For over 30 years, Microsoft Office has been the software suite of choice for organisations that want to centralise their IT software infrastructure.

From creating documents in Word and slide presentations in PowerPoint, through to managing data in Excel, the Microsoft Office suite of old has since evolved into Microsoft 365, an extensive range of cloud-based productivity software that includes all of those familiar products, as well as team collaboration software (Teams and Outlook), note-taking software (OneNote) and personal file storage (OneDrive).

But what if you want to collaborate on and share documents or assets with your team? That’s where Microsoft SharePoint comes in, a cloud-based file storage and management solution that has over 200 million users worldwide.

So, if your organisation has Microsoft SharePoint, do you actually need a dedicated Digital Asset Management solution?

DAM and SharePoint have a lot less in common than you might think, and if you’re simply relying on SharePoint to manage your digital assets, you’ve going to be missing out on a huge amount of functionality that could help your organisation to become more productive, more secure and help make sure you’re getting the most out of your visual content.

What is Microsoft SharePoint

Part of the Microsoft 365 suite of applications, SharePoint is a file management and collaboration platform, but its functionality goes beyond the likes of Google Drive or Box.

Organisations can create internal workspaces and ‘websites’ for different teams, employees can post news items and, of course, there are sharing and collaboration tools as well. One way to look at SharePoint is as a company’s intranet.

It’s a powerful application, but can it be considered a type of DAM?

Is SharePoint a DAM?

Although sometimes thought of as a DAM, SharePoint did not enter the marketplace as a DAM system. The software offers basic file storage capabilities, designed to help companies connect departments together, while the document library presents a space to store, organise and share assets that can be accessed via a web browser on a variety of devices.

However, although SharePoint offers some of the same features, it has a completely separate set of core functions which should be used alongside - rather than as a replacement for - a Digital Asset Management system.

SharePoint can provide a rudimentary way of sharing files, but building on those features in an attempt at getting it even remotely close to a genuine DAM system requires extensive configuration, and a large investment in both time and resources.

For those with limited or temporary digital asset management needs, SharePoint may serve as a light version of DAM; but for professional organisations whose digital files are a mission-critical part of their infrastructure and working practices, then the more robust and extensive offering of a dedicated DAM is by far the better option. 

Digital Asset Management versus SharePoint at a glance: Feature comparison

So, to what extent can Microsoft SharePoint compete with Digital Asset Management software? 

DAM systems like ResourceSpace have been built to store, optimise and distribute files such as images, videos, and documents, and based on this definition you might think that SharePoint can already offer all of these features—but that’s not the case.

Let’s take a look at how Microsoft SharePoint stacks up against a dedicated DAM system.

Contextual search functionality

One of the core differences between DAM and a file storage solution like SharePoint is metadata.

In a DAM platform you can tag digital assets with a wide variety of descriptive and technical metadata, which you can then use to locate specific files. This makes searching for assets in a DAM more like using a search engine, where the system will return multiple results depending on what you’re looking for.

By contrast, you’d need to know the name of a file in SharePoint to find it, or at least know part of the file name. If your organisation doesn’t have strong naming convention policies in place that people stick to (and, let’s face it, many don’t) it’ll be very difficult to find the files you need if you don’t know the location they’ve been saved to.

Quick and easy image visualisation

A DAM isn’t just a location for storing your visual assets, but a place where they can be viewed easily too. 

 

Although SharePoint will provide a thumbnail preview of your assets, you won’t be able to assess their true quality without downloading them locally. You might not even have permission to download a specific file, which means you have to request access before downloading it to judge its quality.

On-the-fly image editing

SharePoint is a file storage solution that can be used to store visual assets, but it’s not a dedicated visual assets platform. As such, it doesn’t offer any on-the-fly editing functionality. Want to edit an image? You’ll have to download it from SharePoint and upload it to a third-party tool such as Adobe Photoshop or InDesign.

That’s not the case if you’re using a DAM. For example, ResourceSpace provides the ability to resize, crop, rotate or download in multiple formats, including JPG, PNG and TIFF. There’s also the option to create custom derivative sizes for each upload so they’re all ready when you need them.

Approval workflows

SharePoint allows you to set specific permissions for certain workspaces and assets, but that’s where control over assets ends. In theory it is possible to create more complex workflows in SharePoint, but this requires a significant amount of costly development time.

A DAM will typically allow you to create more complex approval workflows and use ‘workflow states’. Depending on the status of an asset you can determine who can view, access and edit the content, as well as the workflow actions that can be performed.

 

Customisable dashboards

Some DAM systems, particularly open source systems like ResourceSpace, can be entirely customised to meet the requirements of your business, with options to design the interface to match the branding of your company. 

