Let’s face it; most organizations have too many visual assets.
Most of them find storing, managing, and distributing media with the right person at the right time challenging. The situation gets even worse when dealing with a huge number of assets daily.
But here’s the thing; accessing the media files that you want shouldn’t be difficult at all.
That’s why, whether you’re part of a small media team or a large organization, it’s time to find the best media asset management system for you.
Table of Contents
What is Media Asset Management
Media Asset Management (MAM) refers to the process of storing and organizing video and multimedia files.
The term also describes the workflow and the software that can facilitate the storage, management, and retrieval of media files throughout the content lifecycle.
In short, your MAM system can help you:
- Manage and organize your media assets
- Bring different teams together
- Unify access to assets
- Improve collaboration between different teams
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In other words, a MAM system can make your life easier.
No more time-wasting trying to find the right asset. And certainly no more confusion among teams looking for a specific video in your content library.
But what’s makes media asset management different from digital asset management (DAM)?
The Difference Between DAM and MAM
It’s not always easy to understand the difference between DAM and MAM systems. After all, they are both aiming to streamline content storage and distribution.
So, let’s begin understanding that difference by looking at their similarities.
Firstly, both DAM and MAM systems help organizations manage and access their content.
They also tidy up the chaos of dealing with lots of content through controlled ownership, effective management, and tracking usage.
Here’s what differentiates them, though.
Media Asset Management helps you organize your video and multimedia files. It originally started as a system to streamline the video production process, but it has grown into offering many more features nowadays.
Digital Asset Management can include a broader number of file types to improve the management, storage, and distribution of your content, as you can read up in our article about what Digital Asset Management is and when you need it for your company.
With DAM evolving over the years to support media files, MAM is sometimes considered as a more specialized version of DAM systems to extend the tools and processes that deliver the best results for an organization dealing with numerous video and multimedia files.
Why You Need a Media Asset Management System
The main reason for investing in a Media Asset Management system is to organize your media library. Such a system should help everyone store, find, manage, edit, and distribute your video and multimedia files in a more efficient workflow.
In more detail, a MAM system can help you:
- Discover files as fast as possible
- Store and manage your files in an organized way
- Set up a workflow that makes video production faster
- Allow different teams to use similar assets
- Control content to avoid duplicate files
- Provide information such as creator, permissions, copyright information
- Offer unified access to everyone in the team based on your preferred asset management and permissions
- Track usage
- Access to the history of each file
- Orchestrate a business workflow that can improve your productivity
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Overall, a good media management system can make a big difference even to complex video workflows.
Picking the Right MAM Software For Your Business
Are you thinking of investing in a Media Asset Management System? Do you need to improve your current asset management system?
No matter where you are in the process of improving your content media management, you need to review the stage that you’re currently in. Take a step back and explore your strengths and weaknesses in media asset management. Think, how you would like to see your organization changing based on the workflows that would ensure success.
Not every organization shares the same definition of success, so this is an important step that you cannot ignore.
Spend the right time to research all the MAM tools and how you can benefit from them. Some MAM tools might specialize in a specific industry or a particular workflow process. Others might be focusing on flexibility or ease of use.
After all, you need to weigh down the most important areas of improvement that would benefit your organization.
The right MAM platform should suit your organization’s needs to improve your current processes, workflow, and collaboration. It can take a while to find the best tool for your needs but don’t be afraid to spend a good amount of time on research.
Start your shopping process by exploring the following areas.
- The most important features for your organization
- Number of people who would access the software
- Potential issues with current asset management
- The time it would take for a team to streamline the process
- Available budget
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As with all shopping decisions, it shouldn’t be hard to find what’s best for you. The more prepared you are in the beginning, the easiest it gets to find the best choice for you.
Conclusion
If you are struggling to keep up with the management of your multimedia and video files, then you need to invest in a media asset management system.
It’s not just about storing or organizing your media files.
You may be surprised by how more efficient your teams can be using a good MAM system.
Remember, there’s no need to rush this decision. Spend the right time to find the best tool for your organization and look at the features that would take your business to the next level.
