What Is Digital Asset Storage?

According to the World Economic Forum, the astonishing number of data bits we produce and store will exceed the number of atoms on Earth in about 150 years. We can believe it. After all, every business, big and small and in every industry, handles digital files daily, and the number of these files is growing.

Most digital files fall under the umbrella of digital assets. These digital assets are essential to the organization's continued operations and must be stored securely while remaining accessible for future use.

But what is digital asset storage, and why do you need it? This guide to digital asset storage has all the answers. You'll also learn how to properly implement digital asset storage for all your teams so that you can take full advantage of its many benefits.

What Are Digital Assets?

Before we get into what digital asset storage is and what it will do for you, we need to define what digital assets are. Your digital assets are digital files that you create, store, and distribute digitally and hold value for your organization.

These can be anything from documents and data spreadsheets to brand guidelines, marketing materials, images, video clips, audio, and more.

Product design illustrations, infographics, sales charts, and customer engagement graphs can be digital assets. Remember, if it's digital and holds any value for your business or brand, it's a digital asset.

What Is Digital Asset Storage?

What is digital asset storage? It is organizing and storing your digital assets to preserve them for ongoing use in your organization. Digital asset storage helps businesses make sense of their growing number of digital files while housing them all in a central location.

Digital asset storage keeps all of your digital assets in order. But what is digital asset storage without the right strategy? That's where a digital asset management (DAM) system comes to the fore, maximizing the value of your digital assets. A DAM tool is ideally suited to every digital file-related task.

What Is a DAM Tool?

The right DAM tool makes all the difference to your digital asset storage process. A DAM tool is the software that provides the structure to that central hub of digital assets and enables the various functions required of digital asset management.

DAM tools provide storage and efficient management of your digital assets. Sure, it allows users to organize, categorize, and store files. However, a multi-functional and customizable DAM tool like Razuna will enable teams to revise, optimize, share, and distribute digital asset files.

7 Benefits of Digital Asset Storage

What is the benefit of using a digital asset storage system? More importantly, what is DAM's benefit to your business?

With the right digital asset storage system, the collective benefits can give any organization or brand a significant advantage over its competitors. Here are the top seven benefits.

1. Centralized Organization

Digital asset storage provides a central organizational hub for your digital files. All your digital assets are available in one place, making it possible to access any file anytime. There's no more wasting time navigating multiple file locations for different file types.

All your files are accessible in one location, in a universal gallery, or their relevant categories and sub-categories. You will always have an accurate view of your entire portfolio of digital assets.

2. Rich Metadata

A digital asset storage system lets you categorize your digital assets using rich metadata. The more supporting data supplied and the more detailed it is, the faster and simpler file and search and retrieval becomes.

The system will be able to automatically correlate the metadata to the corresponding tags on your other digital assets. Users will find relevant content based on their search interests with almost no effort. It's yet another way digital asset storage makes managing your digital assets faster, simpler, and better.

3. Enhanced Collaboration

Is collaboration a regular part of your business processes? We're confident it is. Most organizations across industries thrive on collaboration. This can take many forms, from interdepartmental teamwork to remote collaboration and external stakeholder participation.

Whatever the case in your business, the fact is that your digital assets are regularly viewed, worked on, and shared between multiple users. Digital asset storage enhances these collaborative efforts, as every team member quickly locates the necessary files.

The best DAM tools offer version control and other collaboration features, such as workspaces and comment sections, enhancing collaboration further.

4. Raised Productivity

With digital asset storage, less really is more. Thanks to the time and effort saved with its centralized organization and its ability to enhance collaboration, digital asset storage increases your teams' efficiency and, hence, their productivity.

Smaller businesses with less staff can excel, even in the most competitive sectors, and become more profitable. It's one of the easiest ways to boost your business performance without excessive training or capital investment.

5. Better Brand Management

Managing your brand entails storing and collaborating on the digital assets to create, represent, and promote your brand. Digital asset storage allows you to do this, whether you're nurturing one or multiple brands.

6. Brand Consistency

Unless you keep your brand messaging, imagery, and communications consistent, you risk alienating your customer base. Confusing branding also complicates your efforts in targeting new consumer markets.

Fortunately, digital asset storage helps you keep your branding consistent, as teams can always refer to brand guidelines and branding examples. Rebranding? That's not a problem when you update the files in your digital asset storage system.

7. Increased Security

Every business needs to keep their digital assets secure. The threat of cybercrime is always present, and the more digital the world becomes, the more significant that looming danger becomes. So, what is digital asset storage's role in cybersecurity?

DAM ensures that digital assets are secure and safe from unauthorized access and tampering. File integrity is constantly assured by using the built-in security settings and access permissions.

Who Uses Digital Asset Storage and What Do They Use It For?

What is digital asset storage used for in different organizations and industries, and who uses it? The short answers are — just about everything and everyone!

Everyone from product designers and developers to content creation studios, advertising agencies, and IT specialists need digital asset storage. Your own branding and marketing divisions need it, too. Although the various sectors have unique tasks, they all rely heavily on digital assets.

Documents, brand guidelines, promotional content, marketing images, customer engagement video clips; the list goes on and on. The more types of digital assets are used, the larger the collection grows, necessitating a greater need for adequate digital asset storage.

