This is How You Identify and Eliminate Duplicates Among Your Digital Assets

1. How duplicates hinder workflows and damage companies
2. What is a DAM?
3. Versioning vs. Duplicates
4. The advantages of a DAM
5. AdmiralCloud as a DAM solution for every company size
6. Duplicate recognition in 3 steps
7. Other Digital Asset Management Solutions
8. Conclusion

What many already know from their own computer at home can take on unforeseen dimensions in companies: the accumulation of media files. The more that come together, the more likely duplicates also become. This scenario is exacerbated by multiple employees as well as departments, who access and edit the media. As a result, different versions of the same document see the light of day and scatter into different (local) folders. This not only eliminates the overview, but eats up a lot of time and resources to prevent capitulation to chaos.

Fortunately, there are solutions with Digital Asset Management Tools (DAM) that will help you manage the chaos. How a DAM works, how it helps you through duplicate recognition, and how you establish it in your existing digital infrastructure, you'll learn in this article. Based on the DAM system, AdmiralCloud we also provide you with practical insights and a 3-step guide for optimal duplicate recognition.

How duplicates hinder workflows and damage companies

Within a company, a lot of digital assets circulate: images, videos, audio files, documents etc. With digitization, it's becoming even more. The consequences:

• The storage is slowed down and overcrowded (whether cloud or on-premise)
• The employees are frustrated and unproductive
• Untidy file locations, such as the desktop, lead to frustration and unproductivity among employees
• Files are easily deleted by mistake - who knows after all, which file is needed and which is not
• More transparency is lost when numerous different tools come into play
• Increase in Remote Work: The trend in many industries is towards decentralization - The disadvantages for structured and correctly versioned media and docs grow a few meters above normal

All of this leads to high costs, a demotivated team, and waste of resources. Three things no company can afford. However, we owe the challenges that digitization brings with it, the fact that solutions are being created for it. In the case of digital asset duplicates, the solution is a DAM.

What is a DAM?

Written out, the abbreviation Digital Asset Management. There are cloud-based and on-premise systems. In view of the already large efforts, costs and resource expenditures in a company (not only related to digital assets), it is advisable to choose a cloud solution. In this case, the software developer takes over the operation of the servers, data backup, backups, and updating the software.

Back to the definition of a DAM: A Digital Asset Management System manages and organizes all files. Each file is marked by metadata to assign it to the appropriate users and equip it with licenses and other properties. But the core of a DAM system is to automate this process. A DAM uses color, text, and speech recognition as well as automatic tagging to distinguish the files from each other.

A Digital Asset Management must in this case react sensitively, so that hardly distinguishable files are not classified as duplicates. These include photos with similar motifs, which can be the case with photo series for online shops. So-called perceptual hashes help here. Hashes can be seen as the fingerprint of a media file. This avoids almost duplicates.

The DAM becomes a best friend for companies through AI, algorithms, and cloud-based workflows to guide images, videos, and Co. where they are needed and to prevent duplicates. Also, it enables working on files by versioning through any number of editors such as employees, departments, or customers.

Versioning vs. Duplicates

To avoid misunderstandings, we clarify that multiple versions of a file are good compared to duplicates. Don't get me wrong: Duplicates do not necessarily have to be hindering if they are intended, for example.

Different versions of a graphic, on which several people work, remain one file. Any editing of the graphic is recorded in the DAM. If, for example, a change should be deleted for the final graphic, you can revert to the previous version. Without searching for the right duplicate and without having to awkwardly undo editing steps.

In the end, you save yourself file chaos and all editors can work on the same graphic, without losing changes. How the versioning works in detail, we deepen using the example ofAdmiralCloud below.

Versioning allows employees to work on a file without losing changes and duplicates being saved locally.

Example of a DAM in everyday business of a large company

You ask yourself, how big brands like Die Techniker with five-digit employee numbers, manage to post daily content on all possible social media platforms, without internally drowning in data chaos? By using a DAM that ensures in a short time that a piece of content from creation to approval is played to the right people in the company. The result is daily posts on Instagram & Co. Not to mention that the documents sent daily by insured to the TK are kept under control in the same way or the press is fed with all necessary announcements.

Likewise, creative work in a media agency can be made more efficient or keep an overview of the data traffic in companies with 100,000+ employees.

The advantages of a DAM

Since the first Digital Asset Management went into operation in 1988, a lot has changed, or rather evolved. The proportion of video content has increased significantly, as has the number of file formats. Moreover, the evolution of digitization is at the highest level to date. As a result, every department and every industry is handling digital assets. Some, of course, more than others.

Accordingly, the list of advantages of today's DAM systems is longer:

• Simple management, editing, and publishing of media files ensures a consistent brand presence
• Reduces organizational effort
• Makes employees more efficient
• The findability of files is optimized
• With the assignment of user rights and licenses, better control over the assets and their usage arises
• A good DAM can be integrated into any existing system
• Duplicates are recognized even before the upload
• With AI and automatic workflows, much runs before human resources have to be used at all
• Especially creative industries, a DAM allows a lot more space for the actual work
• Overview at all times and on any computer thanks to a cloud

Even though digitization in Germany is progressing only hesitantly, every CEO, department head, and corporate executive should be aware that without a DAM digitization A) cannot function sustainably and B) a lot of money can go down the drain.

