How to build an efficient Digital Asset Management workflow

A dedicated Digital Asset Management (DAM) system should drive efficiency throughout your organisation, but this is only possible if the DAM workflows are working smoothly.

In this blog we’re going to take a look at the three reasons these DAM workflows break down, and what an effective workflow needs to include.

Why DAM workflows break down

A Digital Asset Management workflow often breaks down as soon as asset volumes grow and more teams get involved. 

What once worked for a small marketing team quickly becomes fragile when multiple departments, external agencies and regional teams all need access to the same content. Approvals slow down and ownership can become unclear. 

READ MORE: The cost of inefficient asset approval workflows

Approval bottlenecks

Approval bottlenecks are one of the earliest signs that there’s a problem in your DAM workflow.

Suddenly, assets wait days or weeks for feedback because there is no clear approval path or because too many people are involved at the wrong stage. To get around these bottlenecks, teams might start to look to bypass the digital asset approval workflows altogether, sharing files over email or messaging tools instead of within the DAM ecosystem. 

This introduces risk, removes audit trails and makes it harder to track what has been approved and why. If not addressed early on, these workarounds become standard practice, undermining trust in the DAM and slowing delivery even further.

Asset duplication

When assets are hard to find, duplication becomes inevitable, with teams recreating content they already own because searching takes too long or because they’re not sure whether an asset is approved for reuse. 

This inflates production costs, risks undermining brand consistency and takes up valuable storage space with near-identical files. Without strong DAM workflow best practices, duplication becomes an accepted cost of doing business.

Unclear ownership

As teams grow, ownership of assets and processes often becomes blurred. Who’s responsible for approving updates? Who maintains metadata? Who decides when an asset should be archived or removed? 

Without clear ownership built into the Digital Asset Management workflow, these decisions are delayed or avoided altogether, creating friction, increasing risk and leaving teams unsure who to turn to when problems arise.

What an efficient DAM workflow actually needs

There are four key elements an efficient DAM workflow needs:

• Clear roles and permissions from the start
• Metadata-driven filters instead of rigid folders
• Alerts and notifications that match team responsibilities
• Multi-stage approvals

Clear roles and permissions from the start

An efficient Digital Asset Management workflow starts with clarity around who does what, because workflows break down quickly when roles are vague or based on job titles rather than real responsibilities. 

To ensure an efficient DAM workflow, permissions and access control should reflect how work actually happens across the organisation. For example: 

• Contributors need to upload and edit assets
• Reviewers need to check quality, accuracy and context 
• Approvers need authority to sign content off 
• Publishers need confidence that what they are releasing is correct and compliant

Designing DAM roles around these practical functions reduces friction and removes guesswork, while also preventing bottlenecks caused by assets sitting with the wrong people. When everyone understands their role in the DAM workflow, assets move smoothly from creation to use.

Metadata-driven filters instead of rigid folders

Folder-heavy structures might feel familiar, particularly if you’ve relied on file storage solutions in the past, but they don’t scale effectively. 

As your digital asset library grows, a rigid folder structure becomes harder to navigate and impossible to maintain consistently. By contrast, metadata-led workflows don’t require users to remember where something lives, because metadata allows assets to be filtered, grouped and surfaced by contextual searches. This means that a single asset can support different campaigns, regions or audiences without having to be duplicated multiple times. 

Metadata also enables DAM automation, such as triggering approvals, applying permissions or flagging when an asset is about to expire. This flexibility is essential for long-term efficiency, especially when multiple teams rely on the same content for different use cases.

Alerts and notifications that match team responsibilities

In a well-designed DAM workflow, notifications are tied directly to responsibility to ensure the appropriate actions are taken off the back of them. Reviewers should be alerted when an asset enters an approval stage, approvers should be notified only when their input is required, and teams should receive updates when assets are published, updated or nearing expiry. 

This targeted approach keeps workflows moving without overwhelming users with irrelevant notifications.

Multi-stage approvals

Multi-stage approvals are essential where risk, reputation or regulation matter, such as the public sector, charities and academic institutions. These organisations often need content reviewed for accuracy, ethics, branding and legal compliance before it is shared, and a structured digital asset approval workflow ensures these checks happen in the right order, with full visibility and audit trails. 

Rather than slowing teams down, multi-stage approvals provide clarity and confidence because everyone knows what stage an asset is at, what needs to be done next and what has already been signed off. This reduces last-minute panic, prevents misuse and supports DAM workflow best practices at scale.

Do you want to find out how ResourceSpace can support the creation of an efficient and effective Digital Asset Management workflow? Book your free demo with one of our DAM solutions experts below.