These days, when people talk about business assets, in many cases they are talking about much more than the physical or tangible assets that have long been the primary measuring stick of a businesses value. More and more often, businesses, especially those that engage in ecommerce, have significant "digital assets" that have a great deal of bearing on their bottom line. As a result, effective digital asset management is becoming increasingly important.
Digital asset management is reaching a point of what some experts call "critical mass" and a potentially volatile time in the brief existence and history of managing digital assets. It is precisely because it is such a new area of business and expertise that it can be difficult to manage at times. One of the reasons for this is that as digital, current assets have become increasingly important to businesses, the solutions for asset managers to use to effectively manage these unique assets have not been at all standardized.
Due to this factor of not yet having standardization in place, digital asset management, while increasingly important, is still "technically" in its infancy. Industry insiders expect that consolidation of both technology solution tools and management tools will result in the smaller, and often more innovative players either joining forces with larger competitors or simply being driven out of business.
The current definition of a good, digital asset management system includes a combination of software and hardware technology solution tools for businesses of all sizes and also includes the work flows that make use of those digital assets. This includes the complete array of digital files, digital storage devices and digital communication pathways that allow for the use, sharing, integration and flow of the information.
Digital asset management is also a category of specialized software that has seen explosive growth in recent years, most particularly as the popularity of digital multimedia has flourished. Without a doubt, most every type of organization today has a great deal of time, cash flows and resources invested in the work that has been produced in some type of digital format and which have added significant dividends to the organization.
At the core of asset management software for digital assets is the establishment of a secure, electronic "clearinghouse" for the storage, daily use, archiving, and distribution of the digital data assets. This "clearinghouse" is essentially a powerful database structure which is carefully constructed around a company's file organization scheme, naming conventions, and daily work flow patterns. Such digital management software is also often referred to as media asset management (MAM), content management, and digital asset warehousing.
In the near future, digital asset management is expected to become a multi-billion dollar industry as increasing numbers of companies, organizations and even individuals continue to migrate from traditional formats of all kinds of information and media to digital formats. This creates unique opportunities for investors and developers, and also for individuals who hone their skills in this important area, which will only continue to expand.
It should be noted that digital asset management is not only related to making sure that equipment, software and work flows are accounted for and in place. Just as important, and sometimes more so, is having well-qualified people to not only produce high-quality digital assets but also to know how to properly manage those electronic assets. |
