DAM for All: The Key Stakeholders of an Enterprise DAM Solution

Whether you are CMO, Brand Manager or IT Director at your company, you’re most likely familiar with your company’s Digital Asset Management system. An enterprise DAM provides a range of benefits for various teams and departments at your organization. So, who are the different DAM stakeholders and how do they benefit from such a solution? 

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From content centralization and enhanced team collaboration to effective brand management, there are a number of benefits of a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution. We’ve explored the key reasons for investing in Enterprise DAM by use case and industry. Now it’s time to dive into the relevant stakeholders of an enterprise DAM - in other words, the key users of your solution.

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When investing in enterprise DAM, you’re not only bringing together assets and processes, but the people across your company and extended business organization. DAM facilitates the exchange of information across different departments and accelerates the productivity of various teams. It serves as a core component of your marketing technology stack and business processes, but it also acts as a brand management tool, an engine for personalized customer experiences, a basecamp for visual storytelling, an avenue for creative collaboration and a portal for sales channel enablement.  

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Adopting an enterprise DAM is an organization-wide initiative involving multiple stakeholders, each representing different departmental needs. Let’s explore some of the main groups:

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Who are the main DAM Stakeholders?

Marketing Directors & Brand Managers 

The marketing team is one of, if not the most obvious users of your DAM solution, which explains why the CMO is often involved in the decision-making process as he or she is responsible for driving marketing revenue and improving marketing ROI. The main priorities for marketing and brand management teams are to improve the customer experience with personalized and brand consistent content across all channels that will result in higher engagement and increased revenue. By providing a Single Source of Truth library where marketing teams can easily access, share, distribute and re-use marketing and brand assets for marketing campaigns, an enterprise DAM solution facilitates the daily operations of marketing and brand management teams while removing common bottlenecks - finding the right media file, understanding rights surrounding the use of licensed images, tracking and measuring the use of assets etc...

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Content Creators & Project Managers

Production and creative teams are responsible for creating marketing content in support of the customer journey. They are another primary user group of an enterprise DAM system as it allows creatives to scale content creation and shorten time to market. A DAM provides creative users with the right collaboration tools, such as efficient workflows and approval processes, and also lets users easily share media files both internally and with external agencies, partners or legal viewers to collaborate and review assets. With an enterprise DAM, companies can accelerate content production and meet deadlines while maintaining visibility on projects. Some DAMs even integrate with common creative tools like Adobe Creative Cloud to make it easier for content creators and designers to create, modify or update marketing materials. Take Wedia’s Content Picker as an example. 

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Product & Image Leaders

Another important group of DAM stakeholders is the product team. Product leaders are responsible for product launches i.e. pushing products online with their relevant assets, content and description. For them, timing is of the essence. Product leaders need to ensure product campaigns are delivered on various channels, including their website and e-commerce sites. They also need to ensure visuals, print and video content accompanying products are adapted by regional groups to the local market and language. An enterprise DAM system allows these teams to find and organize assets by product and product line, as well as deliver and resize assets according to various devices, formats, user contexts, or behaviors. Especially in today’s digital first economy, enterprise DAM has become key to helping product leaders bring products to market and creating endless variations and customer experiences that result in sales. 

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Social Media Managers

Besides your website and e-commerce channel, social media is another key consumer-facing digital touchpoint. But content needs to be repurposed for each social media channel. An enterprise DAM is useful for social media managers who need to constantly crop and adapt assets to the right format and dimensions. It also integrates with various social networks so that teams can easily publish images and videos directly to their Facebook, YouTube or Pinterest account, with insights available in the platform to track asset performance.

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Sales Representatives & Channel Partners

Sales teams and channel partners are responsible for selling the products and services of your company either directly or indirectly through sales channels. By centralizing important up-to-date documents such as sales proposals, demo videos, or decks etc. an enterprise DAM enables internal sales representatives to quickly find content for their presentations and sales pitches. They can also share one or a collection of relevant materials securely with prospects from their DAM system. Similarly, your company’s network of channel partners like retailers, dealers and resellers can also access the marketing and product information they need to create localized marketing campaigns. In addition to customizable branded templates, retailers can even order and print POS materials for in-store displays from their DAM solution. 

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Then last but not least DAM stakeholder, the IT Department

The IT department is responsible for the management and security of your company's assets. They want to make sure solutions introduced in your organization are performant, reliable and secure, and of course in line with company-wide goals and IT infrastructure. Thankfully, an enterprise DAM provides many security measures. First and foremost, it ensures assets are safe, securely stored and organized in a cloud-based media library, with different levels of permissions for different users and user groups. Depending on the vendor, enterprise DAMs offer a number of compliance certifications (GDPR, ISO 27001 etc) and are modern, scalable platforms that can easily connect to your company’s growing marketing and devops stack. While enterprise DAM provides a range of benefits for marketing and sales teams, there are a number of ways DAM can be a pain reliever for IT teams. 

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Whether you are a marketer, designer, salesperson, or information manager, an enterprise DAM is designed to support different teams in achieving their business goals. Selecting a vendor that is able to align the needs and priorities of both core and casual users is crucial in ensuring future adoption of your solution and long-term success of your business.

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