What is PAM? Everything you need to know about Product Asset Management

A Product Asset Management solution is the next generation of Digital Asset Management (DAM). Product Asset Management connects content, data, and assets throughout the product lifecycle, from ideation to creation to sales to support. Although a product is typically considered a physical asset like apparel, food, or consumer packaged goods (CPG), it could be software, financial services, or consulting services. Nearly every organization sells some type of product.

Beyond Basic DAM For More than Just Marketing

When you think of a traditional Digital Asset Management solution, it often sits at the end of the product content supply chain, storing finished assets. At best, it provides a place to collaborate on marketing materials, a distribution point for eCommerce content, or a portal for supporting a sales team.

Product Asset Management solutions extend the value of Digital Asset Management far beyond this last mile. This solution considers the data, content, and assets associated with the product from the beginning supporting everything from materials development to product design, sell-in, photo-shoots, and creative campaigns.

To do this, integration with systems like Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), product information management (PIM), and Product Data Management (PDM) is critical. Having visibility to the necessary data, content, and assets at the appropriate step in the process to the right audience removes a traditionally major bottleneck to the product development process.

Accelerating Ideas to Market

The fashion industry is one example of shortening a product's time to market. Although it's a specific use case, the processes to improve the speed to market are similar in any industry. Over the last decade, the top 20% of fashion retailers have delivered all the industry's economic profit. These top performers make speed to market their #1 priority and continue getting faster. They can provide the product to market 6 to 8 weeks more quickly, shortening other brands' typical 40-week lead time.

A major reason for the inefficiencies is the disconnect from the beginning to the end of the product lifecycle. PAM helps eliminate these inefficiencies by providing a single view of the most critical content, data, and assets at the appropriate time in the product lifecycle. PAM promotes collaboration, reuse, brand consistency, and a more efficient digital content supply chain. This includes:

Materials Library

Product creation and ideation require having the right materials, such as parts, ingredients, formulations, or fabrics. One of the most significant challenges in the product creation lifecycle is the siloed and inaccessible information stored in multiple applications and without visibility to downstream needs. Some ways to alleviate these frustrations can include:

• Eliminate major product design delays if referenced materials and ingredients are no longer available because they are unaware of new, replaced, or alternative materials.
• Access to data about materials in a way that they could be used to identify suppliers, availability, or colors removing a once manual, time-consuming process.
• Approving a design without ordering a sample, traditionally saving several weeks or even months.

Design & Prototyping

Samples and prototypes have long been required to bring products to market. There are myriad challenges that cause lengthened production times or lack of visibility into the availability of the parts, ingredients, or materials. A digital approach means eliminating some or all prototypes, potentially saving millions per year.

• Minimize change requests that can impact profitability and time to market by experiencing digital rendering before manufacturing prototypes.
• Leverage 3D renders and viewers to keep up with trends and companies that are digitally native.

Photo Studios

The traditional photo studio processes are crucial to offering product images for commerce and catalogs. Still, most processes were developed in the early days of digital photography and archiving, leaving a lot to be desired in today's digital environment:

• External photo vendors may not adequately tag photos resulting in images that can't be found, leading to unnecessary costs for additional photo shoots.
• Version history for images isn't available to users who may err and use inaccurate images.
• The images may not be connected to product information, and salespeople may search the internet to find what they assume is the most recent product image.
• Different departments within the same organization may order photo shoots at varying points in the product creation lifecycle.

Campaign Development

More digital assets and creative content of different types and formats are required for omnichannel marketing. Several scenarios need to be addressed, including:

• The ability to easily share and reuse detailed briefs shared with external agencies.
• Creating a consolidated resource for videos, images, layouts, and documents, making it easier to source, access, and reuse material in new campaigns.
• Improvements in the approval process and elimination of manual handoffs
• Maintaining version control with one source of truth.

Packaging Design

The package development process is often complicated by the need to design for global regulatory requirements, manufacturing, and product information. Package design can be simplified by:

• An integrated PIM (or similar system) is leveraged to update the product specifications.
• Eliminating manual tasks when multiple systems are being used to create versions for various markets.
• Digitizing and making accessible the review and approval processes.

Content Hubs & Portals

To make a product successful, marketing and sales need to know what they are selling and how. A centralized enablement site makes it easy to deliver the information and content they need. Critical to its success is:

• The ability to search and browse effectively to find the right information.
• Segmenting and securing content that is visible to each department, customer, or vendor.
• Providing the information in the preferred format for easy consumption.

Product Knowledge Base

Customers expect more information about their products now than ever. So, the teams that respond to these inquiries must deliver.

• Support teams can access one source of truth for all product information without having to be trained on multiple complex systems.
• Improved customer experience by getting the correct information quickly.
• Integrated feedback loop from customer to product owners, accelerating product improvements and defect resolution.

Every product-driven company has a different go to market process. Genus helps our customers architect solutions using the low-code, configurable Hyland Nuxeo platform. We understand your challenges and can help you build the content platform that handles everything you create so you can deliver products to market faster. If your company is ready to boost collaboration, reduce work, and save money, it's time for us to chat.