What Is The Digital Asset Supply Chain?
The Digital Asset Supply Chain is a method of organising the origination, management, distribution and preservation of digital assets. A supply chain is a network between and organisation and its suppliers. The chain is the steps or processes necessary to get from raw materials to a product a customer uses.
Central to Digital Asset Supply Chains is the concept of value. Digital assets are composed of intrinsic and extrinsic value. Intrinsic value represents the fundamental essence of the digital asset – the binary data. Extrinsic value is the metadata that gives digital asset context or meaning, i.e. why you may want to use it.
Each process or step in a Digital Asset Supply Chain adds value to digital assets, but also creates bottlenecks which slow down throughput – the speed or velocity with which digital materials get transformed into digital assets and distributed to those who use them.
The DAM is at the operational centre of the Digital Asset Supply Chain. All activity before digital materials become transformed into digital assets is referred to as ‘upstream’. Everything that happens thereafter is described as ‘downstream’.
The objective of Digital Asset Supply Chain Management is to increase value while reducing bottlenecks so digital assets are more useful and can be delivered to those who require them more quickly.
How Are Digital Asset Supply Chains Relevant For DAM Users?
In the context of a Digital Asset Supply Chain, suppliers might be either human beings like photographers, video producers or copy editors etc. Alternatively (and increasingly) they could be upstream systems such as Creative tools, Workflow/Campaign Management, Master Data Management or Enterprise Resource Planning. On the downstream or destination side, Web Content Management, Mobile apps, CRM and In-Store Display.
A fully integrated DAM solution where the digital asset supply chain has been consciously designed and implemented allows managers to monitor and streamline their digital asset operations to meet their objectives faster and more effectively.
Nearly all the projects where Daydream are involved in replacing DAM systems are now Digital Asset Supply Chain solutions. Integration is an essential element of DAM and Digital Asset Supply Chains and we have decades of experience and accumulated expertise to help you ensure their implementation is handled smoothly and painlessly.
If you are interested in learning more about Digital Asset Supply Chains, a DAM Federation accredited course is now available.