How Much Does Digital Asset Managemetn Cost?
For prospective DAM customers, pricing is inevitably going to be at the forefront of your decision-making when browsing the market—we all have our budgets after all. Yet the initial and ongoing costs for adopting a DAM can vary so widely depending on the needs and size of your team.
If Bynder seems like it ticks all the boxes for your organization, we’d be happy to give you a quick and hassle-free DAM quote so you can get a more accurate pricing figure that’s tailored to your exact needs.
Yet, it’s still good to have some context for how the pricing of a DAM for clients is calculated, which can usually be split into a few different categories.
Start-up costs
The initial start-up costs when implementing your digital asset management solution will of course depend on the DAM software vendor you choose.
DAM software providers that don’t offer cloud-based storage may require costly on-site installations. This typically includes costs for a dedicated server storage space, as well as costs for any security measures needed to keep it safe.
Yet physical implementations are becoming increasingly less common for these reasons, and the majority of DAM providers—Bynder included—offer solutions that are 100% cloud-based that needs no physical server space, as the data is stored digitally, i.e. ‘in the cloud’, which helps make it much more cost-efficient.
Implementation costs: How much time it will cost to set up a DAM?
So you’ve decided on a DAM provider and it’s ready to receive all those digital assets of yours. This is where the ‘time’ costs will figure into the equation, as a quality DAM relies on setting up a solid structure that will help your team to start—and continue—using it without the effort. And that relies on creating a taxonomy that matches the needs of your organization.
Here are some basic questions to get you started:
- Which digital assets belong in the DAM and which don’t?
- Which departments use which assets?
- How are you going to categorize your assets?
- Which of these categories would be useful to find assets?
For a more in-depth (and free) guide on creating a taxonomy and applying the taxonomy to your assets, download the DAM toolkit. It’s not as daunting as it sounds; we’ve even used cute & cuddly examples to create a hypothetical taxonomy—you can see how it’s done here.
Another time investment you’ll need to think about is tagging, i.e. applying metadata, to all your digital assets. This involves ‘tagging’ a number of keywords to an asset, which can then be used as search queries to more accurately find what you’re looking for.
As this inevitably costs you time and resources, that’s exactly why Bynder features AI-tagging capabilities. This means your images will automatically be scanned upon upload to the DAM for everyday objects, i.e. a “cat” tag generated for an image of a cat.
This saves you a lot of time and effort both at the implementation stage, and as you and your team continue to upload your images in the future.
For some best practices on applying metadata, check out our top tips for applying metadata to your digital assets.
Training costs
The ROI for digital asset management is directly linked to usage. It's as simple as that. If you team members don’t know how the DAM works, or don’t understand how it can benefit them, then they won’t use it. And if no one’s using it, then your organization isn’t going to reap the benefits a DAM can offer to the workplace.
So it’s imperative that your users know how to use a DAM, as well as how it can benefit them, so they have an incentive to adopt it in their everyday workflow.
We suggest in-house training sessions tailored for each department, so everyone knows exactly how a DAM can benefit their specific use case. Some examples:
- Show the creative team how quickly they can find images using the DAM, as well as its editing functionality
- Demonstrate how the Sales team can find all the sales enablement material they need in the DAM, without having to go through marketing
- Show your PR team how they can share their media kit with external parties in seconds, all from within the DAM
For access to free DAM training resources, click here.
Service costs
Most DAM providers these days like Bynder offer solutions based on a SaaS-based (Software as a Service) subscription, so inevitably the majority of the costs will be charged on a monthly basis—dependent on the size and needs of your team.
So it’s good to identify what your DAM goals and expectations early on, so you know what you’re looking for when comparing DAM vendors. For guidance, read our 5 things to look for in your first DAM post.
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