A CMS typically stores and drives content to a website affording the user the ability to edit the textual content within it. A DAM, on the other hand, focuses on the storing, cataloguing and often process managing of media assets across an entire business and may even feed some to a CMS for publication. A DAM will typically include extensive metadata indexing and search capabilities along with services to derive additional digital formats from the source. 

When the volume of content and team size outgrow a simple local file server and searching for, versioning, replacing or finding where a digital asset has been used becomes difficult you need a DAM. File servers are great but are hugely restrictive in the folder structures they can portray and the additional metadata they can store. More importantly, there are difficulties in making a file server searchable or giving it the ability to maintain the relationships between the assets themselves. Think about how you might track the use of a picture or logo over the last 3 years using just a file server. A DAM solution typically hides the storage structures and presents an asset-based view of projects, collections or related assets and opens up an array of ways to search for and investigate its previous usage along with managing extensive metadata attributes. Where did it come from, when, who approved it, where it's been used etc should all be easily answered questioned from a reputable DAM system. 

Time and Money! DAM’s save users huge amounts of time trying to find, share, process and reuse often expensive digital assets. Being able to see an asset's history, ownership (rights management) and previous usage without having to trawl through many folders or other tracking docs saves not only money but staff frustrations and time! Financially, being able easily to identify and reuse previously purchased digital assets rather than constantly re-purchasing is also very savvy!

Absolutely! Whilst Papermule’s DAM can store any digital file it works particularly well with a variety of creative applications but especially Adobe’s suite and InDesign. InDesign extensions help automate many human processes and provide integrations with other Adobe applications like InCopy. Papermule’s InDesign extension will ensure layouts are created to spec and content exported correctly without human intervention or input. 

Yes, we can provide solutions that are entirely hosted using Amazon's AWS infrastructure but we’ll also do the usage analysis and provide costings for on-premises as well since hosting large volumes of creative assets for prolonged periods in the cloud and the incurred data transfer charges can often outweigh the on-premises costs.