Examples of Digital Asset Storage Use Across Departments

Digital asset storage helps teams in all departments of an organization do their jobs better. Here are examples of how different teams in a typical organization use digital asset storage.

Product Design and Development

Product design and development teams use digital asset storage for their technical drawings, illustrations, product images, and demonstration videos. They use it to access and collaborate on these files and distribute them to stakeholders for review, input, and approval.

Branding and Brand Marketing

Branding and brand development teams use digital asset storage. It allows them to organize their brand guideline documents and font examples, images, audio, and video files used to build a brand identity. Logos, slogans, jingles, and more are all kept consistent by keeping branding assets secure.

Marketing and Advertising

Marketing, advertising, and promotion teams use digital asset storage for their marketing materials, advertising images and videos, and promotional catalogs. The digital assets they use and produce to market, advertise, and promote your brand and products are readily available when needed.

How to Implement Digital Asset Storage

We've established that digital asset storage is a top priority for virtually every industry. However, it will only offer you all of its benefits with the proper implementation strategies.

1. Assess Your Requirements

First, assess your unique digital asset storage requirements. What types of files do you use the most, and how many do you handle daily? How many users will need access to the system, and will you have to pay per user? Do your digital assets have higher-than-normal security requirements?

These are the questions before choosing a digital asset storage and management solution. Make a list of your answers to get a checklist of your digital asset storage needs.

2. Choose the Right Solution

Next, compare your list of needs against the features of the DAM systems you're considering using, and choose the right solution to meet your specific needs. Look for dedicated servers and cloud-based file storage, compliance with data storage regulations, and innovative technological features.

Will this digital asset storage solution be as relevant to your needs in the future as it is now? You need a system that will grow with your organization. Select the most pertinent and scalable option, like our secure-hosted solutions. You can even deploy Razuna on your servers or in the private cloud.

3. Define Folder Structure and Naming Conventions

Once you've found the proper digital asset storage and management tool, you must make it your own. Define the folder structure and naming conventions that best meet your needs and that your teams are most familiar with.

Our customizable labels, descriptions, and tags will keep your file categorization relevant and help your team find the correct files faster. And thanks to our AI algorithm, you can save time with an auto-tagging feature.

4. Set Security Measures

Before migrating any digital assets to their new centralized location, set the measures to keep them secure. This ensures your digital assets are protected from day one in the new storage system.

Remember to assess each file category's unique security needs and control access accordingly. Use permission settings and update these when team members leave or new ones are added. Because we know how crucial digital asset security is, even our sharing links can be set with expiration dates.

5. Train Your Teams

Regardless of how innovative your software is, it is only helpful if the people using it know how to make the most of it. Identify who will use the new digital asset storage system and set aside enough time to instruct them on its proper use.

This will achieve two vital objectives. Firstly, your team members will use the DAM system correctly, and technical errors will be avoided. Secondly, they will be acutely aware of all the innovative features they can use to make their jobs easier.

6. Migrate and Organize Assets

It's time to migrate your digital assets to your digital asset storage system. But before you do, run a last check of all the aforementioned steps. Are you confident that you have met all these basic requirements? If so, migrate your digital asset files to the new system.

Organize them into appropriate categories using the folder structure and naming conventions you decided on earlier. Congratulations! You've successfully implemented a digital asset storage system that meets your needs.

The Importance of Digital Asset Storage Maintenance

You've implemented a digital asset storage system, but it doesn't end there. As your business and digital asset collection grow, so does your need for digital asset storage maintenance.

Your business will constantly be adapting to new developments and challenges. Branding and marketing campaigns will end, and new ones will begin. Clients will finalize their business with you, and you'll welcome new ones. Employees will resign or retire, bringing new hires into the fold.

Your digital asset storage solution must adapt to these changes too.

Tips For Digital Asset Storage and DAM Tool Maintenance

• Regularly review what's stored in your DAM system and assess what's still relevant and what isn't. Delete duplicates and any other files that are no longer accurate or necessary. This decluttering will make it easier to locate your more critical digital assets.
• Revise your folder and file naming conventions that may have become obsolete. For example, if they corresponded to the clients or business partners you no longer work with, update their names and metadata.
• Regularly monitor your teams' use of the software to ensure that they are using it to its full potential. Encourage them to ask questions and offer feedback on their experience with the tools. This will quickly highlight any potential gaps in their training.
• Provide refresher courses on the DAM software for existing staff, and don't forget to provide extra instruction for new hires. Don't assume they will know how to use all the DAM tool features.

Conclusion

What is digital asset storage? It is the process of organizing and storing your digital assets in an orderly and sensible way. Digital asset storage facilitates content collaboration, brand management, file security, and more.

You need the right digital asset management tool to fully realize digital asset potential and craft the perfect digital asset storage system. One has features allowing users to categorize, store, share, and even update files with just a few clicks.

Razuna is the DAM tool you can trust to store and manage your company's digital assets safely. With all the innovative features you need and more regularly added, it's become the obvious choice in digital asset storage for thousands of customers worldwide.

Create an account and get started today!