Marketing plays a critical role in any business. It basically functions to put the business’ branding and its products and services out there in the middle of the marketplace. Further, marketing makes sure that the company and its products can be seen and accessed by potential clients and customers.

An enterprise’s marketing campaign determines its capability to drive the attention and interest of prospective patrons towards its sales channels and outlets, and hopefully convert such interest into sales. To do this, it’s said that various corporations have learned that they need to use a lot of visual materials and enhancements because consumers tend to buy if they like what they see.

Coupled with the thrust of digital transformation among many industries, this has led to an explosion of creative outputs, assets, and resources in the last decade. The result is that companies now have thousands of creative assets and materials from their previous campaigns and projects.

If you’re still thinking about whether or not you should get creative asset management (CAM) software for your teams, you might want to go over some of the various benefits and features that you’ll get from typical CAM software. Here’s something which you might consider as some sort of a compact guide on creative asset management.

1. What Are Creative Assets

Creative assets refer to works of art and creativity that have been saved in digital formats. Some examples of creative assets are graphics, pictures, graphics interchange format or GIFs, artworks, digital films, movies, documentaries, and the like.

Creative assets are frequently used by companies as visual instruments for their digital marketing platforms and channels. You’ll often see them as visual enhancements of websites, social media pages, picture sharing pages along with logos and other company trademarks.

Companies use creative assets to convey the visual aspect of marketing campaigns. They perform a very important role in enhancing and supplementing the copywriting and content writing aspects of digital marketing. Together, the text of copywriting such as online articles and blogs coupled with visual graphics such as pictures, infographics, and videos, combine into a cohesive communication that conveys the company’s message.

In the past, however, digital creative assets were saved off the web. They were then often just set aside and the bus or hard drive stored in an office table drawer somewhere after the project. Imagine hundreds and thousands of these graphics, pictures, and videos stored away, project after project. Some offline storage units catch a virus or get damaged, and the contents are lost forever. When computers got higher memory spaces, people then started saving them there.

2. Asset Management Software

When companies started piling up hundreds of thousands of creative asset resources, that’s when they began to realize that hard drives wouldn’t be enough. There was a time when it became fashionable to store it in cloud drives so that it could be shared with anyone who needed access to them, but this, too, proved inadequate to meet the emerging needs of creative asset management. It was at this point that software developers saw the need and opportunity to develop CAM software.

CAM software, as it has come to be known, is what numerous companies now use to manage their digital creative assets and resources. It’s also sometimes called Digital Asset Management (DAM) software. They’re now commonly used by businesses, especially those which conduct intensive digital marketing campaigns. CAM software provides a system that the internal teams of a company can use to optimize their use and collaboration in producing and handling creative assets and resources.

CAM software includes management of the content lifecycle of a company’s creative assets and resources. CAM software provides a company with a single solution platform and system. This software includes a central database. This database integrates all the creative assets and resources which are created, uploaded, and shared by the company’s internal teams. Aside from integrating all the creative assets, the CAM software enables collaboration.

The CAM software provides processes, modules, and workflows that enable the internal teams to collaborate remotely. The teams thus develop the capability to use these creative assets in a collaborative fashion to create value-added output for the company. The CAM software also provides the technology tools that the teams can use to create materials for the company’s marketing campaigns.

Another innovative feature of CAM software is that it can automate some of the tasks which sometimes took teams hours or even days to complete. This further enhances the productivity and efficiency of the company’s internal teams.

CAM software also has a dynamic central library. The internal teams can easily access all the creative assets and resources through this library. Plus, they can edit and share creative assets with other individuals or teams through the platform and tools, all the while adding a layer of protection on top.

3. System Requirements

There are different CAM software models and brands. They all have their advantages and gaps, and there’s no one model that fits all businesses. Each company has its own operational, infrastructure, and feature requirements for its CAM software. Your company has to identify its own business needs and requirements. You’ll most likely have to sit down about this with your internal teams to find out their different expectations and needs.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) tend to have lesser operation requirements compared to those of large enterprises and global or multinational corporations. In many instances, the basic CAM software functionalities and features are already enough to meet the digital asset management requirements of small businesses.

