The entire office has been looking for the whole day for a document that "was for sure saved” somewhere in the file sharing service, and for some reason you have to pay for so-called “your” website. The reason of these problems lies in the inability to work with digital assets. In this article we will provide you with the instructions how to manage them and what you need to know about non-material part of the company’s property.
CEOs of many companies are used to manage material assets – buildings, equipment or technology, but digital data in recent years has also become a valuable property. A competent management is able to simplify the operation of the enterprise.
Non-material property of the company is known as digital assets
The exact definition of digital assets is not even present in the legislation of the "advanced" countries involved in the IT-technologies. Typically, it refers to non-material property created by the company, for example, documents, videos, presentations or even company website. You cannot touch them, but they are valuable. Digital assets can be stored in the company's resources or they can be a part of other platforms, like social media accounts.
If you use the assets it does not mean that they belong to you
For example, you have paid a marketing company for the domain name and consider it as your own property. However, the company can register it for itself and charge you money for a domain. Therefore, before you accept someone's good offer, you should closely study all the conditions. To check who owns a domain name, use special sites like this. And certainly you do not own the pages on Facebook or Twitter – they are the property of these social networks.
A domain name helps in website promotion
For many site owners, a domain name is just a formality. But if the name of the site includes words that your site visitors will be looking for, it will be higher in the search results. And to advertise a website with a short and concise address is easier than with the address of several words – in the first case, more people will remember the address and will access the site.
However, you should be prepared for the fact that the most favorable website names have already been taken. Apart from the competitors, involved in this process are cyber squatters – "businessmen" who buy dozens of promising addresses, and then sell them for large sums.
Data management software will protect from files loss
To manage files and documents of the company there exists special software to create a separate network where employees can store data and share it with each other. The structure of many of these management programs includes data backup feature – programmers often call it simply "backup". This means that the program creates a hidden copy of the data. If hackers break your system and delete all your data, or there will be any other problems, you can restore data from the backup. Therefore, it is necessary to check whether your system has this feature set up.
System convenience depends on the search settings
In case you have 3000 different files – documents, videos, pictures – the search will take quite a long time. You can split files into categories or attach tags to them, then the search will be easier.
During the installation process of the digital asset management software you need to consider the scheme of accessing the files. After all, you probably have the information with limited access, which should not be seen by all the employees. And if the customers of the company also use its digital data, it is necessary to configure a new level of access for them.
In addition to data protection, it is necessary to deal with violators
Ukraine is the world leader in terms of intellectual property rights violation. Therefore, your digital assets may appear in open access or become the property of your competitors. These problems should be solved not by IT-specialists, but by lawyers, as it will be necessary to prove a violation of intellectual property rights in court. Even the best data management system will not protect from plagiarism because part of the content is still published by the company, and violators can copy it.
In today's world, digital asset management is not an addition to the traditional management, it is full opportunity to make the company more efficient. After all, a sound approach to the site will make your company recognizable and data management system will allow to save the time of your employees every day and keep important information safe.
Based on the materials of BusinessBlogsHub