How to Preserve and Archive Digital Assets
Digital assets are the backbone of any business and range from product images to company logos, photos, and PDFs. They represent your business, driving forward sales and marketing initiatives.
Since businesses have a growing volume of digital assets to manage, asset preservation and archiving are critical functions for any modern business.
Why?
Because you’ve invested time and resources into creating digital assets, they should remain accessible and usable over time.
When used with digital asset management (DAM), digital preservation and archiving done right can offer huge benefits. Assets can be reused over the long term–ensuring that digital information is quickly located and retrieved for future generations.
This article will explain why digital preservation and archiving matter to enterprise companies. Here’s some of the issues businesses face and how to overcome them with simple strategies.
Table of contents
What is digital preservation?
Why digital asset preservation matters
What are the issues involved with digital preservation?
Why your business needs a robust archiving system
How to preserve and archive your digital assets
What is digital preservation?
Businesses spend time and effort creating a range of digital assets to reach more customers, give more options for promotion, and increase brand authority.
Digital preservation is the management of digital information so that it can be accessed and used in the future. DAM software, like Digizuite, allows assets to be easily created, modified and stored.
Digital preservation safeguards and protects an organization's digital asset history and organizational knowledge. It allows businesses to repurpose digital information for future marketing purposes, like offering a flash sale of older products or developing a new brochure that meets compliance requirements and adding brand value.
Why digital asset preservation matters
As newer digital technologies rapidly appear and older ones disappear, modern businesses must preserve their digital assets to stay ahead of their competitors and drive business growth.
Picture this:
Your organization wants to celebrate an important 25-year milestone. Your marketing team needs to find a picture of your founder to post across social media and add to a newsletter to share with new and existing customers.
Digital asset preservation gives you total peace of mind. Your entire content lifecycle can be accessed when you need it. And knowing your organization’s valuable digital information is safe for the future can provide comfort in an ever-changing digital world.
Make the best use of the investment already made in creating digital assets by preserving them.
Here are some of the benefits.
Improved data access. An average employee spends 3.6 hours each day searching for information they need. Digital asset preservation will allow you to search for the information you need more efficiently than traditional paper records or disorganized electronic filing systems.
Prevented data loss. Reduce the risk of data loss by storing digital assets in multiple formats and locations–making it less likely that information will be lost or deleted.
Enhanced asset value. Preserving assets can support new product research by answering questions that were not yet possible to ask when the asset was first created. Updated legislation, for example, can be shared with researchers, allowing collaboration on projects more efficiently.
Improved cost savings. Digital preservation can save money by reducing the need to migrate or convert data as new technology emerges. Automated processes can streamline workflows and improve operational efficiency in retrieving stored assets.
Meet legal and compliance requirements. Keep patents, trademarks, and other regulatory record-keeping requirements, such as complying with data protection and HR law by preserving essential documents.
Brand storytelling. Keeps assets alive long term. Make clients and employees feel part of your business by fostering innovation, inspiring new product lines, and connecting with others.
What are the issues involved with digital preservation?
Digital preservation is a continual process that needs careful planning and management to ensure digital assets' continued availability.
That said, preserving digital assets has some significant drawbacks and challenges. As new technologies emerge, some digital formats become obsolete, making older file formats unusable with more recent software programs.
As technology changes, overcome new challenges by migrating digital assets to new file formats. Regular testing and updating backup systems ensure digital assets can be recovered.
Secondly, poorly designed data management systems can affect digital preservation. Implement a system of organization and categorization for storing digital assets as soon as they are created. A cloud-based system, like Digizuite, can organize files to ensure that your whole asset library is always up to date.
Thirdly, the cost can be a significant barrier to digital preservation. Set-up costs associated with new software, staff training, and equipment can be substantial.
Map out the skills and resources you already have and the digital assets you want to preserve. Invest time and effort in what you know rather than what you don't–saving costs.
Why your business needs a robust archiving system
We’ve touched on some of the enormous benefits of digital preservation, but what about archiving assets?
With the demand for new legislation, industry regulatory requirements, and updated company policies, an archiving system is necessary for all businesses.
Archive outdated digital content to avoid sharing obsolete information. According to this survey, 31% of people say lack of version control limits productivity and is one of their biggest pain points.
Even more, an increased number of digital assets can clog up your IT infrastructure–making systems run slow and making it more difficult to find what you need.
Take Volvo Trucks, for example. To remain in operation and maintain a great business reputation, Volvo Trucks must adhere to strict regulations set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
This means truck manufacturers must have up-to-date versions of product safety sheets–widely and readily available to the public.
