Efficiently managing digital assets is vital for modern retailers. As consumer expectations have surged in recent years and the quantity of digital content continues to grow, businesses are actively seeking streamlined methods to organize, store, and distribute their digital assets across various channels. Digital asset management (DAM) systems play a crucial role in addressing this challenge.
Heightened consumer expectations and scrutiny of brands’ digital experience capabilities have led many retail companies to realize the need to enhance the efficiency of creativity, content creation, and collaboration. Notably, a recent report by Little Black Book reveals that retail businesses are at the forefront of DAM investment, with an impressive 72% actively embracing this technology.
In this blog post, we explore the world of cloud digital asset management systems and discuss how the retail industry can benefit from innovative AWS-based DAM software.
What is a digital asset management system?
Digital asset management (DAM) refers to a comprehensive solution designed to organize, store, and distribute digital assets in a centralized and secure manner. Digital assets can include images, videos, audio files, documents, and other media files. A DAM system provides a structured repository where businesses can manage their assets, streamline workflows, and ensure easy access to the right content when needed.
There are different types of DAM systems available, ranging from on-premises solutions to cloud platforms. An on-premises DAM system requires businesses to set up and maintain their own infrastructure, which can be costly and time-consuming. On the other hand, a cloud-based digital asset management system, available via a web browser and hosted on a network of distant servers, offers greater flexibility, scalability, and ease of use.
On-premises DAM systems: Revealing challenges
A legacy on-premises DAM system may become outdated, and several challenges can hinder retailers’ efficient asset management. Let’s explore some of them in detail:
- Annual ownership, operating, and maintenance costs can be substantial and inflexible. They can strain retailers’ resources, making it difficult to allocate funds for other business priorities.
- Lack of workflow flexibility hinders customization and optimization, resulting in inefficiencies and difficulty aligning with specific business processes.
- Misalignment with architecture, standards, and interfaces can cause compatibility issues, data inconsistencies, and challenges integrating with other systems and tools.
- Insufficient holistic and specialized digital asset management hinders effective asset management and utilization across channels. This may impede advanced functionality like metadata management, content enrichment, and dynamic asset delivery.
- Absence of a central content hub can result in scattered and fragmented digital assets and make it challenging to maintain control, consistency, and a unified brand presence across various channels and platforms.
- Lack of scalability for business purposes leads to limitations in storage, processing power, and concurrent user access. This hinders adaptability to evolving business requirements and future growth.
Benefits of cloud DAM software
Cloud DAM software enhances operational efficiency, promotes collaborative workflows, and optimizes content delivery, fostering a competitive edge by streamlining processes, improving team coordination, and elevating the overall customer experience.
Given the challenges of on-premises DAM solutions, it is imperative for retailers to consider implementing a digital asset management system in the cloud. Preferably, this system should be built on the AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud platform, incorporating AWS CloudFront with Edge@Lambda for content distribution, AWS S3 for storage, and a React-based web application supported by Java-based microservices operating over AWS EKS for asset management.
AWS is a valuable solution for modern cloud-native DAM systems that can result in enhanced user experiences, increased operational efficiency, and strengthened asset protection.
Why digital asset management solutions on AWS?
AWS offers robust infrastructure and a wide range of services, such as CloudFront, that can enhance the overall capabilities of a DAM system and optimize content delivery to users worldwide. Implementing a DAM system on AWS CloudFront offers businesses:
- Accelerated content delivery. By optimizing digital asset distribution through AWS CloudFront’s global content delivery network, retail platforms achieve faster load times and improved user satisfaction with multimedia content.
- Improved reliability. By leveraging AWS CloudFront’s global content delivery network, a DAM system enhances reliability for retail businesses, minimizing latency and ensuring consistent access to multimedia content for users.
- Seamless integration with other AWS services. By harmoniously incorporating with various AWS services such as S3, Lambda, and EKS, a DAM system on AWS CloudFront ensures efficient distribution of digital assets and facilitates scalable, integrated workflows for retail businesses.
- Advanced caching. Storing frequently accessed digital assets like images and videos strategically at various edge locations ensures quicker access for users, lowers latency, and optimizes bandwidth use. This improves the retail platform’s overall performance and responsiveness.
- Robust security features. By leveraging AWS’s comprehensive security infrastructure, a DAM system on AWS CloudFront ensures strong security measures for retail, safeguarding digital assets through DDoS protection, encryption, and access controls.
Benefits of DAM for the retail industry: Real-life success story
By harnessing the power of AWS, retailers unlock numerous advantages, tapping into scalable storage solutions, dependable data backups, and heightened security measures. Complementing these core features, AWS enriches retail operations through a suite of retail technology services for artificial intelligence and machine learning, automating tasks such as metadata tagging and content categorization and providing personalized recommendations. Furthermore, AWS ensures seamless synergy with other common retail tools and systems, resulting in a smooth workflow and improved operational efficiency.
Implementing a digital asset management system in the cloud can bring very tangible benefits to retail businesses, including:
- Reduced annual expenses associated with cloud DAM software ownership and support. In the first year alone, costs can be cut by 50%. Furthermore, in subsequent years, retail clients can benefit from an impressive 90% reduction in annual DAM-related expenditures.
- Scalable and pay-as-you-go pricing. Leveraging the features of a digital asset management system, such as scalable and pay-as-you-go pricing, cloud DAM systems on AWS empower retail clients to tailor resources to their specific needs. This not only reduces upfront costs but also enhances budget allocation within the dynamic framework of DAM solutions.
- Faster asset uploading. Enhanced operational efficiency is achieved through a 10-fold reduction in the time required for uploading product assets. This accelerated process enables retail clients to swiftly integrate new assets into the system, resulting in substantial time and resource savings.
- Rapid asset retrieval. The expedited asset search now delivers results within a mere second. This upgraded search capability empowers retail clients to swiftly locate and leverage assets, enhancing their overall workflow efficiency.
- High availability and data redundancy. The resilient infrastructure and backup solutions offered by AWS guarantee optimal system availability and data integrity. This minimizes the risk of downtime and data loss, mitigating potential financial losses associated with system failure or unavailability of critical assets.
Creating scaled customer experiences with digital assets
In the dynamic modern retail landscape, cloud computing services have brought about big changes. They allow for quick and easy access to extra resources without the long process of getting new hardware. This shift is especially noticeable with public clouds like Amazon Web Services (AWS), giving organizations a great chance to improve how their infrastructure works and shorten the time it takes to launch new products.
In managing assets, which is crucial for a smoothly running organization, IT operations teams need to work together to put strong tools and rules in place. But because many businesses experience staff shortages, they often end up putting asset management on the back burner. This can lead to problems that might explode at a bad time.
Considering the importance of managing assets well, especially with the rise of digital changes, now is a good time to think about using AWS Asset Management for your retail business. Taking charge of innovation, a cutting-edge digital asset management (DAM) system connected to AWS can make a big difference for retailers aiming to modernize how they handle and share digital assets.
Using the powerful scalability, security, and advanced features of AWS, a tailored DAM system is ready to change how work gets done. It secures better teamwork, maintains brand consistency, and boosts efficiency in managing assets. The idea is simple: adopting an AWS-based DAM system isn’t just a tech upgrade; it’s a strategic move that puts a retailer at the forefront of the digital world. And with Intellias expertise in building AWS retail solutions, you’re in capable hands.
