How To Measure Digital Asset Management ROI and Justify the Investment
Most organizations recognize the value of digital asset management (DAM) systems, but the challenge lies in precisely quantifying its ROI. The dynamic nature of intelligent asset management means that its impacts, while positive for many use cases, defy easy evaluation.
So, one critical question for most business leaders is: How do you measure and justify digital asset management ROI?
While ROI evaluation might vary depending on your organization’s goal, consider the profit framework below to quantify the value DAM brings to your operations.
Measuring the True ROI in Digital Asset Management
At its core, DAM system implementation delivers value by saving time and resources wasted in searching for assets, duplicating lost assets, underutilizing resources, and chasing for asset approval.
To quantify your DAM system success, set clear goals and select key performance indicators (KPIs) to track. The KPIs you choose to track can be:
- Quantitative metrics: They are the most straightforward success metrics. You can easily measure their impact using numbers.
- Qualitative metrics: These success indicators are difficult to measure numerically. They delve into the intangible aspects of a DAM system’s success.
The key to measuring true digital asset management ROI is to track both quantitative and qualitative metrics.
Key Quantitative Metrics To Measure DAM ROI: A Game of Numbers
You might have a difficult time convincing decision-makers of the value of a digital asset management platform without hard numbers to back you up. To build a strong case beyond operational convenience, focus on quantitative metrics that justify the investment with concrete data.
Good quantitative key metrics to track digital asset management ROI include:
Cost Savings
One of the most easily quantified sources of value is cost saving. Intelligent asset management drives efficiency in marketing operations by making it easier to find, manage, and distribute marketing assets. Teams spend less time looking for and sharing assets — and recreating those they can’t find.
Besides, AI DAM can automatically tag and organize assets based on predefined criteria. As a result, your organization will require less manual effort to categorize and manage assets.
How To Measure Cost Savings ROI
To measure your DAM’s cost savings, you’ll need to:
- Identify the labor and operational costs before your company implements DAM.
- Calculate the expenses after DAM implementation.
- Subtract the post-DAM implementation cost from pre-DAM costs.
That is:
Cost savings = Pre-DAM (Labor + Operational) costs — Post-DAM (Labor + Operational + Maintenance) costs
Time Saved
Another way to get value from the DAM system is through time saved. Digital asset management systems accomplish this by:
- Reducing asset search time
- Automating metadata tagging to minimize manual efforts
- Streamlining asset approval through centralized review, commenting, and approval processes
Track the time employees and other stakeholders save in asset retrieval and deployment. Then, convert these time savings into monetary terms by multiplying it by the average hourly rate.
How To Measure Time-Saved ROI
Estimate the average time an employee previously spent searching for assets and collaborating across departments. Then, measure the time after implementing DAM.
Subtract post-DAM time from pre-DAM to get the saved time.
Saved time = Pre-DAM time spent in asset retrieval – Post-DAM time spent in asset retrieval
You can quantify the ROI by multiplying the time saved by the employee hourly rate.
Put in another way:
ROI on time saved = Time saved X Employee hourly rates
Reducing search and retrieval time translates directly into labor cost savings and allows your employees to focus more on their core duties.
Reduced Asset Duplication
Asset duplication leads to unnecessary costs and clutter within an organization. It usually happens when your staff members can’t easily find the original asset and have to recreate or download it again.
Duplication also occurs when different teams or departments work in silos, each managing their own asset without a unified system.
With a DAM system, your organization centralizes all the assets so that every employee can access the same version, reducing the chances of duplication.
How To Measure the ROI of Reduced Asset Duplication
Measuring the impact of reduced asset duplication requires a multifaceted approach. You’ll need to consider duplicate storage costs and the labor cost of finding, managing, and creating new assets.
- Track the number of duplicates before implementing a DAM system.
- Calculate the physical and cloud storage costs associated with duplicate assets.
- Determine the time employees spend searching for, managing, and creating duplicate assets. Quantify this time by multiplying it with hourly wages.
- Estimate the cost of acquiring duplicated new assets, such as photography, licensing, and design.
- Then, compare all these costs with the corresponding post-DAM cost.
In simpler terms:
Storage savings = Pre-DAM storage costs – Post-DAM storage costs
Labor savings = Time saved X hourly rate of employees
Asset creation savings = Cost reduction in expenses related to creating duplicates
Therefore:
Reduced asset duplication ROI = Storage savings + Labor savings + Asset creation savings
Revenue Generation
While all other metrics are important, revenue generation is often the most compelling one for digital asset management ROI. However, quantifying the revenue generated can be challenging.
How To Measure ROI from Generated Revenue
Measuring revenue generated by DAM requires you to link the system’s direct impact on business activities to:
- Increased sales from faster time-to-market campaigns
- Revenue generated from enhanced customer experience
- Revenue generated from asset reuse
You can then add all the revenue to quantify the total increased revenue due to DAM implementation.
Total revenue generated = Increased revenue from (Increased sales + Enhanced customer experience + Asset reuse)
Increased Productivity
Another way your organization can get value from deploying a DAM system is through increased productivity. Intelligent asset management accomplishes this by integrating processes, improving collaboration, and reducing time spent on repetitive tasks.
How To Measure ROI Due to Increased Productivity
Quantifying increased productivity due to implementing a digital asset management system typically involves tracking the time saved from the efficiency gained and multiplying it with the employee’s hourly rate.
A simple formula is:
ROI in increased productivity = Total hours saved X Average hourly rate
Improved Campaign Speed
Having your digital assets in a central hub allows your marketing team to speed up production cycles — from ideation to publication. Besides, DAM platforms streamline workflows, allowing you to assign, review, and approve digital assets without fuss.
