Digital asset management built for today and tomorrow

In recent years, the landscape of Digital Asset Management (DAM) has witnessed a significant evolution. The latest Forrester Wave™ report for DAM systems shone a light on the key trends behind today’s most successful solutions, including:

  • The ability to seamlessly integrate DAM within wider digital and marketing ecosystems to enhance overall operational efficiency
  • The need for DAM platforms to scale and grow alongside the expanding needs of businesses
  • The application of artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline collaboration, enhance content discoverability, and enable personalised content

As one of just 13 global DAM vendors listed in this year’s Forrester Wave™ report, Papirfly is keeping pace with these growing trends to deliver not only the most powerful DAM to our customers, but an all-encompassing brand management solution.

Below, we analyse these key trends identified in Forrester’s report, discuss how Papirfly aligns with these developments, and where we are seeking to improve in future.

Making DAM integration seamless to enable scalability

For DAMs to support modern marketers, the ability to seamlessly expand and connect with different platforms is crucial. Nobody uses one platform for everything – from BI tools to CMS and PIM systems, marketers rely on an assortment of digital tools to create, store, measure and more.

Today’s DAMs must become a one-stop shop for users. To enable people to work more efficiently and dynamically. To allow them to bring everything into one interconnected ecosystem and create one source of truth in a fragmented landscape.

By extension, this enables greater scalability. As businesses expand, having one platform that everyone can work from, while still being able to seamlessly incorporate new tools and technologies, is vital for sustained growth. 

This is where Papirfly is making strides to deliver robust integration and route to growth.

Digital asset management statistics showing how marketers use multiple tools to manage brand assets, campaigns and data - source: The Winterberry Group]

How does Papirfly make digital asset integration and scalability seamless?

The Papirfly platform integrates with a huge array of CMSes, PIM systems, creative toolkits and much more. This lets you bring any tool or platform you use into one centralised ecosystem, and not have to change anything about the way you work or operate.

For large, spread-out digital teams, this approach removes barriers, helps teams work together better and makes workflows simpler. In turn, this helps brands maintain a consistent, coherent identity across all touchpoints, no matter the complexity of their operations.

For example, while we have a dedicated DAM, we can also connect to your third-party DAMs so you can instantly bring your digital and media files into our platform, without needing to categorise and tag everything all over again. This allows you to hit the ground running much faster.

This is where our focus on integration reaps its rewards. We ask how can we work with what you have today, rather than asking you to start afresh. And that’s where the scalability question comes in – what can we do to scale alongside your organisation?

By looking at technology as an ecosystem, rather than a single point of integration, our platform is always prepared for growth, whether that happens two months from now or two years. We are at the forefront of this, delivering capabilities to our platform before our customers even need it. 

As digital worlds get more complex and people expect more, having digital asset management software that fits perfectly with your existing systems and grows with your brand is key. We continue to push hard to make sure that we deliver this. To be more than a tool, but a strategic partner in our customers’ brand journey.

Unlocking the power of AI to locate, create and personalise branded content

AI is on the growth. Organisations such as OpenAI have demonstrated AI’s role in unlocking efficiency, creativity and convenience that wasn’t feasible just years ago. And DAM solutions are another example of where this technology is making a massive difference.

When it comes to DAM, one might immediately think that AI can be used to generate assets for this repository. But that’s only scratching the surface. Today, DAM is harnessing AI to more effectively find relevant assets for any campaign through “contextual search”.

Say you want to create a video promoting your brand’s latest product. Using AI-driven contextual search, you can locate down to the pixel-level images and videos that are relevant to this requirement. Rather than spend precious time scanning through folders of assets, this enables users to find the right digital content in one search.

AI also empowers you to maintain assets more consistently with better metadata and tagging. Previously, tagging assets manually was open to a) interpretation and b) human error. When a trained AI model replaces these, it can accurately tag assets based on the learnings you provide. This ensures relevant assets are never lost in the background. 

Venturing further, AI also unlocks the possibilities of machine learning. By analysing data on asset usage and performance, AI can provide insights into optimal asset utilisation and application based on how and where assets are used. This empowers you to better determine what assets should be used for any campaign or application.

Infographic showing how AI automation will be used in marketing by over 80% of retail and consumer executives by 2025 - source: Analytics Insight]

How does Papirfly’s DAM software harness AI to make life easier for users?

Within Papirfly’s AI Lab, we are continuously testing and improving how we apply this technology. Currently, you can generate relevant assets based on your brand colours, stylings and more. You simply provide a prompt and definition, and our platform generates assets within the constraints of your brand profile.

This is where we are now, but the possibilities are endless. We want to use AI to help you design and create content. Short-form videos are a good example of that – our AI in the future will allow you to insert prompts and generate the relevant content and structure of videos in a brand-consistent way. 

We also intend to employ AI to allow you to adapt assets for specific needs. With GenAI capabilities, we will enable you to immediately tweak assets based on different seasons, locations, languages, etc. – all without using a designer or a long approval process.

Right now, Papirfly is simply scratching the surface of what’s achievable with AI. But we are investing heavily in this technology to make it infinitely easier for our users to find the content they need, and create new, brand-consistent assets without barriers or red tape.

Continuously improving to meet market needs

AI is just one example of where Papirfly is growing alongside the market trends illustrated in the latest Forrester Wave™, and where we are driving a future beyond DAM. Two other prominent areas we are focusing on are 3D asset support and advanced content generation.

Starting with 3D assets, this is a huge trend in fashion, homeware, the automotive industry and beyond. It enables people to see, experience and “feel” products before purchasing.

