If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed with a cascade of photos, videos, and documents spread across your phone, tablets and computer, you’re not alone. I’ve been working with a high-volume of data for many years as a TV reporter and photojournalist and I’m constantly improving my workflow and storage systems. Here are a few tips and tricks for you to consider when managing your personal and professional digital files:
Managing the fast-flowing stream of data requires thoughtful leadership and collaboration within your household or organization.
Don’t delay in planning and preparing. Now is the time to protect and organize your data to ensure its well-archived, easy to retrieve and safe from loss.
Managing digital assets is becoming more essential in the business environment. For leaders at all levels who are managing digital assets, it can be overwhelming if not managed with deliberate action and established protocols.
Commercial digital asset management platforms and systems, also known as “DAMs,” are on the rise and incredibly valuable as they make it easier to organize, access, and distribute marketing collateral. DAMs are designed to organize, enrich, archive, and distribute digital files quickly and efficiently. You can also manage this with external drives and cloud storage systems.
Why Should You Care About Managing Digital Assets?
Managing digital assets is an essential part of any organization and this means constant attention to core financial and operational costs, requirements, and expectations. Great consideration should be given as to who and how digital assets will be managed and protected.
As digital assets are increasing in importance, it’s vital to understand how essential they are for communications, branding, marketing and public relations efforts.
What is a Digital Asset?
A digital asset is generally anything that is created and stored digitally, is uniquely identifiable and discoverable, and has or provides value. It often includes intellectual property and its contents can’t be easily reproduced.
Most digital items, like a company's brand, can be assigned a value, monetary or intangible. Some digital items might only be valuable to the creator or one person, such as a family picture on your phone taken at a gathering. Others could be a collaborative project and valuable to a much wider audience.
Digital assets that have ownership rights can include:
Photos and logos
Documents, spreadsheets
Videos, media coverage
Books, newsletters
Audio/Music and podcasts
Animations and Illustrations
Manuscripts
Emails and email accounts
Metadata
Social media accounts
Gaming and Cryptocurrency accounts
According to an article on Comparesoft.com, many organizations are discovering the need for digital asset managers who are responsible for acquiring, cataloging, managing, and protecting digital assets and managing controls.
Digital asset managers oversee the following:
Efficient naming, storage, and maintenance of the usage rights of the related files.
Management and monitoring of the access and use of digital assets, ensuring brand consistency, compliance, and copyrights.
Promotion and optimization of the use of assets.
Whether you’re considering how to manage your personal digital assets or looking to learn how large organizations manage assets with better, the lifecycle can be broken into these four phases:
Creation
Creating digital assets can take many forms and come from many sources. Whether on personal mobile devices, computers, cameras, etc. content can also be transferred from another source and will require indexing and storage.
Indexing and Managing
To make assets easily available to its users by providing a searchable index that supports retrieval of assets by their content and/or metadata. The cataloging function is usually part of the ingestion process for new assets.
Distribution
Learning how to move from creation-to-export and the differences in types of files will help your workflow by saving time and improving efficiency. Sharing assets with other users requires understanding of a variety of distribution platforms but protecting the asset is key so it’s not lost, altered or stolen.
Archiving
Then comes the point where a digital asset reaches the end of its life. This is the time when an asset is no longer relevant and therefore becomes outdated. Having a proper process in place for dealing with obsolete digital assets is crucial.
(Graphic from www.comparesoft.com)
Finally, ensuring security controls are in place so relevant people have access is the key to a coordinated effort to protect intellectual property, prevent hacking and improve overall workflow. Periodically auditing controls will ensure timely access is available for those who need it and locked to those who don’t need it.
If you’ve ever lost data or been hacked, it can have a devastating impact on your personal and professional life. Establishing a workflow and archiving system can be done in small, easy steps and can make a great impact on how you manage data going forward.
Authored By: Amy Forsythe, Managing Director
References:
https://comparesoft.com/it-assets-management-software/digital-assets/
https://marcom.com/why-is-digital-asset-management-important/