Digital Asset Management An Integral Part of an Overall Marketing Operations Management Strategy WHITE PAPER
SAS White Paper Table of Contents Effective Marketing Collateral Management... 1 Digital Asset Management Software: Why It Matters... 1 Why Marketers Need a Digital Asset Management Solution... 2 How Digital Asset Management Supports the Marketing Process.. 2 Features of a DAM Solution.... 2 Production.... 2 Distribution.... 3 Digital Asset Management: The Centerpiece of Marketing Operations Management.... 3 About SAS... 6 The content provider for this paper was Ioannis Stavridis, Business Expert, SAS DACH Center of Excellence for Customer Intelligence.
Digital Asset Management Effective Marketing Collateral Management There is much more to managing marketing collateral than meets the eye. From creation to distribution, marketers need to master many process steps to enable colleagues across the enterprise to use and reuse digital assets, such as graphics, advertisements, photos, video and multimedia files. Organizational complexity makes this a much more challenging task. In large enterprises, marketers collaborate across offices as well as with external partners in a virtual environment to create and publish media content, such as texts, graphics, photos, audio and video. They are also responsible for preserving brand image and enforcing corporate design standards. In particular, they need to ensure that colleagues, departments, branch offices and partners use templates and reuse marketing collateral in their communications with the market. Most corporate marketing organizations struggle to keep this control while giving users the freedom to populate approved templates with messages and graphics, and create customized material as needed. Moreover, the sheer number of contributors agencies, creative staff, decision makers, project and campaign managers, etc. makes content or design errors more likely to occur, since the more people that are involved in a collaborative effort, such as discussing or editing a draft, the more complicated its coordination. When a marketing organization spans multiple locations or subsidiaries, yet another layer of complexity is added as advertisement layouts, email templates, sales letters and presentations need to be formatted according to local standards and needs, and complemented with dealer addresses, sales promotions and other specific information. Against this backdrop, how can marketers: Make collateral production more transparent, faster and failsafe? Grant contributors access to up-to-date information at any time? Save valuable content from organizational oblivion, and maximize its reuse? Enforce corporate design standards throughout the enterprise, even when collateral needs to be localized? This is where digital asset management comes into play. As part of an overall marketing operations management strategy, digital asset management helps corporate marketing departments centrally manage creative assets from production to on-demand distribution across the enterprise. Digital Asset Management Software: Why It Matters Digital asset management software helps companies systematize the creation and administration of marketing collateral, such as boilerplates, images, brochures, sales presentations, multimedia or Web content. From draft to distribution, the entire production and approval workflow is coordinated and made transparent in an integrated, collaborative environment. The digital asset management system also serves as an always-available, central source of up-to-date information for authorized users. 1
SAS White Paper Why Marketers Need a Digital Asset Management Solution Digital asset management software helps marketing organizations assert their sovereignty over the digital assets they create and own. It provides an unbureaucratic way to administer and use sensitive marketing content across the enterprise. Information scattered over multiple systems, including those of external partners, can be integrated and managed centrally. In addition, by coordinating processing steps such as approval, legal review or the application of branding guidelines, the system eliminates many typical sources of error. How Digital Asset Management Supports the Marketing Process Managing marketing collateral comprises two main stages: 1. Production 2. Distribution Advertising Creation Process Version Provision Release Print-ready Output Immediate Control of Results Store and Arrange Provision Catalog Templating Metadata Access Control Provision in Digital Asset Management Features of a DAM Solution Production A visual configurator helps marketing teams create a plethora of templates quickly, thus facilitating the reuse of digital assets. Users can save and visualize their drafts at any time. This gives them the opportunity to review their work immediately, varying textual and graphic input for comparison. At the click of a button, the final version is saved as a high-resolution PDF file with linked images that are ready for print. 2
Digital Asset Management Contributions can be routed to corporate headquarters or other authorized contacts for approval to ensure end-to-end documentation as well as compliance with corporate design standards. After completion and approval, digital assets are filed in a logical hierarchy with role-based access control. Distribution The DAM solution enables marketers to organize digital assets in a multilevel folder hierarchy of their choice after production. To facilitate searching and access, the system automatically generates previews, thumbnails and links. Media files can be marked with multiple tags (metadata) to make it easier for users to retrieve them without exactly knowing the original context. The system automatically numbers new versions of a file. Previous versions are archived and blocked from public access. Using a Web client, both internal and external contributors can submit new content from anywhere. When administrators drag and drop those files into the designated folders, the system automatically catalogs them and adds the corresponding metadata. Access rights can be differentiated by user role. To comply with regulatory, industry and corporate standards, administrators can specify sophisticated security policies that govern who may access which content to what extent. Digital Asset Management: The Centerpiece of Marketing Operations Management Gartner analysts have ranked efficient marketing operations management among the top three missions for corporate marketing organizations to accomplish over the next few years. And digital asset management software forms the centerpiece of effective marketing operations management. Learn More Learn more about SAS Marketing Operations Management online at sas.com/marketingoperations. Through conversations with our customers, and from our project experience, SAS has developed a keen understanding of the challenges that chief marketing officers are facing today, and we have infused that knowledge into our SAS Marketing Operations Management solution to help our customers master their toughest issues including digital asset management. Contact SAS today or visit us online at sas.com/ marketingoperations to find out more about the digital asset management capabilities of SAS Marketing Operations Management. 3
About SAS SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions, SAS helps customers at more than 60,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW. SAS Institute Inc. World Headquarters +1 919 677 8000 To contact your local SAS office, please visit: sas.com/offices SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright 2012, SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. 105940_S93240_0812