Looking to invest in digital asset management software but need buy-in from your team? You’re not alone. For growing ecommerce brands, every tool has to deliver a clear return on investment. And while DAM software helps you organise and manage digital assets, you still need to prove its business value before signing off on the spend.
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In this article, we’ll help you make a strong business case for DAM—from showing the ROI of digital asset management to breaking down costs, time savings, and how different teams across your business will benefit.
No time to read the whole thing? Here’s a handy summary of what we cover in this guide:
Let’s get into it!
As your ecommerce brand grows, so does the volume of visual content you create. You’ve got product images, videos, campaign graphics, social content, packaging files, and much more. Managing all of that content in a structured way becomes increasingly important if you want to keep things running smoothly.
A digital asset management (DAM) solution provides a central place to store, organise and access your brand’s digital marketing assets. It acts as a single source of truth for your team, making it easy to find the most up-to-date version of a file, check usage rights, and repurpose existing content across your channels.
Without a DAM, teams often rely on shared drives, local folders or tools like Google Drive and Dropbox. While these might work early on, they become inefficient as asset libraries grow. It’s easy for files to get lost, duplicated, or used incorrectly—especially when different teams or external partners are involved.
DAM platforms like Dash (that’s us!) are designed to solve these problems. You’ll get features including advanced search, tagging, and expiry dates to help teams find what they need quickly, reduce duplicated work, and avoid mistakes. This will free up more time for content creation and campaign planning.
If managing your visual content is starting to slow things down, or you’re spending too much time trying to stay organised, you’ll want to invest in a digital asset management tool.
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Now you’re convinced you need a DAM and you’re ready to pull the trigger. But your manager is holding the purse strings and needs you to prove it’s worth the investment. To convince them, you’ll need to present a strong case for the DAM ROI. That will include weighing up the benefits and find ways of measuring ROI. Scoot down this article for tips on how to calculate ROI.
First, let's look at some clear benefits that impact return on investment.
It might be a cliché, but it’s true: time is money. When your product images, campaign assets, and brand visuals are scattered across shared drives or buried in folders, your team ends up spending far too long just trying to find what they need. On top of that, you’ll likely be fielding frequent requests from teammates or partners who can’t locate the right files themselves.
That’s exactly why the haircare brand, RevAir, chose Dash as their DAM tool. Before switching, their team was storing assets in Google Drive, but it was almost impossible to find the assets they needed. Time was being wasted and productivity was being compromised. But, since finding Dash, the ROI couldn’t be clearer. Kim, the brand’s CCO says:
“I truly believe Dash has saved us at least ten times its cost.” ????
???? Watch Kim's case study that uncovers why RevAir picked Dash.
Creating visual assets costs money. You’re likely running photoshoots, working with agencies to create ad graphics and using some stock photography in the mix. Whatever it is, you'll want to make sure you're getting the most out of that investment.
If you don’t use a DAM to store these creative assets, it's really easy for them to get lost in your shared drives. If you can’t find them, you’ll likely forget they ever existed and end up creating them again.
Luckily, a DAM like Dash makes it really easy to surface old content. Take the paint brand COAT, for example. Abi, their Brand Manager, says Dash’s search features make it super easy to find assets that she’d forgotten about.
“The searchability in Dash has been a game changer for us. It’s my favourite feature. It helps spark new ideas—especially since we have so much content, it’s easy to forget what existing assets. Being able to dive into these little rabbit holes and discover things we didn’t even know we had is incredibly useful.”
So how does it work?
When you upload a new asset in Dash, it will automatically add tags based on the contents of your image. In COAT’s example, Dash is able to identify key objects like ‘bar stool’ and ‘kitchen’.
Abi has also added her own custom tags like ‘ghosted’ (which is a paint colour), making it really easy to find again later.
Once all your assets are all in one place, it becomes much easier to reuse and repurpose them—without the hassle of tracking them down. Your marketing team might create product shots or campaign graphics for paid ads, but those same visuals can often be used by other teams too—like ecommerce, social, or customer service.
