How retailers are gearing up for growth with a DAM system

Covid plus the supply chain crisis has put retailers on the ropes. But agile marketing departments and their creative directors, however, have already taken on the challenges of commerce. One of the most important roles in modern retail marketing is played by data – specifically, the data in the digital asset management (DAM) system.

The DAM challenge

These database systems are nothing new in Retail Marketing. DAM has been around for thirty years. However, early systems were complicated and were usually stored on local network servers. Present-day, most DAM systems reside in the cloud or are heading there but pose no fewer challenges for the creative directors. Here are some of the obvious challenges:

• Consistent Usage – According to a McKinsey report, 19 percent of users still spend their working time searching for and collating data! The savings potential through the integration of a good DAM system is very large but is crucially conditioned by consistent keywording of images. This potential can therefore only be fully exploited through consistent use of the DAM by employees.
• Metadata Madness – The key to any database is its metadata – technical and content related image information. Metadata is the basis for making images findable in the DAM.
• Integration – To be efficient, a DAM system must work seamlessly with many other systems, from product information management (PIM) to marketing campaign planning and production. The fact is that most legacy DAM systems do not play well with other systems/applications.

The evolution of new marketing channels and the intense competition for people’s attention have worsened the situation. In a marketing campaign, a picture may be worth a thousand words. However, getting the right version of the right picture, at the right instant in time, and for the right channel is a major challenge. Traditional DAMs cannot do it alone. A DAM must be much more than a filing system and must be consistently integrated into the IT system landscape.

The ever-growing multichannel world dictates that digital assets must be accessible in real-time – all the time. As a result, accurate and dynamic data are more critical than ever. So, having all your assets in one place – and easily accessible to every person and marketing-related system – is vital.

As a recent article in MarTech put it, “Digital asset management can play a vital role in your marketing organisation, unifying online and offline marketing channels and leading to more efficient marketing resource allocation.”

But not all DAMs are the same

Many DAMs exist in a world of their own, designed to meet the needs of one channel or workflow. Traditional DAMs are cumbersome in the extreme when used for other purposes or channels. They are also not always easily accessible across departments or regions. An InDesign user creating a print or online campaign, for example, may have to exit their design software in order to hunt through a DAM manually to find the photo or description of a promoted product. Hoping that they see the most recent version, they then download the file, thereby creating a duplicate and placing it in the layout.

Multiply that scenario by the number of regional variations in a campaign – and the number of media channels involved – and you get a cumbersome process, slow to market and highly subject to human error. It’s every creative director’s nightmare to discover – too late – that a catalog or brochure error caused the company thousands of dollars.

The LAGO DAM solution

But there is a DAM system designed for today’s multichannel marketing world. Comosoft’s LAGO DAM allows marketing departments to consolidate digital asset management into a single, unified repository – distributing assets to team members across the enterprise through a centralised platform.

LAGO’s automation and integration with other product databases assure that the correct version of the asset for a particular channel will be found immediately. In addition, if a new version of the asset is created, it can be automatically updated throughout the campaign.

Creative designers, photographers, and art directors especially benefit from using the LAGO DAM through an Adobe InDesign layout plugin. Allowing the DAM to manage assets in the background automatically will enable them to focus on what they do best – design and collaborate – rather than waste time searching for the right image.

Category- and product managers also benefit greatly from using the LAGO DAM system. Comosoft is highly adept at integrating DAM, PIM, and other critical databases with its expert planning tools, so that each campaign can use just the right products to feature – even if there are multiple regional variations to consider. Furthermore, the marketing manager’s decisions are automatically conveyed to the InDesign user, including product size, type, color, pricing, regional variations, and the myriad of other details that used to make campaign planning so difficult.

Once a campaign is in motion, LAGO data can be automatically exported to websites, mobile apps, or other digital channels – eliminating the manual process that traditional, channel-specific DAMs can impose..

Every creative marketing director understands the necessity and urgency of having a reliable DAM system – one that is integrated with every step in the marketing workflow. LAGO’s DAM solution grows and evolves with the company – and with the ever-changing, multichannel world.