DAM for manufacturers: 5 reasons to love it

  1. chevron left iconDAM for manufacturers: 5 reasons to love it
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Monica MahonMay 26, 2023
  • Digital Asset Management

Quite simply, if you have a digital asset lurking anywhere in your manufacturing business, you should have a digital asset management system, or DAM. Well, perhaps you’d get away with not having a DAM if you only had a single digital asset. In reality, you’re more likely to have tens or hundreds of thousands of digital assets, even millions. Today, it’s more important than ever to keep them under control.

As a manufacturer, unlike say a publishing house or even retailer, you may wonder why managing digital assets is important. After all, you’re in the business of building products and focused on precision engineering or quality materials. But digital assets form a vital part of your business all the way from raw materials to the retailer’s shopfloor and even onwards into the customer’s pocket, home or business.

Why should you use a manufacturing DAM?

Strong digital assets bring you closer to your customer

From wholesale catalogs to branding materials, specification sheets and user manuals, there is already a lot of content to deal with. But increasingly, manufacturers are developing closer relationships with their end consumers. This is vital to maintain customer loyalty and improve customer experience, all of which contributes to competitive advantage in today’s crowded marketplaces. Building those closer relationships mean communication, communication means content and content means assets. And because we’re all online and on mobile, those assets are primarily digital.

Similarly, with an increased focus on ESG – Environmental, Social and Governance – issues, consumers are more likely than ever to want to delve into the history and provenance of their products. Digital assets that cover the sustainable credentials of your product’s raw materials and manufacture, the ethics behind its sourcing and traceability are all essential and increasingly required to be a matter of public record.

Time for better asset organization

Unless you launched your business in the last few years, it’s highly likely the way you manage your growing asset library has grown organically, some might even say ad hoc. Processes that were initially fit for purpose – exchanging assets over email, storing files on desktops, then servers, possibly even Dropbox or Google Drive – are starting to fall over. Assets can’t be found, they get duplicated – at extra cost, the wrong people start using and changing them meaning time-consuming repairs, mistakes are made, approvals not secured and in the worst-case scenario, the wrong information makes it to the end user.

A DAM solves for all of this – and more.

Did you know?

Maintaining control over your assets is vital. In 2017, Burger King launched a mobile campaign featuring a video that was designed to trigger Google Home devices. The concept was simple enough. By accessing the company’s digital assets, notably its Wikipedia page, a request “OK Google, what is the Whopper burger” should have brought up complementary information to the 15 second ad.

Instead, the internet did what the internet does and the company’s Wikipedia site was hacked, replacing mouthwatering ingredients with “The Whopper is a burger, consisting of a flame-grilled patty made with 100% medium-sized child with no preservatives or fillers, topped with sliced tomatoes, onions, lettuce, cyanide, pickles, ketchup, and mayonnaise, served on a sesame-seed bun.”

With DAM for manufacturers keeping close control over individual assets as well as the contextual links between them, it’s possible to avoid this sort of situation.

To this day, a search for “burger king cyanide” brings up nearly three million results.

Source: Gizmodo

1. Organize your assets with Metadata

The world moves fast. You need to be able to find your assets quickly and accurately. When every asset is uniquely categorized with metadata, it makes your database easy to search. The metadata also creates contextual links between assets so you can create rich, relevant content. Anything from troubleshooting guides to complementary products, accessories and branding collateral can be linked to make both trade and consumer communications fast and crystal clear.

2. Create more effective workflows

Content is not a manufacturer’s main business. Inevitably, there will be many more employees coming into contact with digital assets than those with the expertise or the authority to make significant changes. With automatically-set levels of access and clear workflows, anyone who needs to interact with an asset can do so, within the permitted guardrails, and can have a clear view of what is required of their task.

Did you know?


BSH Hausgeräte GmbH (BSH) is a leading manufacturer of electrical and white goods, as well as a retailer of well-known brands such as Bosch and Siemens. A global business with more than 3,000 users around the world, the company has to manage more than 11 million assets. The DAM system has to be intuitive enough for people to use with minimal training and intervention, while keeping content secure and workflows on track. It also has to be ready for any changes that are likely to happen in the industry. censhare’s DAM was implemented with 150 stakeholder workshops to make sure users get the full benefit of the system.

“We needed a completely new, integrated, and comfortable to use content management system which is fast and ready for future needs, as well as flexible and meeting the requirements of the digital world.”

Daniel Correns

Senior Project Manager, BSH

3. Ensure brand consistency and legality

Manufacturing is in the business of innovation. That means products are constantly being refreshed, reiterated and reborn. To make sure that all the digital assets remain current, a DAM catalogs items not only by what they are, but by their expiry date. Whether it’s image licenses that are only live for a certain period, or instruction manuals that have been superseded, it’s vital that a product’s corresponding assets should stay up to date and not hold up the release process.

4. Automate processes for employee satisfaction

With a huge volume of assets, some extremely meticulous in nature (such as product specifications), employees can get bogged down in asset management and processing themselves. Too much time is wasted on rote tasks such as filing assets, chasing up images or information and pushing items through approvals processes. Instead, by automating things such as asset tagging, asset distribution, approvals and even production workflows, employees can engage in more stimulating, higher value tasks that demonstrate creativity and push the business forward.

5. Personalize at scale

As content is increasingly becoming part of the physical product experience, so too it offers manufacturers another way of personalizing their offering, without the expense of having to change tangible attributes and produce small batches. Through personalized digital assets, such as welcome packs, suggestions for use, complimentary products, extra training or advice, manufacturers can enhance their customer experience using the assets at hand.

Censhare helps transform the way a manufacturer operates and, with its DAM for manufacturers, helps them reap all the benefits of a digital age.

Gain the upper hand with DAM for manufacturers today

Manufacturing success is as much about the experience as it is about any physical item. The quality of your content is at the heart of delivering that experience. Today’s manufacturer has to be switched on to consumer needs, and agile enough to respond to them quickly and effectively.

To achieve this, manufacturers need the help of a robust digital asset management resource. Using a DAM means your teams have everything they need to create lasting customer relationships while innovating with an eye on the future.

Monica Machon Headshot.JPG
Monica Mahon
Monica Machon is the Marketing Manager for censhare US. She has been working in marketing for 15 years, overseeing marketing functions and helping SaaS companies design and execute marketing strategies, events, and promotional activities, while enhancing brand positioning and impacting revenue goals.

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