That’s exactly what the dog food brand, Forthglade, finds now they’re using Dash. As David Keefe, their Graphic Design Manager, explains:
“There’s a lot more collaboration between departments with what each is creating. The ecommerce team, for instance, can see assets uploaded by the sales team in case they want to use them in their campaigns. Seeing what others are creating sparks ideas.”
When your teams have visibility over each other’s work and easy access to approved content, you get more value from every asset.
When you’re managing a growing library of content, it’s easy for things to slip through the cracks leading to unnecessary expenses.
But even small mistakes in your visual assets can come with a price—whether it’s legal risk, brand damage, or just the time spent fixing an error after it’s gone live.
Two of the most common issues ecommerce teams run into:
Kim at RevAir, explains that they work with influencers on a regular basis and Dash has been vital in ensuring they honour their relationships.
“We always want to honour our influencers and affiliates. Without a tool like Dash, it’s difficult to monitor that one piece of content is licensed for six months while another is licensed indefinitely. We can also ensure it’s no longer available for download in any of our portals, so we don’t have to worry.”
A digital asset management solution like Dash helps reduce these risks by giving you a structured way to manage asset rights and availability. You can add expiry dates, usage notes, and licensing information directly to each file—so everyone knows what’s safe to use, and when.
For ecommerce brands, visual content is essential for growth. Whether it’s on your product pages, social ads, or campaigns, assets are what drives clicks and conversions. And with the rising cost of paid media, making the most of your creative assets is more important than ever.
This was another reason RevAir invested in Dash.
When they were using Google Drive, photoshoot content was getting lost, team members couldn’t find the files they needed, and valuable creative material was going underused.
As Kim puts it:
“I felt anxious knowing how much money had been spent on the photoshoot, only to struggle to find the images in Google Drive. I couldn’t show them to team members who weren’t at the photoshoot. I wanted to create wonderful things from the content, but it was impossible with Google Drive.”
Now with Dash in place, RevAir’s content is properly organised and accessible. Teams can easily find and repurpose visual assets, whether they were involved in the original shoot or not—helping them get more value from every piece of content they produce. Kim explains:
“For what it costs per month, I easily get ten times the return in productivity from my team members. In addition to happier team members and better quality work.”
This kind of ROI isn’t unique to RevAir. It’s something many growing brands experience once they get their content under control. If your team is spending time chasing down files or re-creating lost assets, that’s time and money that could be reinvested into campaigns that drive revenue.
???? Want to hear more? Watch Kim’s full case study interview to see how her team is using Dash.
While a digital asset management system is often championed by marketing teams, the benefits go far beyond that. The right DAM can support your entire business and help different teams work more efficiently, stay aligned, and avoid unnecessary roadblocks.
Here’s how all your departments can get value from your DAM:
Marketing teams
Marketing teams are often the first to feel the pain of messy file management. If your campaign assets are scattered across folders or buried in old threads, it's going to slow you down. A digital asset management tool like Dash helps your marketing team move faster and stay consistent.
Instead of wasting time tracking down the right product image or worrying about whether a file is up to date, marketers can search for what they need, grab the right version, and get on with the job. Whether they’re building product pages, launching seasonal campaigns or briefing external agencies, everything is easy to find, organise, and reuse.
Read up on how the marketing team at FashionFitness use Dash to help sell Reebok in Latin America.
Design teams
Your designers are some of your most valuable (and often most time-strapped) team members. But without a proper system in place, they can easily become bottlenecks—fielding constant asset requests, re-creating files that have gone missing, or digging through folders to find the “final-final-v2” version of a logo.
Abi, the Lead Creative at Beavertown uses Dash in lots of different ways. For example, she uses the Adobe Creative Cloud integration to quickly update assets and send them back into Dash. She also makes use of the upload approvals feature, so any new assets need to be approved by her first before they’re live in Dash. That means she’s confident that her colleagues are only using the approved versions of the brand’s creative.
Discover how Beavertown’s design team uses Dash to improve their creative workflows
Retail partners
If you work with resellers, stockists, or distributors, chances are they need regular access to your product images and promotional assets. Instead of sending files manually or managing messy shared folders, a good DAM like Dash will allow you to set up portals. These are publicly-accessible versions of your Dash that lets retailers self-serve assets. It means they’re always up-to-date with the latest assets and they don’t need to come to you to ask for content.