By contrast, large enterprises and multinationals need comprehensive digital asset management solutions. Aside from their need for CAM platform solutions for their marketing campaigns, they also need larger storage space for their data management and sharing requirements.

4. Platform Infrastructure And Features

Here are some of the system, infrastructure, and functionality features those businesses look for in a CAM software solution:

• File Management

One of the most important components of CAM software is that it provides a powerful file management system for creative asset management. This file management system can be found in a central hub, which allows your internal teams to store, search, share, and collaborate with other teams in creating and producing creative assets.

• Publishing

Creative assets and creative outputs of your internal teams and individual workers are usually published as final outputs. You should choose CAM software that enables your internal teams to upload and publish their creative output on external sites and platforms. It should have cross-platform and cross-functional capabilities and compatibilities to publish through emails, search engines, websites, and social media pages.

• Security

CAM software typically comes with security systems and solutions. This is essential to protect the creative assets and outputs of your internal teams and individual users.

• Mobility

Some of your teams might need or want to work using your CAM software remotely. There might also be users who would need to upload both input resources and creative outputs while they’re on the road or in clients’ offices. You should consider choosing CAM software that has functionalities and capability for mobile use and implementation.

• Configuration

Most CAM software would allow the licensee to configure their systems. They can make changes to their system configurations to make them more suitable for their specific company requirements. Additional configurations can be done to the accounts of teams and individual users.

• Integration

It would also help you a lot in terms of increased efficiency and productivity if you get CAM software that is capable of integrating its workflows, processes, and outputs, with external platforms such as email, social media pages, search engines, websites, and microsites.

• Workflow Automation

CAM software has built-in functionality for automation. This enables users to automate the way they create and approve their use of digital assets and other creative materials.

• Brand Management

Part of the objectives of creative asset management is to enhance a company’s brand management strategies and campaigns. The CAM software you choose should enable your company’s resources and capability to implement and execute your brand campaigns using consistent creative assets.

• Metadata

Some CAM software solutions have the functionality which enables users to search for existing digital items and creative assets from their central database with the use of metadata.

• Analytics & Reporting

Other internal clients in your company would definitely want to know how the CAM software is being used by internal teams. They’d want to know its impact on workflow, processes, creativity, output, efficiency, and productivity. You should consider selecting CAM software that has the functionality to generate data analytics studies and reports.

5. Benefits Of Using CAM Software Solutions

The main impact of acquiring CAM software is that your company’s internal teams would have a common platform and tools to do their work. They would have a seamless way of creating, producing, saving, uploading, and sharing their output of creative materials and assets.

Imagine your internal teams being able to look at and work on the same screen, sketchpad, or canvas, even though they’re in different locations and work at different times of the day. That would have an enormous impact on creativity, productivity, and efficiency.

Here are some of the more specific benefits that you’d be able to derive from acquiring a CAM software solution:

• Your internal teams would multiply their group creativity through collaboration intelligence;
• It’d take your teams and individual users less time to search for and find digital materials and creative assets;
• There would be less time, effort, and resources spent on repeating what has already been previously done by other teams or workers;
• You’ll be able to implement uniformity and brand consistency across all your digital and creative campaign materials;
• Your teams can repurpose some of the materials and creative outputs of the other teams, thereby creating more value for your company;
• Your auxiliary teams would be able to provide ready support for the needs and requirements of your marketing campaigns; and
• It’d significantly enhance the capability and performance of your marketing teams, thereby resulting in additional revenues and profits.

Conclusion

Creative assets and resources are widely used by companies to enhance the impact of their marketing campaigns and advertisements.

Over time, most organizations have amassed an inventory of creative materials with every completed project, but they didn’t have a smart way of managing this wealth of creative resources. This is when CAM managers have heeded the call for more efficient management tools.

CAM software enables a company to make the most of its creative resources by providing a central database, common platform, and powerful technology tools for their teams and individual users to create, upload, publish and share their creative work outputs.