While this is not possible in the current iteration of our platform, it’s something that we’re investing a lot of time and effort towards. Thanks to players like Meta and Apple who have introduced stronger routes to virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), we are exploring ways our platform can manage and deliver 3D assets on our platform so they can be showcased in the form that suits our users.

Developing 3D asset support and advanced content generation through the Papirfly DAM and brand management platform]

Advanced content creation is another gap that we are working to address. Through the greater use of AI and prompt engineering, we aim to enable our platform’s users to generate on-brand, high-quality content without requiring the knowledge or skillsets of a designer.

These evolutions are steered by our Product Roadmap and pivoted around current technology. AI has been a powerful opener for us, and we’ve already spent many hours understanding what AI can offer and proving the concept works for us. This is allowing us, and by extension our users, to harness greater levels of automation.

We are also looking at ways in which we can better supply data and insights from our platform to help users make informed actions and decisions around their brand. Through our ability to interconnect and integrate with other apps, we are on the path to giving our customers enhanced insight that no one is offering today.

With every evolution of our platform, we are enhancing usability and automation to make every aspect of brand management faster, easier and more comprehensive for our users.

Driving design and strategic creativity through DAM

In today’s digital ecosystem, the fusion of design and strategic creativity is not simply an advantage – it’s a necessity for brands aiming to stand out. 

In the latest Forrester Wave™ report for Digital Asset Management (DAM), these platforms are increasingly expected to support design in brand management, and foster a collaborative environment that breaks down silos and encourages holistic storytelling.

At Papirfly, we embody this ethos. Our platform acts as a powerful conduit for marketing and creative leaders to unlock intelligent creativity in the way they work.

Here we’ll explore the growing importance of DAM in the creative process, and how our solution is enabling our users to generate on-brand assets and personalise content however they see fit.

Empowering creativity, breaking barriers

Traditionally, DAM is just a repository that controls your digital assets. Today, it is now expected to play an active role in the development of branded assets. It’s not just accessing a piece of data anymore – it’s about providing one holistic platform where creativity flows from one end to the other.

That’s why Papirfly’s platform is built for all users. The creative studios, the designers, the marketers – everyone involved in the creative process. In large, global brands, creative artists often work in silos, confined to their departments in a very rigid format.

Rather than a conventional DAM where assets are simply stored for marketing teams to access, today’s DAM systems must be so much more. What we do at Papirfly is bring everything under one roof. Our tools and workflows are aligned to allow for seamless ideation, execution and management of brand assets without conventional barriers.

So how does this work? In our platform, any user can access assets in the DAM, and then make changes where necessary in the same space. From here, you can then set workflows for approving content before it’s published, and plan the timeline for your campaign – still in the same all-encompassing platform.

You go from where you Place assets in your DAM, to where you Produce new assets, to where you Plan your campaigns and Prove their performance through data and analytics. Everything is available in one platform, accessible to everyone, with no silos, barriers or red tape.

Papirfly is creating an ecosystem where everyone comes together to produce what is needed with minimal resistance, and with complete control over brand consistency. This does not only ensure every asset is always on-brand, but is also strategically conceived to engage audiences and drive results.

Through this central, brand management hub, our platform enables design and creativity in a way far beyond traditional digital asset management tools. We provide a space where users have the freedom to create what’s needed and get innovative, while always delivering absolute consistency.

Getting personal with content creation

The Forrester Wave™ report on DAM also noted how DAMs are playing a vital role in the personalisation and customisation of content. This is somewhere that Papirfly excels.

For global organisations, it is essential to customise content for different geographic locations, demographics, seasons, etc. Without these alterations, you greatly limit the performance of an asset for your audiences, and fail to get the optimal value out of your campaigns.

So, within modern DAMs, it is crucial marketers easily adapt assets to ensure the right content reaches the right audience at the right time. At Papirfly, our platform is designed to go beyond managing digital assets; it gives you the power to transform assets for maximum engagement.

Infographic showing 80% of consumers more likely to make purchases when brands offer personalised experiences - source: Epsilon]

Let’s say you want to customise a particular set of assets for a specific audience, like graduates. In our platform, you can create a series of different templates and structures for this and any other unique audience. These are still bounded by your brand guidelines, but give you the flexibility to adapt content in a highly streamlined, efficient way.

Our platform also enables you to set controls and workflows for certain regions to make sure they only receive content that’s right for them. Take a brand like Mercedes for example – some of their car models are only available in particular locations.

With our advanced metadata and tagging systems, you can lock down what assets individual franchises can access. This ensures that campaigns only contain relevant products, colours and imagery that suits this audience.

 Value of brand personalisation statistics to lower costs, improve revenue and enhance spend - source: McKinsey]

This is just one control mechanism our platform provides to help you send the right content to the right audience. You can also set assets to be accessible at precise times of year – such as how Coca-Cola have unique designs on their cans during Christmas.

By enabling the rapid customisation of assets through intelligent templates, and giving you control over what assets are available for a given region, demographic or time of year, our platform is making it faster and simpler to deliver custom content that connects with your varied audiences.

A more dynamic future for content creation and customisation

With DAMs expected to play a key role in content creation and strategy, Papirfly’s platform is steering the future of digital asset management. From unlocking silos that stifle the creative process, to integrating effortlessly with marketing technology stacks, we enable brands to create cohesive, customised customer journeys at all touchpoints.

Through our comprehensive brand management solution, you gain the ability to streamline creative operations, swiftly respond to ever-changing market dynamics, and deliver personalised, engaging content at an unmatched scale.