 

SharePoint needs a high level of development in order to offer personalised designs for login screens and email templates - and it’s not possible to change the standard interface to suit how you work.

Optimised for managing large files

A DAM system is designed to handle large, content rich files and will allow you to work with assets that are hundreds of GB in size. In contrast, SharePoint imposes restrictions on file upload sizes, while total storage space is also tiered based on subscription level.

Digital Asset Management software provides you with the freedom to work across all file sizes and formats.

Granular permissions and filters

Every member of your team will have different responsibilities and requirements for digital assets, and a dedicated DAM will allow you to set granular permissions to determine what they can and can’t see in the system. It’s possible to restrict downloads and configure which files certain users can or can’t edit as well. 

By contrast, Microsoft SharePoint’s permissions management can be clunky and cumbersome, with access codes required for embedding or sharing assets.

Integrations with the rest of your tech stack

As part of the Microsoft 365 suite, SharePoint integrates seamlessly with the rest of your Office applications, but if you need it to work with third-party applications, such as the Adobe suite, social media channels or content management systems (CMS) you’re going to have to spend a lot of time and resources creating complex bespoke integrations.

By contrast, ResourceSpace integrates with all of these systems and more, including:

We also offer a full RESTful API that can be used by your developers to access many of the internal functions of ResourceSpace to connect it with a wide range of other third-party applications.

Usage insights and reporting

Does your organisation make the most of the assets you’ve produced or purchased? Do you know where there are gaps in your asset library? A dedicated DAM system will provide advanced analytics and reporting, allowing you to monitor performance and usage of digital assets, as well as in-depth info on downloads, uploads and views.

SharePoint doesn’t offer any of this insight, which can ultimately lead to asset library bloat because you don’t know which assets are no longer being accessed. 

Cost

The price of a dedicated DAM will depend on the vendor you choose, as they all employ different pricing models. However, because ResourceSpace is open source, you only ever pay for two things:

  1. The amount of consultancy you’re likely to need for implementing and effectively managing the DAM - this is based on the size of your organisation and the complexity of your requirements.

  2. The amount of cloud storage you need if you choose a fully hosted service.

The ResourceSpace software is free and always will be.

At the time of writing, you can purchase SharePoint as a standalone product (including OneDrive and Microsoft Lists) for £4.10 per user, per month (1TB storage per user), which means the cost can mount up considerably for larger teams, and particularly for enterprise-level organisations.

Note that SharePoint is also included with a Microsoft 365 Business Standard package, along with the rest of the 365 applications, priced at £10.30 per user, per month (1TB storage per user).

Securely share assets externally

As the name suggests, you can share digital assets with SharePoint—but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. In fact, there’s a complex process required to enable external sharing in the platform.

Secure sharing is one area where Digital Asset Management excels, and ResourceSpace allows you to share assets internally and externally without compromising overall security, while also ensuring that emailing large files is a thing of the past.

Trusted external contributors can also upload to ResourceSpace, with these assets remaining in a ‘pending’ state until they’re approved, completely removing the need for third party file sharing software.

On-premise solution

If you’re looking for an on-premise solution both SharePoint and DAM systems can be set up on your own servers, although not all Digital Asset Management platforms come with this option.

ResourceSpace does have this option, although we generally find that a cloud hosted package is the best solution for most organisations.

READ MORE: Is on-premise DAM dead?

On-the-fly document editing

This is the one area where SharePoint has an advantage, as a DAM is intended as the single source of truth and isn’t designed to allow editing of documents in the system. The files accessible to general users in the DAM should be the final versions that all users are safe to use. 

A DAM can securely store, organise and share documents, but you won’t typically find any word processing functionality. 

Does Microsoft offer a DAM solution?

The simple answer is no, there’s currently no dedicated Digital Asset Management platform offered as part of the Microsoft 365 suite, or any other application. SharePoint is the closest you can get to a DAM by relying on Microsoft software alone, while OneDrive and Dynamics 365 offer some basic file storage and sharing functionality. 

The Microsoft Media Library within Dynamics 365 is no more advanced than the likes of Google Drive or Box, and it’s simply not up to the job of managing the digital assets of growing businesses.

Conclusion

Whilst SharePoint carries out some of the same functions, it cannot stand alone as a DAM in its own right. 

The basic functionality of SharePoint may suit those looking to handle and share a small number of original files, but for those who wish to batch process and enhance their photographs, videos and brand graphics, a dedicated DAM is the best possible solution.

File storing and sharing make up one aspect of SharePoint, as part of a broader set of core functions, and these can complement a DAM. However, organisations that need to manage assets in a robust way and take asset creation and security seriously will benefit from the next-level features offered by Digital Asset Management software.