ROI of DAM: How Much Time and Money Can You Really Save?

If your business works extensively with digital assets, you’ve probably realized by now that trying to manage them in the old-fashioned way is a complete waste of time and resources. 

A Digital Asset Management (DAM) system offers a powerful solution to these challenges, but raises an important question: how can you justify the cost to stakeholders like your boss or a board of directors?

DAM ROI matters. 

If you’re considering implementing a DAM, you need to know whether the return on the (not inconsiderable) time and money you’re investing is going to be worth it.

To help you make that call, let’s take a look at what the ROI of DAM software is and how to calculate DAM cost efficiency.

Is DAM an Expense or an Investment?

Businesses these days accumulate a vast library of digital assets, like images, videos, marketing materials, or presentations, for example. Managing these comes with many challenges. From creating and storing them to retrieving the right ones when you need them, there’s potential for confusion and wasted time at every step. 

In fact, according to a McKinsey study, your team may be spending up to 19% of their workweek searching for and gathering information. That’s almost a full day every week that they could use for higher value (read: income-generating) tasks. Add to that the risk of human error or of choosing an inappropriate or outdated resource by mistake, and it’s clear there’s a lot of room for improvement.

A DAM system meets that need and so much more, improving your team’s productivity and effectiveness on every level — which means your team can get a final product onto the market much sooner.  

So how exactly do we measure those results against the cost of the system — in other words, DAM cost efficiency? Enter DAM ROI. 

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What is ROI for DAM? Measuring Value Beyond the Price Tag

DAM ROI — or return on investment — helps you measure the financial benefit of implementing a DAM against its cost. This gives you the information you need to make the best decision for your company. 

In simple terms:

Essentially this formula calculates the money saved by using a DAM, measured against the cost. 

If the DAM ROI is positive, then it’s likely to be a good investment, while a low or negative ROI means it may not be worthwhile. Bear in mind that at this stage, these figures will be estimates, not absolute values.

Factors That Impact DAM ROI

Many different elements influence DAM cost efficiency. Some are quantitative and relatively easily measured, such as time saved on searches. Others are more qualitative and less easy to calculate, like brand consistency and compliance factors, for example. That said, the consequences of not staying on top of the latter often show up later in cold hard costs. 

Let’s take a look at some of the most important factors in DAM cost efficiency.

1. Time (= Money) Saved

Remember those team members who’re spending almost a day a week searching for digital assets — and then checking usage rights and making sure it’s the right version? And let’s not forget that those assets need to be manually cataloged in the first place. You’re paying your team for all that time, and the moment you reduce the time they spend on those tasks, you’re saving money.

How a DAM System Helps

These are just some of the DAM features that make it quick and easy to find what you need:

• Folders that divide your assets into clearly defined categories
• Detailed meta tagging, with keywords and descriptions
• Comprehensive search functionality

Simply press a few keys and out pops your digital asset, saving hours of work and pots of money. 

How to Calculate Your Potential Savings

1. Estimate the average time one of your team members currently spends every day finding and downloading digital assets. 
2. Estimate how long it would take them to type in a few keywords to find an asset from your DAM and then get almost instant access.
3. Subtract the DAM process figure from the manual process figure to get your time saved.
4. Multiply the time saved by the number of employees who work with digital assets.
5. Multiply this figure by the average hourly rate of your team members to get your savings every day.

For example, if you have 3 team members who spend around 1 hour a day accessing digital assets:

1. 1 hour without DAM – (say 5 minutes) with DAM = 55 minutes
2. 55 x 3 team members = 165 minutes or 2.75 hours per day
3. 2.75 hours per day x average hourly rate of $25 = $68.75 saved per day
4. $68.75 saved per day x 250 working days = ✅$17,187.50 saved every year

2. More Efficient Use of Assets

With no centralized filing system, digital assets frequently get lost or deleted by mistake. That means you need to recreate them — with all the extra design, photography, fees, and other costs that entails. Assets may also be stored multiple times in different places, with all those duplicates adding to storage costs. 

Added to that, licensing and usage rights can easily be managed, so you won’t inadvertently use something you no longer have rights to, thus avoiding possible financial or legal consequences. You might also save even more money because, with all a brand’s assets stored in one central place, you no longer need to pay for multiple licenses for different platforms.

How to Calculate Your Potential Savings

1. Estimate the cost of creating one asset, taking into account photo or video shoot and production costs.
2. Estimate how many assets go missing every year.
3. Multiply the cost per asset by the number of missing assets to get your cost saved.
4. To save even more, add the number of assets you could repurpose rather than creating new ones. 

For example, say it costs you $250 to create an asset, and 30 go missing every year. 

