Pimcore Digital Asset Management: A Complete Guide

The biggest problem troubling marketers these days is digital assets. Their images are scattered across devices, outdated videos are stored in them, and no single source of truth.

Due to the content explosion, managing brand content has become more complex than ever. Such content overload can be resolved with Digital Asset Management (DAM).

With Pimcore’s DAM, marketers can take a sigh of relief as it provides more than just storage. However, companies still struggle to understand Pimcore DAM fully. They are unsure if their business demands it or not. If you are also using Pimcore development services, we are sure you must have the same questions.

This article breaks down what Pimcore is, how it works, and when a business needs it. So stay with us until the end to look for answers.

Why is Digital Asset Management (DAM) Important?

There are heaps of data available in an organization that creates nothing but chaos. Both data and content have become unmanageable these days due to overload.

Your project manager is unable to find the right folder, the intern has messed up storing the data into the correct one, and you are stuck unjumbling their chaos.

To keep your business afloat, DAM is highly important. It stores all data in a single place for better access and management. With such organized chaos, users can remain stress-free and focus on other things in the organization.

As of today, Pimcore is the only DXP that combines all product data with your system for DAM, content management system (CMS), and omnichannel user experience.

Benefits of Pimcore Digital Asset Management

• Data designing: Regardless of your data being on web content or product, Pimcore DAM can store it in the system quickly without any manual effort.
• Universal framework: The framework’s approach makes Pimcore quite adaptable to your needs. It is built on the Symfony framework, which explains its strong foundation.
• Large active community: The Pimcore community offers multiple Bundles and Symfony Components to simplify development. You can also create your own Bundles to extend your project with reusable components.
• Unified platform: Without any import/export issues between MDM/PIM, DAM, e-commerce, Pimcore helps to maintain your application smoothly.
• Modern interface: Pimcore’s DAM has a simple-to-navigate and easy-to-work-with UI. This interface is designed for everyday use.

Core Challenges of Agencies Resolved by DAM

There are a multitude of issues that organizations face when it comes to data organization and management. We will look at a few of those challenges faced by agencies and how DAM resolved them.

• Asset management: DAM helped in easily maintaining clients’ diverse media and digital assets safely.
• Improved collaboration: It has also helped in collaboration and clarity in dealing with thousands of digital assets.
• Consistent branding: Managing compliance, copyright issues, and versioning of different assets is how Pimcore helped in keeping the brand consistent.
• Personalized experience: Improving workflows and receiving better insights on delivering personalized experiences for users.
• Profitability: With revenue nosediving, the challenge was to align managing assets, save time, and reduce operational costs.

Digital Asset Management Best Practices

Using Pimcore’s DAM is one thing, but using it right is completely another. Implementing the best practices that are aligned with your business goals is necessary to survive the market. Your chances of beating the competition and benefiting increase if you incorporate the best digital asset management practices.

1. Analyze your DAM maturity

Make sure to outline your business needs clearly that you demand by implementing DAM. Find the challenges and issues you face that you want DAM to resolve. At an organizational level, you also need to address your DAM maturity. A few points to consider in this case:

• Highlight your objective and find errors in your management of digital assets.
• Look for suitable DAM features and assess the readiness of your system to adopt them.
• Look for pathways in which DAM can fit in your environment and the related application environment.
• Execute your prepared digital asset management strategy.

The DAM Maturity Model

Pimcore’s DAM offers a maturity model that measures your company’s proficiency in digital asset management.

There are five levels of competency in this model: Ad Hoc, Incipient, Formative, Operational, and Optimal. The functionality increases from Ad Hoc to Optimal.

The areas that your business is categorized into include:

In terms of these categories, the DAM maturity model guides your business in the following manner.

This model will help you prioritize your current DAM maturity, spot capability issues, and develop a roadmap. This will help in progressing from ad hoc to optimal as your business manages digital assets effectively.

