Digital asset management (DAM) is a self-serve content repository. It facilitates the management, ingestion, storage, organization and distribution of all types of content an organization uses. The content includes any digital asset, such as text, graphics, images, videos, audio, design files and product information used by an organization to communicate with internal and external audiences. DAM platforms not only support marketing but can also serve internal and external parts of the organization including sales, HR, legal, finance, call and service centers, third-party suppliers, agencies, and distributors. The primary purpose of a DAM is to manage governance of digital assets and make them available and useful, enabling brand consistency across the organization. Beyond its role as a self-service solution, DAM products are part of a content operations ecosystem, which includes capabilities that overlap across technologies such as content marketing platforms (CMP), marketing work management (MWM) and product information management (PIM). Individually, technologies support different variations of content taxonomy, content editing, management of and content access controls to third parties (e.g., agencies). Their goals are to drive efficiency, transparency and scale of content deliverables across the organization. The primary purpose of a DAM is to manage governance of digital assets and make them available and useful, enabling brand consistency across the organization. DAM platforms serve as a repository for all digital content assets. Organizations that have a large number of digital assets use a DAM solution to manage, catalog and transfer files, and to store digital assets. The solution allows organizations to share and edit digital assets across multiple platforms and channels. DAM platforms can support external partners with portals to access an organization’s assets. Overall, it is a self-service content repository and can facilitate collaboration.
Gartner defines digital commerce as the technology that enables customers to purchase goods and services through an interactive and self-service or assisted experience. The platform provides necessary information for customers to make their buying decisions and uses rules and data to present fully priced orders for payment. The commerce product must support interoperability with customer data, product content (e.g., price, availability) and order functionality and data via APIs. Digital commerce is commonly delivered as single or multitenant SaaS, or as single-tenant hosted or managed hosted (PaaS) applications. It could be offered for on-premises implementations in some circumstances. Digital commerce enables customers to purchase goods and services through an interactive and self-service or assisted experience, providing the necessary information for customers to make buying decisions.
A digital experience platform (DXP) is a cohesive set of integrated technologies designed for the composition, management, delivery and optimization of personalized digital experiences across multiple channels in the customer journey. A DXP orchestrates multiple applications to allow the creation, management and presentation of seamless digital experiences. It forms part of a digital business ecosystem via API-based integrations with adjacent technologies. DXPs serve B2C and B2B use cases.
Master data management (MDM) is a technology-enabled business discipline where business and IT organizations work together for the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of enterprises’ shared master data assets. Organizations use MDM solutions as part of an MDM strategy, which should be part of a wider enterprise information management (EIM) strategy. An MDM strategy potentially encompasses management of multiple master data domains (e.g., customer, citizen, product, “thing,” asset, person/party, supplier, location, and financial master data domains). Data and analytics (D&A) leaders procure MDM tools for data engineers or less-technical users, such as data stewards.
Master data management (MDM) of product data solutions are software products that: Support the global identification, linking and synchronization of product data across heterogeneous data sources through semantic reconciliation of master data. Create and manage a central, persisted system of record or index of record for product master data. Enable the delivery of a single, trusted product view to all stakeholders, to support various business initiatives. Support ongoing master data stewardship and governance requirements through workflow-based monitoring and corrective-action techniques. Are agnostic to the business application landscape in which they reside; that is, they do not assume or depend on the presence of any particular business application(s) to function.
Gartner defines the product information management (PIM) market as the packaged solutions that enable product, commerce and marketing teams to create and maintain an approved shareable version of rich product content. PIM makes a single, trusted source of product information available for multichannel commerce and data exchange. PIM solutions now support complex use cases, including product data syndication (PDS), product experience management (PXM), product information effectiveness analytics, digital shelf analytics and product data contextualization. They lay the foundation for delivering personalization, product discovery and digital experience platforms (DXPs). PIM is available as hosted cloud-native, SaaS, private cloud and on-premises solutions.