Learn how BrewDog uses Dash’s portals to share assets with bars and partners around the world.
Brand managers
Brand consistency and integrity is super important for growth. When shoppers recognise and trust your brand, they're more likely to pick you over your competitors. So if you're responsible for how your brand is represented in the wild, a DAM can make your life a lot easier.
Instead of chasing down outdated files or worrying about off-brand assets slipping through the cracks, you’ll have one central place to manage everything. Brand managers can make sure only the most up-to-date logos, guidelines, and campaign assets are being used, while keeping an eye on usage rights and expiry dates. It also becomes much easier to brief agencies or share collections for seasonal campaigns, product launches or brand refreshes. With everything organised and searchable, you spend less time on admin and more time shaping a brand that feels consistent and cohesive—no matter who’s creating content.
Read how Abi, COAT’s brand manager, used Dash to ensure only the most up to date assets are being used in their campaigns.
Customer support
Support teams often need quick access to visuals—whether it’s to answer product questions, guide customers through a setup, or send branded collateral. With a DAM, they can search for what they need in seconds, without having to chase down designers or marketers for help.
This is something that COAT’s customer support team makes use of in Dash. If a customer asks for a picture of a particular paint colour, they can quickly hop into Dash and find the assets they need.
You’ve seen the kind of ROI a DAM can deliver. But how much does a digital asset management system cost?
The truth is, most digital asset management platforms are built for large enterprises. They often come with complex features and hefty price tags to match. While those tools might work for global corporations with dedicated IT teams and multi-layered approval processes, they’re often overkill (and overpriced) for growing ecommerce brands. What’s more, most DAM vendors hide pricing on their website, so you won’t know how much you’ll be paying until you’ve been through the demo and sales process. Here’s a breakdown of what we’ve discovered about the pricing of some key digital asset management vendors:
Bynder
Bynder is a well-known enterprise DAM with advanced functionality for multinational teams. It’s a good choice if you're a global brand, but less suited to scaling ecommerce businesses.
???? Pricing starts at around $450/month, with costs rising quickly as you add users or features.
???? Read our full Bynder comparison.
Brandfolder
Brandfolder is a popular choice for large corporations and agencies, offering some advanced features like integrated printing services.
Pricing starts at around $/month, making it one of the priciest DAMs on the market.
???? Check out our Brandfolder alternatives guide.
Canto
This is a DAM tool for mid-market and enterprise brands across a range of industries. Canto’s features include branding tools and templates, but you won’t find any pricing information on the website.
???? Estimates suggest $600/month, though exact costs are hidden and you’ll need to book a demo for the full scope.
???? See our Dash vs Canto breakdown.
MediaValet
MediaValet is another DAM tool aimed at enterprise businesses. It has some advanced features like forensic watermarking and over 50 integrations.
????Again, there’s no pricing information on the website. However, our research suggests it has a similar price point to Brandfolder at $ per month.
???? Explore our MediaValet alternatives and comparison article.
Dash
We’ve designed Dash specifically scaling businesses and teams that need a powerful, easy-to-use DAM without the bloated feature set or enterprise-level costs. Our pricing starts at £99 / $139 per month, and includes:
Are you interested in learning more about retaining dam? Contact us today to secure an expert consultation!
You’ll get to try Dash free for 14 days, and if you want to chat with the team, there’s the option to book a 30-minute demo.
???? Get an in-depth picture of digital asset management pricing in our article.
By now, you’ve seen how a digital asset management system can bring serious value to your business. But if you’re trying to make a solid case for it, you’ll need to show some real numbers.
Here’s a simple ROI calculator to help you make a business case to your boss:
1. How much time is your team spending searching for assets?
Start by figuring out how long it takes your team to find files in your current setup.
Let’s say you’ve got 5 employees, each spending 15 minutes a day hunting for product images, campaign visuals or social content.
That’s:
2. What does that time actually cost?
Let’s assume your team members earn £15/hour. That means 15 minutes of their time costs around £3.75.
