Is there a real benefit to implementing a DAM?

This was a question posed in a comment received on this blog by a new reader. Obviously, they had not read anything I had written before, but I wanted to answer their question rather than having them believe that a DAM is simply a justification for:

• Another project just to keep people busy and employed
  
• Another application for the collection of ‘shelf babies’ within an organization that does not use the tools which have been developed for them
  
• A higher budget to burn on something

Unfortunately, many IT projects are wrongly considered in one or more of these categories listed above because people simply don’t understand them. So, now I will lead you back to the logical business world where people actually want to improve their organization as a whole. I will keep most of this rather simple to understand too.

As more people and organizations accumulate digital assets, they need to:

• Manage the assets they keep
• Know what assets they have
• Know the contents of these assets
• Know who acquired/created the assets for accountability and sometimes even crediting purposes
• Know where and how to find the assets
• Find assets in a timely manner using metadata
• Know when the assets were acquired/created for the life cycle of the asset and any rights management issues
• Know what versions/renditions are available of any asset (there is better way than just using so-called unique filenames)
• Enable the use, reuse and re-purposing of assets (how do you spell ROI?)
• Preview assets from one central repository (let us see what we have)
• Be organized (really, it is possible)
• Grow with the organization (rather than against it)
• Have permission-based access for all users and roles
• Enable more people throughout the organization to access assets they should have as they need them
• Enable access to assets 24 hours a day/7 days a week/365 days a year/ from anywhere with internet access/worldwide

These were a few real benefits to implementing a DAM.

Now, who wants to name and count the number of systems that can do all that today, aside from a DAM?