Digital Assets - Commodities of the Digital Age

1. What are Digital Assets?
2. What benefits do digital assets offer?
3. What types of digital assets are there in companies?
4. Why should companies manage their digital assets?
5. How can companies manage their digital assets?
6. What digital asset management software is available?
7. Conclusion on Digital Assets

Every era has its goods, on which a large part of global value creation is based. In the agricultural society, it was agricultural products, in the industrial age machines and in today's age - mostly digital - information.

Digital assets are the umbrella term for digital information and content and can take different forms depending on their intended use. What exactly these are and what advantages they offer, you will learn in this article.

Table of Contents

1. What are digital assets?

2. What benefits do digital assets offer?

3. What types of digital assets are there in a company?

4. Why should companies manage their digital assets?

5. How can companies manage their digital assets?

6. What digital asset management software is available?

7. Conclusion on digital assets

What are Digital Assets?

There are countless definitions of digital assets. In summary, they are non-physical assets that can be stored as binary data on hard drives or servers. They can usually be clearly identified by a letter combination in the file name, e.g. .doc, .jpg, .pdf.

Digital assets are valuable files that can have very different purposes and can incur (high) costs in companies. The explicit value of a file is at the same time the most important distinguishing feature from "digital content". Due to the effort involved in (re)production, assets are also referred to as capital goods.

The most common asset categories include:

• Text documents (.docx, .txt., .rtf, .pdf)
• Photos and graphics (.jpg, .gif, .svg)
• Video files (.mp4, .wmv, .mov)
• Audio files (.mp3, .flac, .wav)
• Tables and databases (.xls, .csv)
• Presentations (.pptx, .xml)
• System files (.exe, .html, .js)

What are digital assets? (Image Source,)

It is difficult to say exactly how many file formats there are worldwide, especially since new asset categories and classes are constantly emerging. Two new digital asset classes have recently been attracting particular attention: Cryptocurrencies and NFTs. They are an attractive investment for many people because of their increase in value and an indicator of where assets will develop in the future. Here is an interesting TEDx talk by Roop Singh about this aspect:

What benefits do digital assets offer?

Even if digital assets are popular targets for hackers and they consume a lot of electricity due to enormous server capacities, the advantages of digital goods outweigh:

Flexibility:

Digital assets can be available anytime and anywhere, depending on the type and location of storage. Digital content can be accessed, saved, duplicated, edited and sent from any location within seconds. In addition, digital assets have the advantage that they do not have a "material" expiration date and suffer from loss of quality: a movie or a photo in digital form can still be watched in the same quality in a 100 years as today. Provided that there is software that can read and process such content.

Just like with material goods, the value of digital assets, among other things, is measured by whether and how laborious they can be duplicated. Depending on the point of view, the flexibility of a digital asset is not only an advantage.

Security and traceability:

Passwords can be used to protect digital assets from unauthorized access. In addition, digital assets can be hidden through visibility settings, and found thanks to intelligent search engines and metadata. Central storage (e.g. via Digital Asset Management) can make important content consistently up-to-date and quickly accessible for all users.

Analysis possibilities:

Another advantage is the analysis potential that is inherent in digital assets. Various tracking tools can be used to determine information such as the number and duration of accesses, the place where the asset was used, and user behavior. This can lead to important conclusions about the relevance and performance of the digital assets and the personality traits of the users.

Digital Form Collection (Image Source)

What types of digital assets are there in companies?

The ongoing digitalization of business processes suggests that the volume and relevance of digital assets in companies is growing, if they have not already become the core of value creation. What types of asset classes can be found in companies?

Digital Media Assets

Digital media assets include all media files that are used in companies: videos showing how to use the product correctly, close-ups of product details, soundtracks from press conferences or PDFs listing the ingredients and materials in detail. Digital media assets are particularly valuable when they contain company internals like secret blueprints, patents or recipes, and are therefore rare. A famous example, even though likely not in digital form: the Coca-Cola recipe.

