Businesses create, use, acquire, sell and distribute many forms of digital assets within their day to day business. These digital assets can be graphics, video, audio, animation, layouts, photographs and many other digital content. Businesses usually don't pay attention to this digital content as they store it in employee's desktops, network drives, CDs, DVDs and even floppy discs. There is a critical awareness point in a business where the business understands the value of the digital content and this is mostly when the staff starts spending time getting their hands around the constant growth of digital content. At this critical awareness point, businesses become aware of Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems. This awareness point can be immediate for businesses that have their core business around content, such as media companies or it can take years for businesses that generate less amount of content and the content generation is not that expensive.

A DAM system allows businesses centralize the storage, access and distribution of digital assets by facilitating the management of the assets. The misconception of a DAM system is usually that it is a software and hardware system that can magically manage the valuable assets. It is a lot more than that. DAM systems are combinations of policies, operations, workflows, people and software systems that work together to manage and maximize the value of digital assets.