A common approach by many organisations to calculating DAM ROI is to use statements like “each of our x employees spend y hours each day, searching for assets”. They then use this statement to count backwards and calculate the ROI; Search time per day (hour) x Employee cost per hour = Cost for Business per day.
This formula however, will only tell what the costs are without using a DAM. But there are more factors to consider when calculating the ROI for a successful DAM implementation.
Reduce Time-to-market
A key factor to a successful product launch in todays digital world is to have your content (images, video, sales material etc) available for the right people in the right marketing channel at the right time. A great DAM-tool makes these digital content easily accessible to marketing organization, sales representatives, channel members, publications, etc. By using multi-channel publishing the content will be instantly available to your colleagues, partners, resellers and consumers.
Effective distribution
A proper DAM tool can easily and automatically convert images, audio, video and documents to correct format on-the-fly. This saves lots of time for employees working with image editing and video editing tools like Photoshop and Final Cut. You can set up rules for how the files should be automatically converted and named depending on which marketing channel you want to use your assets. The distribution can also be made by another tool using the API to pull information and assets from the DAM in correct format, instead of having people uploading content to another tool and storage area.
Improve Brand Consistency
DAM makes it possible to maintain full control over the representation of the brand by making it easy for employees and partners to access digital content that can be controlled to provide the correct brand image. For example if a change is made to a product pack shot , then the digital assets can quickly be changed and outdated images can be made inaccessible. This will reduce the risk of partners, colleagues, wholesalers or retailers using an outdated or incorrect image in their marketing. By using an outdated image companies may confuse or even alienate customers.
Business Intelligence
Once an automated system for keeping track of everything is in place, it is much easier to get precise and accurate usage figures for your content. The intelligence gathered can inform a wide range of operational activities in relation to digital media that you would not have known otherwise.
Reducing costs of licenses
Without a proper DAM, many marketing organisations spend a notable amount of their budget on purchasing assets and renewing photo licensing rights without having a clue of what is being used, how often, by whom and in which marketing channel.