Selecting An Asset Management System
We have been looking into getting a digital asset management system to house, manage, and retrieve our graphical, marketing, and other files. In researching this online, we found that there wasn't a lot helpful information out there. So, to save you some time, here are some things to look for when picking an asset management system:
- Hosted (SaaS) or in-house client-side application
- Ease of use and user-friendly interface - This one was key for us as we found many solutions with complex, multi-stepped, and poor UIs.
- Disk space - default capacity and scaling up options
- Subscription and setup fees
- Number of users and admins supported and upgrading options
- Ability to brand interface
- File upload & download options - single file, batch uploads, ftp
- Basic and advanced search capabilities
- Supported file formats
- Preview mode of static versus multimedia files - being able to view a streaming file snippet within the tool is a great feature
- Ability add metadata, keywords, captioning, etc.
- Auto-rendering multiple file sizes of a single file
- Report generation and alerts
- Localization support
- Lightbox/favorites
- Third-party access - e.g. for agencies you work with, you can send them a pick-up link for a file without the need to login to access the file.
- Access rights - security and password protection capabilities.
- Customer references