Archiving old digital assets gives you a single source of truth for all content. Joe Salling, Volvo Trucks eBusiness Manager, said, “Being able to ensure that relevant content is up-to-date and that everyone – on our side, on the vendor’s side, and even on the customer side – knows how and where to find the accurate version is extremely important.”
Capture metadata about your company’s digital assets in its records systems and related tools. Metadata tagging allows you to create an optimized process for content creation, management, distribution, and archiving.
Use metadata to provide additional context and information about each digital asset–improving your ability to search and retrieve archived assets.
How to preserve and archive your digital assets
A robust strategy for preserving and archiving digital assets is critical, but where do you start?
Follow the five steps to keep your digital information available and usable over time.
Undertake an assessment
The first step in digital preservation and archiving is a full assessment. Understanding why preserving and archiving assets matter and identifying barriers to implementing a good strategy.
Start by thinking about your organization's capacity, goals, and which digital assets will be affected by asking:
Who will be responsible for digital preservation across your organization?
Do they have the capacity to be able to implement a strategy?
What might get in the way of successful preservation and archiving?
What measures can you take now to mitigate any potential problems?
The results will give a clear picture of your digital assets, capacity for improvement, and what factors can help you get from where you are to where you want to be.
Develop a digital preservation and archiving strategy
Make sure everyone is on the same wavelength when preserving and archiving digital assets. Creating a robust strategy communicated well across your organization will ensure everyone has the same sense of direction–while understanding the reasons behind those assets must be preserved.
A digital preservation and archiving strategy can ensure team members understand the what, when, why, and how preserving and archiving assets impact business. Employees will also understand the consequences of data misuse–acting as a deterrent.
When developing a strategy, it’s certainly not a one-size-fits-all approach. At the very least, your digital preservation and archiving strategy should include:
An identified goal explaining what you want to achieve
The types of content to be preserved, such as audio files, video, or PDF
Which format will be stored in, for example, JPEG or Plain text
The tools and processes needed to ensure their longevity, like storage facilities or internal procedures
Who your key stakeholders are, for example, staff, customers, funders, or management
The timescale for preserving and archiving digital assets
Create a digital asset register
A digital asset register records assets, systems, and applications for processing or storing personal data across an organization. Put simply; it holds details of all your information assets, including the asset owner, location, retention period, and brief description.
Create an accurate digital asset register by reviewing the function of each asset, where it is stored, and the reason for preserving or archiving.
Include a section about how the data will likely change and grow in the near future–allowing you to think ahead and plan for future costs associated with upgrading software.
Revisit and inspect your digital assets
Your digital asset register will allow you to audit the quality of existing information systematically. Inspect digital assets and Identify files that have become damaged or lost and repair them as necessary.
Pay attention to file names and metadata and correct any untitled assets by adding file names and metadata. Role model best practice with team members by creating titles for every asset created.
Plus, periodic inspection of digital assets can prevent security threats–allowing you to protect sensitive and confidential information quickly and efficiently. Put access rights and permissions in place to avoid downloading and sharing sensitive assets that shouldn’t be.
That said, digital assets are fragile. Although they create endless opportunities for sales, marketing, and technology teams, they can be copied, misused, and lost, resulting in serious implications.
Employee data misuse within an organization has increased by 44% over the past two years. MySpace, for example, suffered a massive data loss where millions of songs, photos, and videos uploaded to the site were lost during a data migration–with no chance of recovery.
A search and filter feature from Digizuite will find all brand assets fast. Use text or a few basic criteria, then refine your search using appropriate filters–allowing you to preserve or archive efficiently.
Carry out quality assurance checks
The final stage for preserving and archiving digital information is often overlooked.
Carrying out regular quality checks will keep everyone on track–making sure assets are available for future generations.
Although some businesses see quality assurance as costly, it saves money in the long run. By auditing internal standards with regular quality assurance checks, you can fix errors or bugs in your digital asset preservation and archiving procedures quickly and efficiently.
Carrying out quality assurance checks will allow you to find out if your team is adhering to internal archiving procedures. Ensure the measures you have put in place are working correctly.
Conclusion
Step up your digital preservation and archiving planning!
Digital assets can have a very short lifespan. Ever-changing software means preserving and archiving digital assets remains a critical business function.
The long-term preservation of digital assets and strategies for archiving them will make sure vital information stays accessible and usable over time. With proper planning and execution, you can secure existing knowledge and develop internal strategies for reducing risks and overcoming challenges.
Request a demo and talk to one of our digital asset specialists about how Digizuite software can help preserve and archive your digital information.
