There is a lot of dubiety between SharePoint and Digital Asset Management. Both seem to serve the same purpose, but they are different. SharePoint can store digital assets and organize them, having some characteristics of Digital asset management (DAM) like library storage.
One question arises here: Does DAM is for your organization if SharePoint is already there. The answer is depending on the needs. DAM cannot replace SharePoint but can extend the functionality further.
There are many advantages DAM has to offer over SharePoint. Fusing them brings the powerful collaboration form. The system becomes more adaptable and compatible with the organization.
For more clarity, the article will discuss the difference and gains of SharePoint and Digital Asset Management.
Significant Distinction Between SharePoint and DAM
From the definition, SharePoint is for creating a collaboration website where team members communicate and share necessary files and information. It automates the workflow and provides efficiency in the process. With the dashboard in it, members oversee all the recent work activity, newsfeeds, team calendars, and other relevant information quickly and conveniently.
Coming to the DAM, it’s a tool focusing on managing and organizing digital assets. With DAM, you can navigate and search the digital information in a vast amount very quickly without any issues. It drops the user on its exact location. When you are working with the bulks of digital assets that require internal or external sharing, retrieval, or finding, DAM is the solution.
By the way, SharePoint also serves as a DAM light version, allowing sharing and uploading of digital files with the team.
Benefits of Digital Asset Management
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Improved Return on Investment
There are analytics tools included in DAM that track and monitor the usage of the asset. It tells who used it, how, when, and where. Such information can then be used for optimizing the content strategy decisions.
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Other Management Software can be Connected
If you manufacture or deliver merchandise, you’ll want to be capable of storing your product pictures in directories and incorporate them into your product content system. As a result, DAM can be used in conjunction with other inventory management tools such as a Product Information Management framework.
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Metadata Makes Access to Digital Assets Easy
DAM makes digital assets access, finding, and retrieval easy from a single-entry point. It properly structures and indexes with metadata to ensure convenient searching of files. It would not be a problem here if you forgot the file name. You can use parameters like descriptions, tags, category, etc., to find your file. DAM can also do content indexing for several common file types, allowing users to search for their document by typing the words used in it.
Benefits of SharePoint
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Integrated with Multi-Purpose Feature
SharePoint is famous for the flexibility it provides. Organizations built their website over it to share information, assign tasks, scheduling, and collaborate internally.
Admin person can set file accessing permissions for a different level of users. Moreover, there are features like file management, business information, document sharing, and all else required in daily routine business virtual operations. It automates most of the work significantly. All organization members create their profiles on intranet sites like they do on social media sites and create communication channels to discuss their work and tasks.
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Content Delivery Becomes Optimized
Behind the curtain, several kinds of employees like article writers and social media experts work for the firm’s content strategy optimization. Employees must approve, edit, and provide reviews in a timely manner for them to be effective. You’ll probably fall behind if you focus on a system of disparate directories to have comprehensive content management. Checking who accessed the file, when, how many times, changes in version, or review could become problematic.
However, to ease your difficulties, you must hire a SharePoint application development company to develop your company customized intranet solution. With that, team members can submit content approval or creation within minutes (or even seconds). You would never have to worry whether your report or blog has passed via the requisite review stages if you plan to go online on your intranet or internet pages at a specific time. If your company has its operations globally, SharePoint can also cater to this very nicely. The system has library templates for documents, helping the navigation between the documents.
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Collaboration and Sharing
A SharePoint is a workspace site centers all the company employees for effective collaboration. Co-authoring in real-time allows simultaneous work on a file to multiple users in contrast to singular working on a personal computer. Changes become visible immediately whenever someone edits or modifies the document.
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Site Consolidation
You will merge all of the sites (collaborative work environments) into a shared network, reducing siloed site management costs. Internal departments can quickly connect and control the internet and intranet pages since they have been consolidated.
When One Need SharePoint Without Integrating DAM?
SharePoint is a preferred and suitable platform if your collaboration is for small projects and requires a limited set of features. A team that works on few ventures and does not utilize large files can go comfortably with SharePoint.
When One Need DAM Without SharePoint
Compared to SharePoint, digital asset management is much more extensive. It offers sizeable centralized storage, followed by easy and quick file sharing, organized work process, quick distribution, and digital right management. If you want these kinds of utilities in your system, then you need digital asset management.
A question rises here that SharePoint is still a requirement then. If you want to work out of the SPS and build a different workflow, DAM without SharePoint is not an issue.
When one Require Integration Between SharePoint and DAM
If the workflow is SharePoint dependent, you are working within the SPS, and looking for some more robust approach, the integration of DAM with SharePoint comes as a perfect fusion.
Last Words
The selection of digital asset management or SharePoint depends upon the team working style, company priorities, and end goals. If we look at SharePoint, when we do not need tracking of a large number of assets and focus is on more project management sides where timely completion is crucial, and you require rapid interaction, you are good to go with it. It regularly provides updates on events that happen among the team and organization.
Conversely, when the team is working with a large stack of digital files and needs a way to organize them in a secure manner, having complete control over it, digital asset management is the right choice.
Both technologies serve a different purpose and cannot replace each other in terms of functionalities. However, they can be integrated and used together to achieve extended functionality in a system.
Lastly, contact Cubix if your company is looking for professional SharePoint or digital asset management development services. Their innovative approach can bring a revolution to your collaboration system.