Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive; the variety and availability of cloud file-sharing services have never been greater. These services provide easy, drag-and-drop file sharing with automatic syncing, perfect for backing up and sharing personal and small business files.

For many businesses, there comes a time when a more feature-rich solution is required. As business demands increase, Dropbox ceases to be a time-saving tool, and becomes a time-consuming one. One of its main USPs, simplicity, can quickly become a problem as your business grows and starts to use and share more and more digital assets. As you require more functionality, you’ll need to start using other programs outside of Dropbox to perform related tasks, substantially increasing your workload.

The next logical step is to invest in an online Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution. Online DAM systems go a step beyond the simple file-sharing capabilities of Dropbox, providing superior security, asset management, and collaboration features.

4 Signs Your Business Needs to Upgrade

Upgrading to a Dropbox alternative can be triggered by a number of factors, but we’ve found some of the most common problems include:

1.   The need to present a more professional image

Dropbox provides fantastic value, but in some scenarios, the stripped-down value model is no longer a benefit. If a client has just paid you handsomely for your services, sending them a Dropbox link to receive their files just doesn’t quite cut it. You need a more professional-looking solution.

A DAM solution, such as Filecamp, offers you the opportunity to brand your asset management spaces with your own logo, colors, and URL. Your clients will access their data through a clean, professional-looking file-sharing portal.

2.   The need to improve security

The security features of Dropbox are fine for personal use, but for business use, they leave much to be desired. Because Dropbox normally logs itself in automatically, your business is just one lost laptop or tablet away from leaking all your data. A professional file-sharing solution will offer superior security, ensuring that you and your client’s data remain safe.

An online DAM solution provides a secure location for your important digital assets. Files are protected both physically and digitally in a secure data center, with all access available only through a secure HTTPS connection.

Full control over the access rights of your users means that you can finely tune the ways in which different users are allowed to interact with the system. Granular access control ensures that clients and other business partners can be given access to specific assets and folders without able to access anything else. Finally, a fully-featured audit trail and email alerts triggered on certain actions ensure that you know exactly what is happening to your data.

3.   The need to collaborate effectively

For most businesses, performing key operations out of just one central office location is no longer a reality. It is more common than ever for key employees and freelancers to work from remote locations, using cloud services to send work back and forth. While Dropbox or email is fine for sharing files for a time, it can quickly become unmanageable if you’ve got multiple files being worked on by multiple people.

An online DAM solution provides an easy-to-use platform for sharing, commenting on, and providing feedback on a wide variety of digital assets. Virtual annotations allow you to quickly and easily pass comments back and forth within the system, making your workflow that much more efficient. Not only will your collaboration be improved, but unlike email, you won’t run the risk of assets getting stuck in silos, with each user maintaining and editing their own versions of key files. Instead, you’ll have one central digital asset storage that will ensure everyone is using the right version.

4.   The need to better organize and archive images

If you’re managing hundreds or even thousands of digital assets, you’ll soon be finding it nearly impossible to manage all your assets within Dropbox or another file-sharing solution. Organizing and archiving this many assets requires a substantially larger range of tools than these solutions provide.

An online DAM solution allows you to assign multiple tags to files to help you index them. You can then search for assets by filename, tags, or folder name. Additionally, Filecamp captures metadata when your assets are imported, and this data is both searchable and editable.

Digital Asset Management – Doesn’t that cost a lot?

One of the biggest reasons businesses neglect to upgrade from Dropbox to a professional DAM solution is that they believe they are restricted by their budget. However, thanks to the economies of scale provided by cloud technology, you can now access a DAM solution, like Filecamp, for less than a dollar a day.
Invest in Filecamp for less than a dollar a day and you’ll get:

• Professional-looking, fully-brandable DAM solution.
• Integrate asset-sharing with your website.
• Full control over access rights, including granular access control.
• Easy collaboration with virtual annotations.
• Tag and search images quickly and easily.
• Read, write, and edit metadata.