2. Align requirements with business needs

Picking the project requirements in advance can help build project success and limit overall project costs. It is necessary to understand why the project is being made and how it can simplify the tasks of your company’s team. Some pointers to consider are:

• Set up high-level functional needs and non-functional needs.
• Recognize incoming and outgoing data and asset flows.
• Determine the pros and cons of the approach you are taking.
• Confirm requirements from business partners.
• Set up estimations on metrics, inputs, and outcomes.

3. Execute risk analysis strategies

To avoid any major mistakes, risk assessment is highly important when it comes to managing digital assets. It is always beneficial to receive feedback from different users. While analyzing risks, make sure to prioritize the whole system and analyze how it impacts your current business environment.

• Audit your digital assets for security and accessibility.
• Spot any hindrances that could delay the project or its time, or value.
• Assess how your DAM solution will affect the existing workflows.
• Determine how you will track, control, and comply hot digital assets.
• Add another security layer with roles and permissions.

4. Pick a value-based implementation strategy

Make sure to go for an implementation approach that serves both long-term and short-term success of the business. Collaborate with an expert who can meticulously plan the software purchase and execute DAM through Pimcore.

• Consider the following components while deciding on the best feature for deployment:
  ◦ Automation: Pick actions or workflows that you want to automate for assignment, validation, auto-response, and other options.
  ◦ Assets: Migrate all the assets into the new system with quality and cleanliness.
  ◦ Analytics: Make sure analytics can be accessed easily for better digital asset management.

• Add managers and employees as active participants in the deployment process.
• Begin with a pilot test and then expand your strategy.
• Clarify the ongoing costs and maintenance after deployment.

DAM use cases and types

There are multiple kinds of digital asset management systems. Enterprises have the option to pick any or all of them based on their requirements. It helps to monitor their lifecycle of assets covering different regions, countries, departments, and languages. Let us look at a few types.

Media asset management

• This type of asset management deals generally with images, audio, and video files.
• Pimcore DAM features and workload tools allow users to store and manage video content in a single location.
• It provides work-in-progress support for creative professionals with asset repository access within creative tools.
• This software was integrated with workflow management to manage and track finished asset versions.
• MAM is generally used for video production, TV space, and ad agencies.

Brand asset management

• This type generally focuses on brand-based assets for management. It contains a brand workflow to manage the complete set of brand assets.
• It also maintains copyright or intellectual property rights and other assets to protect brand integrity and reputation.
• This software also helps marketers and managers to access all content via a centralized asset management system.
• It controls the usage of it, maintains brand consistency, and encourages asset re-use across channels and platforms.

Advanced asset management

• This type of asset management deals with the growing demands of enterprises.
• It manages marketing material like signage, collateral, digital ads, emails, and landing pages.
• Build an integrated DAM platform with your business system when it demands multichannel content distribution, performance analytics, AI-based image tagging, etc.

Is DAM The Solution to All Your Asset Management Problems?

Yes, it can be. If you truly understand how to use it. Your content surfs through multiple customer personas to set up the right journey context and then converts them. With DAM, you can align your digital assets and improve the operational efficiency of your company.

At DRC Systems, we encourage our clients to maximize the benefits of Pimcore by letting us implement the necessary DXP platform in their system. We provide Pimcore development services like PIM, DAM, MDM, CDP, and many more.

FAQs

1. Can Pimcore DAM integrate with existing CMS and e-Commerce platforms?

Yes, Pimcore DAM provides integration with popular CMS and e-Commerce platforms like Magento, Shopify, and WordPress. This allows unified asset management across your digital environment.

2. What standards does Pimcore use for metadata management and asset discovery?

The platform maintains metadata standards like XMP, IPTC, and EXIF. This helps in central storage of existing information like image overviews, photographer details, copyright data, and specific equipment used to build the asset.

3. How can an organization measure its readiness for a DAM implementation using the maturity model?

With five competency levels, organizations can measure their DAM maturity level and readiness. Measuring maturity allows the organization to identify gaps in the architecture and expertise before deployment begins.

4. What is the difference between a Global and Local implementation approach for DAM?

A Global implementation process standardizes the process to bring together assets across different regions and removes silos for better global reporting. A Local implementation is generally used for certain departments or regions to collect locally generated media and improve compliance at a regional level.