Multiply that by 5 employees and you’re looking at:
3. What happens when you add a DAM like Dash?
With Dash in place, asset searches are much faster. Let’s say that same 15-minute task drops to just 5 minutes per person per day.
Now you’re looking at:
That’s a £250 monthly saving—just from cutting down time spent searching.
Now factor in the cost of Dash, starting at an initial investment of £99 / $139 per month. Even on our smallest plan, you’ve already more than made your money back—and that’s without touching all the extra ways Dash saves you time.
Want to work out what that saves you in a year? We’ll let you grab a calculator to measure DAM ROI. ????
And remember—this doesn’t even include the extra time saved when sharing assets with agencies and partners, faster campaign launches, or fewer mistakes across your marketing. Those wins add up quickly too. ????
If you’re ready to pitch DAM to your team, here’s a step-by-step summary of what to include in your business case:
1. Define the problem
Explain how your current setup is slowing things down:
2. Show who benefits
Make it clear this isn’t just a ‘marketing problem’ and highlight how it can benefit different teams:
3. Break down the ROI
Use real numbers to show what you’ll save:
4. Compare vendors
Position Dash against bloated enterprise tools:
You can also use our DAM software comparison worksheet to help pick the best DAM for your brand.
5. Wrap with a clear recommendation
End your business case with a confident call to action, emphasising the need for continued investment in a DAM system:
“Dash will save us time, reduce content costs, and improve the ROI of our marketing. It’s easy to use, cost-effective, and already proven to work for brands like ours.”
If you want to see real digital asset management ROI, you need a tool that’s actually useful day to day—not just something that looks good on a software list. Dash is built for growing ecommerce brands that need to manage digital assets without the faff. It helps you cut costs, save time, and make the most of the content you’ve already created.
Here’s how Dash helps you get value for money:
With Dash, managing digital assets becomes one less thing to worry about. And when your content’s organised, searchable and easy to share, your marketing runs more smoothly—and that can directly impact the revenue generated from your campaigns.
If you're looking to save time, cut down on content chaos, and prove the value of your marketing efforts, Dash is a smart investment. It's simple to use, affordable for growing brands, and designed to help you get the most out of your digital assets.
???? Start your free trial of Dash — no credit card needed, no auto-renew.
In this article, you’ll learn:
Digital asset management software (DAM) is a key component of any modern organization's content creation and distribution strategies. It helps organizations store, organize, and access their digital assets in a centralized location, which can save time and money.
Yet, business isn't just about things that feel "neat." When you're building a business case for DAM solution, you have to consider how it will impact your business. Will the time and money you invest into the implementation of not the simplest of softwares actually make you more money?
In short, you need to calculate the ROI of a digital asset management system.
But how do you measure the return on investment (ROI) of DAM software? In this article, we'll explore the various ways you can calculate the ROI of a DAM solution and provide some examples to help you get started.
The digital asset management ROI is a crucial consideration for businesses looking to implement a DAM system.
After all, any investment in technology should provide a positive return in order to justify the expenditure. Fortunately, DAM systems can provide a number of benefits that can lead to a positive digital asset management ROI.
Depending on your requirements for a digital asset management system, you may want to calculate ROI for DAM with different approaches.
Some teams might opt to focus more on the cost-saving aspect. DAM can save each user 10 hours per month that they would have otherwise spent searching for files. Meaning that they will have more to be productive.
Pics.io recently released a face recognition feature that can save a lot of time if you constantly need to look up photos of specific individuals. Learn more in our blog post about the benefits of face recognition.
For others, DAM can be used in a case where it adds extra business value, by streamlining the way you collaborate on assets with your team.
In any case, the following list is non-conclusive. It just aims to give you a few ideas on how you can approach the DAM ROI calculator.
Although many users think that a digital asset management tool is just about "looking up for pictures fast," the software has long evolved past this point. Nowadays, digital asset management (DAM) can become a fully-fledged link in the chain of your business processes.
To identify exactly how DAM can be most beneficial and calculate DAM ROI, you need to create a DAM strategy which can be accomplished by carefully looking at the assets you currently use and HOW and WHY you are using them.
The ROI you can expect from DAM will depend on a variety of factors, including the size of your organization, the number of assets you manage, and the specific features and capabilities of your digital asset management (DAM) system.
