Create a ‘Single source of truth’ for all council digital assets with digital asset management

Why do Australian councils need a digital asset management solution?

Branding is important to denote authority and endorsement on official council initiatives and information. However, digital asset management often falls low on the priority list for busy councils, which presents a problem when files are needed quickly. 

This is exacerbated when different users create various versions of important files and store them in different places and devices, making it difficult to keep track of the correct version to use. 

Protecting your council brand

The primary advantage of a digital asset management system for councils is the ability to protect your council brand. Your brand and collateral is likely being used on multiple documents and publications, so the challenge lies in maintaining control of what brand collateral is being used by who, how they are using it, and whether it is updated. 

With a digital asset management solution like Lookatme™, you have a ‘single source of truth’ for all your brand collateral. This ensures all brand collateral resides in one place and is automatically updated with the latest branding and guidelines when new files are uploaded. You can also implement approval requirements before release if necessary.

Powerful, intuitive workflows

Every official digital asset produced often requires the input and approval of multiple stakeholders for use. Having served Australian government departments and institutions for over a decade, Lookatme™ has used that experience to develop a set of standardised role-based, intuitive workflows for approval and cataloguing.

For instance, a team member can use their phone to take images and video of a local event, then upload them directly into Lookatme™’s digital asset management system for cataloguing when convenient. When these assets are properly catalogued with the correct metadata, the team member can alert the administrator for approval.

If you are the administrator, you can simply view and approve the images in Lookatme™ via your smartphone for publication if you aren’t at your desk. Your teammate can then share them with interested stakeholders. This greatly streamlines work efficiencies and allows greater staff mobility, which can be valuable when there are events that require people to be away from their desks simultaneously.

Centralising management and development

Beyond cataloguing and storing digital assets, the Lookatme™ digital asset management solution also allows you to centralise how these assets are developed.

You can provide controlled and appropriate access to anyone who might need access to your files, such as your team, head office, agencies, content creators, media owners and external parties such as special interest groups and local schools. You can also track who has viewed and used the assets, providing a useful audit trail for accountability.

Whenever you upload a file to Lookatme™, everyone who has access will automatically get the updated version, which simplifies collateral creation and use across parties. You can also attach guidelines for the use of images, such as approvals by multiple parties for use and timeframes for usage, which is particularly valuable when dealing with a culturally sensitive subject matter or assets with limited usage rights.

Scaling critical digital asset storage

Scalability is an issue with many digital storage solutions, especially for images and video. The average smartphone image is usually over 2MB, while the average DSLR image is around 20MB. That’s around 15 PDF to 50 Word documents per image! With all the digital assets a council may need to store, this means you may run out of space quickly.

With a digital asset management solution like Lookatme™, the cloud-based system can scale to meet your needs so you can expand your storage as your collection grows. It also has robust encryption protocols and backups to safeguard your assets, making sure they remain intact and compliant with data protection regulations.

Freeing the reluctant archivist

Organisations once retained images in either prints or negatives and employed dedicated staff members to keep these archives organised. However, today most photos and videos are stored digitally and can number in the thousands per person due to sophisticated smartphones, while council staff are likely having to juggle archiving alongside other regular tasks instead of leaving it all to a dedicated archivist.

This is where a digital asset management solution can be a game-changer. Lookatme™ makes it easy to filter, tag and store assets so they can be easily searched for and accessed when you need them, especially with the including of AI tagging. This makes it easy to archive important information for future generations.

Choosing 100% Australian owned

Products and services made in Australia are held to very high standards, making them world-class in many respects. Created, developed and headquartered in Australia with local team support, Lookatme™ is proud to be a 100% Australian-designed and owned digital asset management solution that is protected by both US and Australian patents.

Within Australia, we have been honoured to be the solution of choice for institutions such as Tourism Australia, Australian Geographic, and Destination NSW. But our expertise does not stop within the local market; many of the world’s governments and cultural institutions consider Lookatme™ to be the global benchmark for digital asset management systems

Some software solutions make sense

To give you some idea of how simple Lookatme™ is to use, there are more than 20 million transactions on Lookatme™ digital asset management solutions each year and fewer than 200 end-user help desk enquiries about using Lookatme™.

It’s fast and cost-effective to implement. Your people will learn to love it in a matter of minutes. Your council can begin to protect and manage all of its digital assets professionally in weeks

All you need to do is contact us today.