Speed matters — but so does staying on brand and compliant. That’s why today’s Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems do far more than store files. They manage approvals, protect compliance, and keep every asset consistent and ready for market.
Over the past two years, DAM platforms have evolved rapidly. Marketers now need tools that not only make brand assets easy to find and use but also ensure that every asset in market is approved, compliant and on brand. That’s exactly where Simple Asset Manager stands apart.
Built for marketing and brand teams, Simple Asset Manager has expanded far beyond storage — providing advanced metadata control, built-in approvals, and governance features that support the entire asset lifecycle, from creation to expiry.
Digital assets are only valuable if people can find and use them. That’s why strong metadata and tagging remain at the heart of effective asset management.
Metadata and Tagging: Simple Asset Manager combines auto-AI and manual tagging so assets can be categorised by subject, colour, text, faces, or any custom criteria. Metadata fields capture details such as uploader, usage rights, expiry, and dimensions, ensuring every asset is easy to identify and manage.
Advanced Search: Powerful search tools allow users to locate approved content instantly using tags, metadata, or text analytics. Instead of trawling through drives or folders, teams can find exactly what they need — fast.
Text Analytics: Ideal for content-heavy assets such as brochures or leaflets, this feature analyses text within documents so marketers can search by topic or keyword, saving hours of manual checking.
Bulk Sharing and Watermarking: Assets and folders can be securely shared with internal or external stakeholders, complete with watermarking to protect brand integrity.
Together, these features form the foundation of an efficient, discoverable, and secure digital asset management system.
One of the most significant advantages of Simple Asset Manager is that it includes approval workflows and online proofing tools directly within the DAM.
This means that assets are reviewed, annotated, and approved before they are published to the central library — ensuring only final, compliant versions are stored and accessible.
Teams can upload draft files for review directly within the platform.
Stakeholders provide feedback using in-app markup and comments, removing the need for email chains or file downloads.
Approvers can view asset versions side by side and sign off on final artwork.
Once approved, the asset automatically transitions to the live DAM library, where it is available for authorised users.
This built-in governance ensures that marketing, creative and compliance teams work from a single source of truth — and that no unapproved material ever reaches market. For regulated industries such as finance, insurance and healthcare, this capability is essential.
Modern marketers need full control over when, where and how assets are used. Simple Asset Manager provides a suite of governance features that make this easy:
Separate Approval and Publish: Decouple approval from publishing so assets can be approved in advance and released at the right time.
Expiry and Withdrawal Controls: Assets can expire on a fixed date or a relative timeframe (for example, 30 days after publication). Assets can also be withdrawn immediately, with the reason logged for audit purposes.
Enhanced Metadata Permissions and Audit Logging: Administrators control who can change metadata, while full audit histories provide transparency for compliance reviews.
Mandatory Metadata Fields: Organisations can define mandatory fields — such as campaign ID, usage rights or region — ensuring each asset meets governance standards.
Metadata Summary Reports: Export detailed metadata records for regulators or auditors in just a few clicks.
Attachments to Assets: Add background documents, briefs, compliance sign-offs, or legal disclaimers directly to an asset, keeping related materials together in context.
These governance controls give brand and compliance teams peace of mind, ensuring all assets remain compliant, traceable, and accountable.
Marketing teams rarely work in one place. Simple Asset Manager’s new collaboration tools make it easier for distributed teams to work together while maintaining consistency.
Placeholder Assets: Create placeholder assets — complete with metadata and IDs — before the actual files exist. This helps plan campaigns, delegate asset creation, or pre-register items for regulator approval.
Collaborative Collections: Collections can now be curated and managed by multiple users, allowing teams to jointly manage campaign materials and distribute them easily.
Asset Followers: Users can follow assets to receive email notifications of status changes such as updates, expiry, or withdrawal.
Managed Corporate Collections (coming soon): Corporate teams will soon be able to display managed collections on users’ home screens, acting like a launch banner for new or priority assets across the organisation.
These enhancements make Simple Asset Manager a true collaboration hub for marketing, creative and brand teams — not just a storage repository.
Visibility is vital for marketers managing multiple campaigns and markets. Simple Asset Manager offers:
On-Demand and Scheduled Reporting: Run ad-hoc or recurring reports to monitor asset usage, expiry, approvals and governance metrics.
Improved Time-Zone Management: For multi-national organisations, time-zone alignment ensures a consistent understanding of asset approval and publication times — critical for compliance and campaign coordination.
Custom Metadata at Every Level: Add custom fields anywhere in the organisational hierarchy, making data more meaningful and searchable across brands or regions.
These reporting and visibility tools give marketing operations leaders the insights they need to manage assets confidently and demonstrate compliance.
Modern marketing tools work best when they connect. Simple Asset Manager includes an open API that allows teams to integrate the DAM with other business systems or automate asset workflows. It also connects directly with Admation, so approved campaign assets can be automatically published into the DAM. This ensures only final, compliant materials are stored and available for use, keeping every connected system aligned with the latest approved brand assets.
Traditional DAMs were built to store files. Today, marketing teams need more. They need a platform that connects creative workflows, approvals, and compliance in one place.
Simple Asset Manager delivers exactly that — a marketing asset management solution that supports the entire asset lifecycle:
From upload and proofing
To approval and governance
Through to publication, expiry and reporting
By combining approval workflow software, marketing compliance tools, and digital asset management in one system, Simple helps organisations protect their brand, save time, and reduce risk — while giving teams the freedom to focus on creativity and delivery.
As content demands grow and compliance requirements tighten, managing brand assets effectively is now a strategic advantage.
With its latest enhancements — from advanced metadata controls and collaborative collections to built-in approvals and proofing — Simple Asset Manager gives marketing teams a complete, future-ready solution to store, manage and distribute approved brand assets securely and efficiently.
Explore how Simple Asset Manager can simplify your marketing operations.
Book a demo or download our Free DAM Self Assessment to learn if your teams needs to invest in DAM.