For many business owners, digital asset management seems like a daunting prospect — until you realize that the familiar Google Drive is essentially a form of digital asset management. Small business owners who learn to effectively use digital asset management software can save themselves time, effort and a sizable amount of money. According to the Geeky Globe, a company that uses digital asset management software can save nearly $200,000 a year in streamlined workplace efficiency, DRM compliance issues and prevented asset re-creation.
Google Drive is the most familiar cloud-based collaboration and storage tool out there, but how does it compare to other digital asset management solutions? Here’s a look at Drive’s pros and cons as well as the pros and cons of other similar software.
Google Drive
Google Drive bills itself as “a safe place for all your files.” It enables you to store and access your files on the web, on your hard drive or on your mobile device, and it offers a bevy of features that make it unique. For example, Google Drive can open more than 30 types of files, including Photoshop files, even if a particular user doesn’t have the right software to normally access a file. To this end, Drive allows users to see and edit files that they normally wouldn’t be able to.
While some digital asset management software offer a sort of thumbnail gallery for opening files, Drive offers an easy-to-use and efficient system for previewing and editing files. With 15GB of free space, Drive can serve as a small file storage vault for a growing or small business without a monthly expense. Additionally, Google Drive offers a great solution to handling older Microsoft legacy files.
Google Drive does have its limitations, however. Google Drive is accessible from many devices, but users cannot upload files directly from a smartphone to the drive for non-Android users. And as PC World notes, the mobile Drive site is somewhat clumsy, though the Drive app is functional. Google Drive for Work offers users up to a terabyte of storage space, but that comes at a cost of $10 a month per user with a minimum of five users on an account. Finally, Drive doesn’t offer an obvious indication of a file’s share settings, which means employees can be locked out and you might not even realize it.
DAM Solutions
Digital asset management solutions (or DAM solutions) come from a variety of developers, and each has its own pros and cons. DAM solutions are more than collaborative software and more than storage — as WebDAM points out, effective DAM software enables workflow automation, backup archives and even e-commerce features. Google Drive is part of the Google App suite, but in of itself it simply doesn’t offer what other DAM solutions can.
Some DAM solutions beat Google Drive’s storage options flat out. Dropbox, once the undisputed king of cloud storage, offers unlimited data storage for just $15 per user a month for organizations through their Dropbox for Business software, but like Google Drive, it requires a minimum of five users. Dropbox is also popular with many freelancers, and it may be a good choice for companies that outsource to these individuals.
Dropbox’s simplicity is also its weakness, however. With its drag-and-drop storage system, it is actually quite easy for an untrained employee to accidentally delete all your digital assets. Dropbox provides archival roll-backs in the case of such an accident, but that can take time that a project might not have.
OneDrive is Microsoft’s DAM solution, and is seamlessly integrated into the entire Microsoft Office suite of programs. OneDrive offers backup and archival abilities as well as the ability to create shared folders for team collaboration. OneDrive is limited to Windows operating systems, which hamstrings your team if you use a a variety of computers. Finally, OneDrive has slower upload times that other services, which can be problematic for deadlines and simply aggravating for employees.
