The cost of inefficient asset approval workflows

28th January 2025

Your organisation uses digital assets across every department and to support every function. To be effective, those assets need to be relevant, provide value and be in line with brand guidelines, but how do you control and manage those digital assets to ensure they deliver on all of those points?

This is where an asset approval workflow comes in, but you need to make sure that the internal process is working efficiently. Let’s take a look at the common causes of inefficient workflows and how you can create a streamlined, efficient workflow to ensure different stakeholders can access what they need, when they need it.

READ MORE: What is Digital Asset Management?

What is an asset approval workflow?

In the context of Digital Asset Management, an asset approval workflow ensures that digital assets are reviewed, approved and properly categorised before being made available for use to internal teams.

The process typically begins when an asset, such as an image, video or document, is uploaded into the DAM system. It then follows a predefined sequence of steps, involving designated stakeholders such as content creators, marketers and compliance officers assessing the asset for quality, branding alignment, metadata accuracy and legal compliance. Following approval, digital assets are stored within the DAM system and made available to users, while rejected assets may require revisions.

Why asset approval workflows matter

Asset approval workflows are critical for effective Digital Asset Management because they ensure that only high quality, compliant and brand-aligned assets are uploaded to the DAM system. 

These workflows aren’t intended to simply add a layer of unnecessary bureaucracy to Digital Asset Management, but streamline collaboration among key stakeholders, reduce errors and eliminate the risk of unapproved or outdated content being distributed. 

The various stages and checks carried out during the workflow help organisations avoid legal or licensing issues, while also enhancing efficiency, enabling sales and marketing teams to maintain consistent messaging and visual identity across campaigns. Ultimately, they improve asset reliability, save time and support a more organised and professional content ecosystem within the DAM platform.

Common causes of of inefficient workflows—and how to solve them

Organisations across every industry often suffer with inefficient workflows, but they aren’t always able to identify what’s causing it.

Here are some common issues behind the inefficiencies.

Manual processes and tracking

Sometimes, DAM managers prefer to retain complete control of which assets get uploaded to the system - and this is understandable. After all, the more manual reviewing and tracking you do, the more visibility you have over what’s getting uploaded.

However, while this might work for small teams that don’t own a large number of assets, these manual processes—including reviewing, approving and manual tagging and categorising assets—are a huge time burden.

Implementing elements of automation into the asset approval workflow will improve efficiency. For example, automatically routing approval notifications to the right people eliminates the need for manual handoffs, while DAM systems like ResourceSpace can show real-time tracking of approval statuses to allow stakeholders to keep on top of it.

Conflicting feedback and unclear roles

Another common cause of inefficient asset approval workflows is poorly defined roles. If two people are reviewing an asset at the same time, they might provide conflicting feedback, leading to delays in resolving the issue with the asset.

Think about the following responsibilities within the process:

• Who has permission to upload assets to the DAM for approval?
• How many layers of approval (different stakeholders) are there?
• Who has the final sign-off?
• Who’s responsible for archiving or disposing of assets when they’ve reached the end of their lifespan? (Something else ResourceSpace can automate).

Mapping out the end-to-end process makes it clear to everyone who’s responsible for each stage of the approval workflow. This will make sure there’s no confusion about who should be accountable to which element of the process, and make it easy for the DAM Manager to identify where the workflow is falling down.

Low user buy-in

Insufficient buy-in to the DAM from users is the cause of multiple issues, primarily that internal processes and workflows simply aren’t followed. For example, team members might store assets on their local drives or cloud storage rather than upload them to the DAM for approval, or download assets and use them beyond the usage permissions allow for.

This might not be an issue with the approval workflow process itself, but it leads to inefficiencies within the process.

To combat this, the benefits of the DAM—to each team member, not just the organisation—need to be clearly communicated to everyone that will use it. Extensive training programmes also need to be developed for new starters to ensure that everyone is onboard from day one.

It can take time to shift organisational culture, but without getting buy-in from everyone that interacts with the approval workflow, it’ll never work efficiently.

ResourceSpace streamlines asset approval workflow and versioning with a combination of automation and easy to use functionality. Our users are able to:

• Monitor the status of any given resource at any time
• Carry out workflow actions with the click of a button, assuming that particular user has permission to do so - this can be a single asset or a group of assets
• Easily revert workflow actions in a single click, undoing uploads or metadata tagging

To find out more about how ResourceSpace can streamline your asset approval workflow book your free DAM demo below.