Do you lose digital objects within your folder structure?
Typically most people have about a thirty-day memory of where they put stuff. This short-term memory includes where they stored their digital objects – probably in some type of folder structure within their laptop or file server.

Depending on the scale and volume of your projects, you might be able to quickly locate items from a folder naming convention, but that takes time. In addition, there is always the risk that objects might be lost or misplaced from being dropped in the wrong location. Ultimately, this approach starts to break down as the volume of digital objects increases, and that 30-days’ worth of knowledge quickly dims as time marches on.

Searching, instead of Finding
Digital asset management (DAM) provides a vastly more efficient alternative to a folder-based approach. The DAM approach is simple, by making digital objects searchable through digital descriptions; users can retrieve items by “searching” from the associated fields in the database. The main benefit is not having to remember where you placed an object. Instead, just remembering any description of that object will allow it to be instantly retrieved.

Download the Metadata Whitepaper to learn more about how search works in a DAM.