I want to reiterate that building a digital asset management solution that is tailored to your needs is a challenging process that might require some window-shopping and a lot of trials and demo bookings to find the golden ticket.
Nonetheless here is the non-quantifiable side of ROI of DAM that you can expect from integrating it into your workflow:
Let's consider a hypothetical to help us calculate the DAM ROI.
Suppose a company has 10 employees, spending on average 2 hours weekly searching for assets. The company pays each employee $20 per hour.
The cost of asset search time, therefore, is $400 per week or $20,800 annually.
Now. Let's say the company invests in a DAM system with a subscription cost of $6,480 per year. If the DAM system is able to reduce asset search time by 50%, the company would save $10,400 per year in employee time costs.
Thus, the ROI of the DAM system in this example would be:
(Cost Savings - Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment = ROI
(10,400 - 6,480) / 6,480 = 60%
This means that the company would see a 60% return on its investment in the DAM system in the first year.
Still, it's worth keeping in mind that this scenario is just digital asset management (DAM) ROI estimates. So, don't necessarily expect such a high ROI in real-life applications as the reality is often messier than an ideal marketing vacuum space.
Nonetheless, this pricing model for DAM is real. Pics.io DAM is one of the most democratically priced solutions on the market, giving you the best price-to-value ratio out there.
The DAM pricing in the example I've just listed - 6,480 per year - isn't even the lowest amount! We also offer a Micro plan for 10 users which starts at $150/mo.
Combined with the fact that you can keep your own storage - Google Drive or Amazon S3 - makes our product quite user-friendly! This, in turn, lets you maximize DAM ROI by reducing both the monetary and time investment required to get started with DAM.
While cost savings and revenue generation are important factors to consider when calculating DAM ROI, there are other factors you should also keep in mind.
If you need to train your team to use the DAM system, you should also consider the costs of training in your ROI calculation. While Pics.io does provide free workshops for our users, these are still hours that your team will need to invest before they can fully master the product.
If you need to integrate your DAM system with other systems or software that isn't covered by the DAM vendors' integration list, you might have to invest extra resources into developing such an integration. This can be accomplished in one of two ways.
Pics.io is a leading digital asset management platform that helps organizations of all sizes manage their assets more effectively. Some key features of Pics.io include:
Ultimately, I will say that the most important part of calculating DAM ROI is actually figuring out your DAM business case. Don't get me wrong, never losing track of your digital assets is a wonderful idea, but are you certain that this is exactly the thing that you'd be willing to spend the money on?
Instead, it is worthwhile to ponder the following: exactly how DAM can improve my business? Maybe it can streamline delivering assets to your clients. Maybe you can use it to maintain brand consistency by providing easy access to all brand guidelines and collaterals?
By answering this question, you can then figure out the value of this particular business case, look at the DAM's features and realize how much time you will spend on this or another process if you integrate DAM into your workflow.
Only then, in my opinion, you should get to number crunching and measure DAM ROI.
And if you want a helping hand in figuring out your specific business case, book a demo with us and we'll talk with you about everything you want. It's free, I promise. Same way as our trial is (no credit card required, by the way).
Whatever option you choose, I hope to see you there ;)
Did you enjoy this article? Give Pics.io a try — or book a demo with us, and we'll be happy to answer any of your questions.
To measure the return on investment (ROI) of a digital asset management (DAM) system, you can calculate the savings and increase in revenue resulting from using DAM. You can measure the time saved by automating asset management tasks or how many more clients you can reach thanks to the streamlined content distribution practices.
Answering this question requires you to take a look at your business processes and figure out how digital asset-adjacent they are. If you're working with digital assets (videos, photos, documents) on a daily basis, then DAM will certainly improve your workflow. The only question is: by how much exactly?
If you have a team of 10 people spending 2 hours each week looking for digital assets. So, how many hours a digital asset management system can save you here? That's ~$400 down the drain every week. But if your margin is too thin when you factor the initial costs of investing into DAM, then DAM might not be the right fit for you. It's all on a case-to-case basis, really.
Contact us to discuss your requirements of Hydraulic Dam. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.