As business processes become more and more complex; with employees, work, and work flow spread all over the globe; managing data and records can no longer be a manual process. In the age of computers, it only makes sense that data is recorded and stored in digital form. Digital asset management involves storing data in digital form. In technical terms a digital asset is any form of media that has been turned in to a binary source. This may include PowerPoint presentations, text documents, logos, photos, and email.

The importance of digital asset management can be gauged from the fact that it not involves storing data in easily understandable formats, but also that the management software, apart from storing and classifying data, come with the additional features of analyzing it, thereby ensuring conducive business decisions taken at the right time.

If data is managed manually, there may be situations when the company does not even realize that it has certain assets in its inventory that have been forgotten because of not being used over a period of time. So, for an asset to be an asset, it is not only important that people have it, but they know where to find it and can utilize it when the need so arises.

Research has shown that digital asset management saves both time and money. This means that skilled professionals do not have to spend time searching for data that can be located in centralized data repositories and accessed through the companys intranet.

Digital asset management means that you can study existing projects and reuse valuable assets from them. This also means faster development because the groundwork already done ensures that people can concentrate on the requirements of the rest of the project.