How To Quantify the Impact of Improved Campaign Speed
To measure the ROI of improved campaign speed, consider the following:
- Compare the pre-DAM and post-DAM time used in asset retrieval
- Estimate the number of campaigns your team runs
- Calculate the total time saved by multiplying the time saved per campaign by the number of campaigns
- Assign a financial value to the time saved by multiplying it by the average hourly wage
ROI of improved campaign speed = Total time saved in campaign x Average hourly rate
Also, faster campaigns generate more timely sales to generate more revenue.
Key Qualitative Metrics: Beyond the Numbers
Quantitative metrics only tell part of the story. While you can use them to track ROI by assigning a numerical value, you might need to track qualitative metrics to reveal non-monetary ROI.
Non-monetary benefits nurture brand perception for long-term success and are based on interpretation, observations, and feelings.
Examples of qualitative metrics you can track for your DAM include:
Reduced Legal Exposure
AI DAM acts as a gatekeeper to support effective copyright management. It has metadata management features that track digital asset licensing terms and ownership details. Your employees can stay aware of copyright laws and remain compliant, reducing the risk of inappropriate use of marketing assets.
Besides, a DAM system allows for granular access control, ensuring only authorized individuals can access or modify assets. It lowers the chances of misuse and accidental breaches of legal agreements.
While it’s difficult to quantify the ROI of reduced legal exposure, consider the risk mitigation achieved through secure asset management and adherence to compliance standards. Minimizing these risks prevents substantial financial penalties and reputational damage.
Brand Consistency
Brand consistency is another way you can get ROI from your DAM system. Your average target customer sees 50-400 ads a day, which can be overwhelming. Your marketing should maintain unified brand messaging across all channels to drive brand recognition.
With a DAM system, you can establish your presence in a saturated market by unifying your brand messaging and preserving the quality and integrity of creative assets across various media.
To measure the ROI of brand consistency due to the implementation of a DAM, examine the following:
- Improved brand identity by gauging customer sentiments, brand search volume, and referral traffic after deploying the DAM system
- Enhanced customer experience by assessing customer satisfaction and effort to communicate with your brand
- Impact on customer trust by measuring retention rates, customer lifetime value, social media, and online review
How To Calculate ROI in DAM: A Step-by-Step Guide
Generally, calculating ROI in DAM follows a simple process.
- Identify costs: Add all the expenses of implementing and maintaining your DAM system.
- Quantify the value: Measure the total benefits from your DAM system. You can calculate how much you’ve saved on labor costs, the value of increased productivity, and other KPIs you’re tracking.
- Calculate: Plug these numbers into the ROI formula below to find your ROI as a percentage.
ROI = Gain from DAM/Cost of DAM X 100
Quantitative metrics will be easier to assign numeric values to than qualitative ones. However, with some research and analysis, you should be able to calculate costs and benefits even for the less tangible measures.
The Importance of Measuring DAM ROI
DAM ROI at any organization proves the value of intelligent asset management to the company. Implementing an intelligent asset management system is a significant investment, and you need to quantify its true impact.
Demonstrating that digital asset management is profitable can help you:
Justify the Investment
Measuring DAM ROI allows you to demonstrate its value and justify the initial investment and ongoing maintenance costs. You can show stakeholders the tangible benefits to help secure a budget for future enhancement or expansion of the DAM system.
Optimize Resource Allocation
When your organization understands the ROI, it can make informed decisions about how to allocate resources — in terms of time, budget, or personnel — more effectively.
ROI helps business leaders understand what aspect of the DAM system offers more value, helping them prioritize updates, integrations, and process improvements.
Reveal Inefficiency in Asset Management Processes
When measuring ROI, you can expose bottlenecks in asset management processes. You can then target the inefficiencies for improvement to refine workflows, maximize efficiency, and improve productivity.
Demonstrate Impact on the Overall Business Goal
ROI shows how the DAM system contributes to the broader business goal, such as enhanced brand consistency, increased sales, and improved marketing efficiencies.
Encourage Widespread Adoption of the DAM System Among Employees
Demonstrating a positive ROI to all stakeholders can encourage more widespread user adoption of the DAM system because they see the clear benefits in their daily tasks.
Optimizing DAM for Higher ROI
Understanding DAM ROI is invaluable for organizations looking to make informed decisions on where to put their money. However, what’s more important is understanding ROI and acting on it to maximize profitability and marketing impact.
Here’s how you can optimize your DAM system to achieve higher ROI.
Set Goals
To maximize ROI, start by clearly defining your objectives and KPIs. For instance, you might want to:
- Improve asset utilization
- Increase content delivery speed
- Set the stage for effective measurement
Depending on your DAM goal, choose the right KPIs to measure your system’s impact.
Train Your Team
The more skilled your team members are in employing your DAM system, the higher the adoption rate and the more effectively they’ll use it. Conduct regular training sessions and create user guides so your team knows how to get the most out of the system.
Integrate Your DAM
Connect your DAM system with tools like a content management system (CMS), customer relationship management (CRM) system, and marketing automation platform.
The integration will streamline workflows, enhance collaboration, and improve productivity.
Analyze Your Strategy
Is your organization meeting its KPIs? Are users satisfied with your DAM implementation? Use analytics to track metrics like asset usage, search efficiency, and user activity. If you spot patterns of underutilization or inefficiency, investigate the root cause.
The metadata tagging may need improvement for better searchability, or some assets may be outdated and need a refresh.
Maximize Your Marketing ROI With AI DAM
Unlock your full marketing potential with an AI-powered digital asset management system that allows seamless creation, management, and distribution across the entire content lifecycle. With the growing volume of assets, intelligence can help you save time wasted searching for assets, recreating lost ones, and seeking asset approval from stakeholders.
Learn how you can improve your marketing today with a free trial of Aprimo DAM.