1. Calculate the costs of missing assets: 30 x $250 = $7,500
2. Add 10 repurposed assets: 10 x $250 = $2,500
3. ✅And you’ve just saved $10,000 a year

3. Improved Collaboration

Now consider all the time your team members spend sharing assets or the links to them with co-workers or external colleagues. 

How a DAM system helps

A DAM stores everything in one central location that anyone with the right authorization can access. This keeps the data safe while making it easy to share assets with the right people — and even have multiple people working on the same asset. 

It also helps maintain brand consistency and, with version control in place, everyone knows exactly which one is the most recent version, so there’s no danger of inadvertently using an outdated asset. 

How to calculate your potential saving

This one is a bit more difficult to quantify but the benefits are very real. You’re saving time (read money) because assets are no longer being shared manually. You’re also increasing data security — especially if you’re running an on-premise DAM system — and ensuring the right assets are always used, preserving brand integrity.

Costs of Cloud vs On-Prem DAM 

On the other side of this equation, you need to consider your DAM costs. These will depend on whether you invest in a cloud solution or an on-premises solution.  

For a cloud solution, you’ll pay for:

• A subscription fee every month (that increases as you add more users)
• Data storage costs (that increase rapidly as you scale)

For an on-prem solution, you’ll pay for:

• A once-off software fee
• System maintenance costs (which you’d be paying anyway if you have an on-site server)

Both options require time to install and set up the system and staff training time, plus you may pay an extra fee if you’re integrating your DAM with other software, like a project management platform, CRM system, or design tools. 

For more on why an on-prem system (rather than a cloud-based one) improves DAM cost efficiency in the long term, see here, and for some real-life on-prem vs cloud costs see below.  

The Ultimate ROI Formula: How to Calculate DAM’s Financial Impact

Let’s see how you can pull together all the factors above to help you decide whether the ROI of DAM software is worth it. 

Step 1: Gather Your Data

You’ll need some real numbers to work with here, so ask your team to log:

• The hours they spend every day searching for digital assets 
• How many assets get lost and need to be replaced
• The costs of replacing assets
• Any other issues they encounter when managing digital assets

Also research DAM Costs:

• Pick a couple of DAM platforms for comparative purposes — Daminion is a good place to start).
• Calculate how much it will cost you for the software or monthly subscription (depending on whether you’re going with an on-prem or cloud option) plus storage and maintenance costs. 

Step 2: Analyze Your Data

Now that you have your numbers:

• Run them through the formulas above to see how much you would save by using a DAM.
• For factors that aren’t as easily measurable — for example, improvements in collaboration or how many times an incorrect or outdated asset is used by mistake — document these separately. They’re also an important part of your business case.

To show this in action, let’s use the same examples we used above:

• ✅Time savings: $17,187.50
• ✅Replacement and repurposing savings: $10,000
• ✅Total Savings: $27,187.50
• ✅Estimated cost of DAM system: $20,000 per year

Now that you know HOW to calculate DAM cost efficiency, the good news is you don’t have to do it manually. You can save time and effort by using Daminion’s free DAM ROI calculator to see how your business could benefit from a DAM. 

To calculate your Daminion DAM ROI, simply enter the number of system users in your business and their average annual salary.

Why Daminion Is the Most Cost-Efficient DAM on the Market

With many years of experience with clients who deal with sensitive data, Daminion’s DAM is designed for speed, reliability, and security. It offers an optimal solution that perfectly balances efficiency and costs, making it the most cost-efficient DAM on the market — especially if you opt for an on-prem system (cloud and hybrid options are available on request).

Increased Data Safety Control

Daminion’s on-prem system is hosted on a server on your business premises, and it’s implemented and maintained by your staff. This means you have complete control over your data security and hyper-speed access to your digital assets, no matter how big the files are. 

Lower Long-Term Costs

You’ll pay an upfront fee for the software and will need to carry out normal, routine maintenance on your system, but once the system is in place, there are zero additional storage costs, even if you scale rapidly. 

Reduced Installation Costs

Once installation is complete (with remote deployment assistance from Daminion’s sterling support team), Daminion on-prem will auto-scan the file server and index all files stored there, which is a LOT faster than using a cloud platform, as it doesn’t rely on internet speed. That’s more man-hours saved, improving your DAM ROI even further.

Turning Digital Chaos into Cost Savings with DAM

If you’re feeling the need to get your digital assets under control, it may well be time to invest in a DAM. 

And a DAM truly is an investment, not just an expense. Work out the ROI of DAM software for your business, and you’ll quickly see how you could save time and money, be able to make better use of your assets, improve team collaboration, and so much more. 

When you’re ready to take the leap, you can’t do better than Daminion. A Daminion on-prem DAM is extremely cost-effective and gives you complete control of your digital library, boosting productivity, efficiency, and collaboration.  

Schedule your demo with Daminion today. Both your team and your bottom line will thank you.