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Article | by Andy Wood
Digital Asset Management and EPiServer Integration
Discover why we integrate Episerver with our own digital asset management system to simplify the management of your digital assets.
As a full-service agency, our specialisms range from developing digital strategies (integrating content, web development, search and digital marketing) to creating content assets from scratch.
Our clients create plenty of content too, which we edit, optimise and atomise on an almost daily basis. But there comes a point when the sheer volume of images, files, documents and videos becomes difficult to manage.
Digital asset management (DAM) software helps our global clients centralise, govern and distribute thousands of content assets. DAM software can also be integrated with a client's content management system (CMS) to make the storage and sharing of digital assets even easier.
But before we look at how these two software systems complement each other, we should first define what differentiates them.
CMS and DAM: What’s the difference?
Generally speaking, both CMS and DAM software allow for the publishing, management, and distribution of content.
CMS platforms, like Episerver, are used to publish and manage content on websites. They can help your staff create landing pages, optimise content for search, provide analytics on website usage, and actively improve the experience of the people visiting your site. They also help users to add dynamic content (videos, images, audio etc.) to web pages without an in-depth knowledge of HTML.
Digital asset management software serves a different purpose. Essentially, a DAM system is used to organise your digital assets in a way that makes them more secure and easier to find. This could include anything from marketing and sales collateral, such as images, videos and audio files, to documentation like training packs and legal contracts. The intended audience for these assets will usually consist of internal staff members or invitation-only third parties, such as agency partners.
The benefits of Episerver integration
Integrating CMS and DAM systems allows you to effectively and efficiently manage, maintain and distribute enormous amounts of content across various channels in order to strategically target different audience groups.
Our Head of Tech tell us: ‘Episerver integration is fundamental to some of our most sophisticated web builds; when used with a DAM system, the Episerver CMS serves as a central hub to a wider ecosystem, connecting to third-party content and systems using industry-standard APIs’.
Updating a product field in the DAM system will automatically update the ERP, CMS and product management system – all from one place, all with one command. This not only saves you time and effort, but also lowers the risk of incorrect or out-of-date product data being displayed on your website.
Which DAM should I use for Episerver integration?
As mentioned, our CMS platform of choice is Episerver, so you might be wondering what our preferred digital asset management system is.
Well, as it happens, we've developed our own solution, Freestyle Partners. Partners is a DAM system used by global businesses to manage and distribute high volumes of digital assets, making it an exceptional tool for product-driven campaigns and businesses.
With both of these systems integrated, a web content editor can browse the content stored in the DAM system using Episerver, before adding these digital assets to the appropriate pages and blocks as if they were native content.
Regardless of whether this data includes documents, images or videos, the Partners connector can transcode it all to a usable format and keep these assets synchronised – ‘listening’ for updates and changes in the DAM system and replicating these in the CMS.
Thanks to its flexibility and sophisticated API, Partners can also react intuitively to data input, e.g changes to product data in an ERP system. This means if your product team updates a product (a change in colour, description, etc.) in your ERP system, Partners will recognise this change and automatically revise any related data on your website.
If you would like a further chat about Episerver integration or any other integration projects, as well as web design, or digital asset management, please get in touch.
Work with us.
Guy
Brown
Technical Director
Guy's been at Freestyle for over 12 years. When it comes to technology - he's the person we turn to. Whether it's a web build, integration or Freestyle Partners Digital Asset Management, speak to Guy about your next project.