AdmiralCloud as a DAM solution for every company size

Who would we be if we didn't introduce you to a suitable DAM solution to stay not only in theory. We present: AdmiralCloud.

AdmiralCloud is a multiple test winner and also scores highly with users on OMR Reviews. The Berlin-based Digital Asset Management originally emerged from the in-house need of mmpro GmbH. A film and media production company that has been creating moving images in 126 countries for almost 19 years. The source of the in-house need for a DAM seems plausible when thousands of videos and other media files have to be managed, edited, and coordinated. Over the years, AdmiralCloud has become an individual solution for various customers and industries - also beyond film and television.

Even though the DAM system fits startup and SMEs as well as agencies, AdmiralCloud focuses increasingly on tailored solutions for large companies and corporations. A particular focus is on speed and duplicate recognition. In addition, it can be expanded through various add-ons. Through the possibility to incorporate fitting systems into complex, already existing infrastructures of the companies, AdmiralCloud creates an individual solution for (almost) all!

Duplicate recognition in 3 steps

Of all the useful features that AdmiralCloud delivers, one function stands out above all: the duplicate detection. This starts before the upload of a file, not to even get into a data chaos. What 3 steps of duplicate detection you can implement in AdmiralCloud and how, we reveal to you now.

Step 1: Identify and sort out duplicates before upload

The uploader in the AdmiralCloud identifies duplicates before uploading files. If some of the assets are already immortalized in your cloud, the DAM points this out. All duplicates are then marked.

You now have the option to decide what to do with the duplicates:

• Upload without duplicates
• Upload with selected duplicates (Reminder: Not every duplicate has to be superfluous!)
• Carry out upload with all duplicates

Sometimes it is quite intended to upload duplicates, which is why AdmiralCloud does not leave it to the logic of the AI to eliminate duplicates. To make your decision easier, you can first preview the duplicates.

Decide what to do with duplicates - even before the upload.

Step 2: Duplicate Prevention - Edit Existing Files Instead of Uploading New Versions

As mentioned in the list of features, you can directly edit your media files in AdmiralCloud, If several people are working on a file, theoretically file duplicates would be created - each on the processing state of the respective editor - and possibly saved in different places. To avoid this, you can version files in AdmiralCloud.

Proceed as follows:

1. Select the desired file and click on "Edit".
2. Choose the editing program of your choice (Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Excel, Sketch etc.).
3. The file is now opened in the desired editing program.
4. Edit your file as planned.
5. When you click on "Save", the file is stored in AdmiralCloud.

This does not create a new file - i.e., a duplicate - but a changed version of the original file. In this way, anyone with the appropriate rights can modify, view, and possibly further edit the file.

If a DAM did not have this function, an asset would be downloaded, for example, by the editor (photographer, designer, graphic artist, cutter, etc.) onto the local hard drive. There it is opened and edited in the editing software (maybe even the format changed) and saved locally. If this file is now uploaded to the cloud, a modified duplicate of the asset is created, whereby already two files exist - but nobody knows which one is the current one. Herein lies the crux, which we mentioned at the beginning of the article: Not having a DAM so costs money, time, and ultimately also nerves.

Edit an asset in AdmiralCloud in the respective editing program - without a
duplicate occurring.

Step 3: Check Existing Assets for Duplicates

Once some media files have built up in your cloud, you should intermittently check these for duplicates. For that AdmiralCloud provides you with an expanded search. This allows the system to search for duplicate files among your assets. The previously mentioned hashes are here at heart. Only assets are compared, which technically have an identical "fingerprint."

This step requires your time and impairs productivity. Since for each duplicate you must manually decide whether it has a right to exist or belongs in the trash. That's why the first two steps are so important, to make step three as unneeded as possible in the best case.

To counteract this, it helps to give all employees a detailed onboarding - no matter whether you use AdmiralCloud or another DAM. This can prevent erroneous workflows and duplicate files in later use from experience.

Search for duplicates among the files already uploaded to the cloud - for more
transparency.

Other Digital Asset Management Solutions

AdmiralCloud DAM is of course not the only DAM system on the planet. Other popular digital asset management solutions are for example:

CI HUB Connector

Frontify

Canto

Kontainer

4ALLPORTAL

Conclusion

Duplicates are a time and resource eater. The different workflows of the employees as well as various software prevent productive working on assets like photos, videos, audios, and documents. Identifying duplicates through a DAM and manually cleaning them up is the first important step. But much more important is to tackle the problem at the root and counteract the formation of duplicates by a central, cloud-based management of the media and documents, which allows transparent workflows.

Aside from that, a Digital Asset Management System provides many more functions, which gets a grip on the accumulation of files everyday, which is why it is an alternative to companies of any size - especially since the digital content will continue to rise in the future. In every industry. So it's all the more relevant for you to find an individual DAM solution tied to your needs.