DAM stands for Digital Asset Management and refers to software for managing digital content - in the PIM universe, mainly for product photos and videos, but also graphics.
Product editing is not image editing, or: the flood of images
Understandably, users like to have everything centrally in front of them - in the PIM, that is, all catalogs, families, articles, texts and, of course, assets.
In fact, however, the processing of these media is a matter of its own. If there are five to ten product photos per article and the PIM grows to several thousand products, the clarity, management and editing of these assets can become a real challenge for product maintainers. In addition, there are channel-specific requirements such as size, resolution or alt texts (image descriptions). Image rights and watermarking often play a role as well.
The list could be continued, but it is already clear: Image processing and management is an independent, complex and time-consuming process, which is not separated from the actual product maintenance in many companies for nothing.
In order to meet the requirements of this flood of images, we have decided for OctoPIM to rely on professional support; we are not reinventing the wheel and have therefore created an interface for the integration of DAM systems.
Work with professionals
A professional digital asset management system can not only upload and store images, but it is also the central administration point for assets. Cataloging and archiving images, videos and other files provides both a good overview and significant time savings. In addition, cropping, editing and provisioning can be automated, depending on the DAM.
Therefore, the decision for a DAM interface was easy for us: First, there are very good DAM systems that OctoPIM customers can use. However, it is of course also possible to link files stored on the FTP server and file hosting services such as Dropbox. Secondly, this allows us to keep the development of OctoPIM lean and concentrate on its core competencies: The management, preparation and output of product data.