management fits any modern organization. The software that can be used for the management of creative assets is highly adaptive and is always up-to-date.
2. Allows For Easy Content Modification
Stored creative assets that can’t be accessed, modified, or used whenever you need them won’t be working to your advantage. Excellent digital asset management supports workflows where companies or organizations can change or adjust content without any problems. These include files that are currently being modified by others or require approval.
3. Improves Productivity And Efficiency
Creative asset management helps boost efficiency and productivity by eliminating the need for requesting assets each time they have to be utilized. Marketing teams that constantly use graphic designs and imagery to add visual appeal and elevate content will surely benefit from such a solution. As a result, any rework on materials that have already been produced can be prevented. It also reduces design requests.
4. Organizes Assets With Ease
Companies will be able to check their creative assets’ quality by organizing their digital materials from creation to completion. They’ll not only be able to convert, export, store, and convert files but also see when materials are added to the system. Organizations can even access metadata with the help of creative asset management. It keeps all the relevant people and teams up to date on developments and gives employees the ability to locate assets effortlessly.
5. Ensures Brand Consistency
Photos, videos, color palettes, and company logos all get shared across marketing materials frequently. The problem is that creative teams often use outdated images and old logos because they weren’t aware refreshed versions exist. Other times, they just couldn’t find the correct files. Branding consistency and integrity suffer as a result. Teams, partners, agencies, affiliates, and clients will always have access to the company’s latest approved version of files with a centralized repository for all the different creative assets.
6. Manages Control Over Creative Assets
It’s impossible to know who exactly has access to what if images and other creative files are only floating around in documents and emails. What digital asset management does is set up different access levels and permissions to files so that organizations can manage control over their digital assets. Not only it makes file management a breeze, but it also provides secure material allocation.
Simply saying, creative asset management helps provide guidelines on how and where to use digital files. It also allows design teams to control who has full access to essential materials.
How To Choose A Creative Asset Management Solution
It’s time to look for a creative asset management system to match your needs now that you know the benefits of having one. The best solutions all demonstrate several core principles, even if there’s really no one-size-fits-all approach.
Check the best practices for selecting a creative asset management system below.
- High Level Of Adaptability – The best creative asset management solutions allow administrators to configure the system to ensure that a team member in a given role can access and see only the assets and features they need for their job. Such adaptability helps companies achieve a less cluttered work environment, lower stress, and higher productivity.
- Easy And Quick File Distribution – The best asset management systems allow organizations to easily and quickly distribute materials to different platforms, such as employee desktops, email, and even social media. It’s essential because some digital assets are made for distribution.
- Seamless Collaboration – creative asset management solutions must be collaborative because today’s workplace requires teamwork and collaboration more than ever. The system must provide various tools that allow team members to collaborate seamlessly. For example, creative asset management should enable more efficient and well-organized discussions around digital assets. The creation and modification of files become smoother this way.
- A Wide Range Of Custom Reporting And Analytics – Who has been accessing the digital assets? What’s currently in production or being modified? Who’s adding or uploading new materials? Where are they published? These are some of the questions that companies or organizations have regarding their creative capital. That’s why excellent reporting and analytics are vital in asset management.
Final Thoughts
Companies that leverage effective creative asset management gain efficiency by getting more traction from their digital files, ensuring brand compliance, and streamlining workflows. Amplify the benefits that this post has discussed above by taking the time to create or produce a clear and consistent strategy for managing your digital assets.