Digital Marketing Assets

Digital marketing assets are used for communication with the target group and aim to make the brand and products part of the "relevance set" in purchase decision processes. In addition, potential customers can be better identified and understood through digital marketing assets. The most important digital marketing assets include social media profiles, websites and customer data. Social media profiles in particular have become indispensable for many companies. With reach in the nine-digit range, as demonstrated by the company Nike, product and company news can be shared directly with consumers. Increasingly, a large part of the interaction with the target group takes place on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & Co.

Websites and own online stores are the second station in the customer journey. First-class user experience and a modern user interface are key factors that significantly influence the value of the website as a digital asset. Websites again consist of a wide variety of digital asset categories: product images, product descriptions, and explanatory videos are content that have explicit value in themselves and therefore also count toward a company's digital assets.

Customer data generated by online transactions such as store visits, purchases, newsletter sign-ups, and survey panels, are also essential as a marketing asset class. After all, only when companies know who their customers are, what they are looking for and how they behave, can successful decisions be made in portfolio management.

Why should companies manage their digital assets?

Digital assets are becoming increasingly important in companies. This is not only evident from the global amount of data produced, but can also be inferred from the increasingly digitised workflows and business processes. As mentioned at the beginning, one advantage of digital assets is their reproducibility. But in order to be able to manage the closely related organizational effort, a systematised administration is needed in companies. Sometimes efficient and professional administration of digital assets can be a competitive advantage. Because if you have to spend less time searching for and finding files, you have more time for creative and productive work on really important topics.

Functions and advantages of DAM software (Image Source)

How can companies manage their digital assets?

Digital Asset Management Systems (DAM) can be your solution if you work in companies or organizations that deal mostly or even exclusively with digital content every day.

In corporations, central hubs can be set up with the help of DAM, which can be accessed in a controlled manner by various departments, as well as external partners and service providers. The advantage: everyone uses the same source and nobody uses outdated files. This guarantees a consistent brand experience according to corporate design guidelines.

But also in one-man agencies or start-ups, DAM systems can bring considerable advantages. Collaborative and simultaneous work with digital assets can be realized with DAM tools and ensure smooth workflows.

What digital asset management software is available?

There are different ways to use digital asset management tools in companies. The two most common ways are:

Cloud based SaaS solutions

If you don't want or can't integrate a DAM system into your IT structure, a cloud-based solution is the right choice. Depending on the level of customization, you have all the functions of a DAM tool at your disposal and you don't have to worry about things like data backup and software updates. In return, you have to do without individualizations, such as a web-based CMS. In addition, there is a regular subscription fee for use. Cloud DAM tools are becoming more and more popular and are the first choice for most companies.

Cloud-based SaaS solutions for your digital asset management are e.g. Admiral Cloud, Frontify and Canto.

On-Premise solutions

This involves installing the DAM system as an internal data server locally and usually purchasing it once. This single source approach is much more effort in its installation and is therefore initially more expensive. In addition, you have to consider that scaling is not easily possible and you have to take care of system updates yourself. In return, you can combine and customize the system with your existing databases and interfaces. You can also directly transfer and monitor your data security standards with an internal implementation.

On-premise solutions for digital asset management are e.g. Kontainer, 4ALLPORTAL and snaatch.

If you want to manage your digital assets using another cloud-based or on-premise solution, you will find many more DAM providers at OMR-Reviews in the Digital Asset Management category. You will also find real user reviews and their experience reports on how they cope with the DAM tools.

Conclusion on Digital Assets

Digital assets are a firm part of global value creation and thus a kind of "raw material" of our current era. The advantages of digital assets lie in their properties: they are virtually available everywhere and at all times, do not consume expensive storage space and allow many conclusions about their user and relevance through business intelligence tools.

But the most important characteristic of digital assets is the value to be attributed to them. This can arise from cost- and time-intensive (re-)production processes and/or due to their rarity in companies. Therefore, it is all the more important to protect digital assets and to organize them intelligently.

Companies that master both tasks excellently not only have a competitive advantage over market competitors without professional digital asset management, but also have more satisfied and motivated employees, since they can take care of tasks that are really important.