Reduce time to market in the manufacturing industry with DAM

Is a slow product development lifecycle getting in the way of your ability to corner the market?

Time to Market (TTM) is a pivotal success factor in the manufacturing industry, particularly when developing new products. The process involves numerous stages and steps, including the creation of catalogs and product brochures, often with a multitude of collaborators working in unison to prepare the product for the market.

In today’s consumer market, anything that can be done to streamline and speed up the time to market can decide whether that product thrives or fails. After all, so much of bringing a product to market is capitalizing on an idea to respond to current consumer demand before another manufacturer does.

In short, an expedited TTM can keep you ahead of the competition.

But this is easier in theory than in practice. Today’s marketplace is populated with fast-acting and flexible producers, all looking to take their share of the market.

Enter digital asset management (DAM), a solution that can significantly expedite TTM, particularly in a multichannel environment.

Here’s how DAM is rethinking how the manufacturing industry approaches production and why it’s time to pay attention.

A Closer Look at Digital Asset Management

Pictures and photographs, PDFs, audio and video files, and any other assets a company might have can pile up quickly. Once that happens, it can be hard to locate what you need or ensure that you’ve located the most recent version of that asset. Then, it’s easy for brand standards to slip, and suddenly, collaborators are all working from different versions of the same file, with no cohesion to speak of.

That’s where digital asset management can have a considerable impact. Digital asset management is all about bringing assets together within a “single source of truth,” where, for example, your manufacturing team can find current and relevant media assets throughout product development.

A DAM solution also empowers you to assign metadata to all digital assets, including the topic, date, and any other details your team might find helpful during development. While marketing agencies or retail brands might use a DAM system to maintain consistency as they develop content like weekly circulars or ads, manufacturing teams can use this single source of truth to ensure the entire team works from the same version of their latest product.

Especially in a multichannel environment with multiple collaborators and many people working quickly to speed up time to market, it’s virtually impossible to share assets, marketing materials, and product content across email and messaging platforms or in shared storage environments.

A DAM system matches the fast pace of the manufacturing industry, efficiently managing all the digital assets for new products, including videos, audio, PDFs, and technical documents. This allows teams to access the proper assets quickly from anywhere in the world, streamlining the entire process of bringing a new product to market, from development to marketing campaigns and sales.

Keeping Brand Consistency in Development and Manufacturing

One of the most significant ways a manufacturer can benefit from a DAM system is by maintaining brand consistency. Manufacturing companies often deal with many products or product lines at once, all run by diverse teams and departments that may be spread across the globe.

Simplifying Compliance Requirements & Protecting Intellectual Property

As products are developed, changes in compliance, documentation, and regulatory requirements may be necessary, and assets must be updated to stay current – and that’s where a DAM solution can support your operations.

Whether for a product guide or catalog, everyone within the supply chain operation needs the correct details and accurate information at scale – and fast. A DAM platform enables version control so that everyone uses the most current version of your company’s digital assets – those already okayed by everyone within the approval chain and your internal creative teams.

A DAM solution like LAGO by Comosoft also serves as a secure platform to share, manage, and store compliance credentials and certifications, protecting intellectual property and guarding your proprietary designs and patents. Access is securely controlled because everything is stored within the DAM system.

Streamlining Creative and Marketing Workflows

An intuitive DAM solution like Comosoft is designed with collaboration and streamlined workflows in mind. With robust project management offerings, asset distribution, and proofing and approval management tools.

For example, LAGO connects users from internal departments and external groups – no matter where they are – for easier collaboration and improved transparency during the development phase. This makes the review process more transparent and streamlined, making the entire path to project approval smoother and more straightforward.

With a DAM solution, creatives can communicate changes and send approvals and requests for edits automatically. Why does this matter? Automation is one of the most meaningful ways to improve time to market within the manufacturing process – it clarifies workflows, reduces the chance of a failed handoff or a request falling through the cracks, and means fewer mistakes and faster results. A user-friendly DAM solution like LAGO clarifies who is responsible for each task and edits it during the proofing and approval processes.

Expediting Development with Updated Versioning Control

As revisions happen during the development or updating of a particular product, the language and assets surrounding this product may also change. With a single source of truth or a united repository, it can be easier for multiple teams company-wide to know which version of each asset is the most current.

LAGO by Comosoft offers version optimization, which provides users with automatic updates to the assets they have access to. It makes knowing which assets to use and when simple, including detailed versioning for national, regional, market-specific, and even customer-specific variants for account-based work. It also gives managers and decision-makers better control over the entire production workflow. This supports brand consistency, saves development, production, and proofing time, and streamlines the proofing-to-approval process.

Why is this so important? As you may know, the manufacturing industry relies on accurate, timely parts catalogs and fact sheets to share information with consumers. Without these, there is no way for clients or customers to know what’s manufactured. LAGO also makes it possible to segment multilingual product assets in a media-neutral, centralized source to be used in print or digital catalogs across various markets. It also allows you to automate the production of product brochures and catalogs on demand.

Strengthen Data Security and Rights Management Across the Supply Chain

One of the most significant ways a DAM solution can support the manufacturing industry is through data security and rights management. Without a DAM solution, manufacturers must provide full access to valuable – and sometimes confidential – information, with countless individuals working to bring the product to market. This includes internal staff members like engineers, marketing teams, and sales teams, but can also include outside third parties like retailers, distributors, media teams, and more. Additionally, a DAM system simplifies the rights management for assets, only providing users access to the assets that are fully licensed and ready for use.

With a DAM solution, manufacturers can make collaboration more straightforward and far more secure. They can add users and assign roles and permissions to distribute licensed assets quickly and efficiently but share only what’s necessary, protecting access to the rest of their confidential data.

LAGO by Comosoft: Designed with Manufacturers in Mind

In the world of manufacturing, timing and accuracy are everything. That’s why LAGO by Comosoft was designed with manufacturers in mind.

From campaign planning and layout to proofing and approval and even print or digital publication, LAGO is an intuitive DAM solution that can increase time to market by as much as 30 %. Moreover, you can update data and assets automatically, even at the final hour, to allow for last-minute changes to products and campaigns.

LAGO allows you to:

• Store, share, and update product data and assets from a centralized location.
• Automate the production of product brochures and catalogs.
• Manage rights for digital assets.
• Integrate data with multichannel markets and eCommerce platforms via the only combined Digital Access Management and Product Information Management solution.

Ready to see for yourself what the right DAM solution can do for you? Book a demo today!