Digital Asset Management buyer’s guide for Life Sciences

Life Sciences organisations create a huge amount of content: brand materials, product information, training, campaigns and medical education, across many markets and channels. Keeping it organised, approved and current is hard. A Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform can make it much easier, if you choose and set it up well.

I have spent decades working in Health & Life Sciences, including six years leading Abbott’s EMEA digital engagement, and I now lead Phoenix’s Health & Life Sciences division. This guide sets out what to look for when you choose a DAM platform, and how to make it work once you have.

1. Why DAM matters in Life Sciences

In many industries, a lost or outdated file is an inconvenience. In Life Sciences it can be a compliance issue. Material that has expired, or was never approved for a market, can still reach customers if teams cannot easily tell which version is current.

A good DAM gives everyone one trusted place to find approved content, see whether it can be used and know when it expires. It also saves time: teams stop recreating assets they cannot find, and agencies work from the right source.

2. Start with your content and how it is approved

Before you look at any platform, understand what you have. Find out:

• what types of content you create, and roughly how much,
• where it lives today: shared drives, agency systems, email and existing tools,
• who creates it, who uses it and who signs it off, and
• how review works, including medical, legal and regulatory review.

This picture becomes the basis of your requirements, and it shows where the biggest risks and time savings are.

3. Define the requirements that matter

Every DAM platform stores and searches files. The differences that matter in Life Sciences are more specific:

• Approval status and expiry. Every asset should show whether it is approved, for which markets and until when, with expired content withdrawn automatically.
• Usage rights. Images, music and talent all come with conditions. Record them against the asset so nobody has to guess.
• Localisation by market. Make it easy to see which versions exist for each country and language, and how they relate to the original.
• Search that works. People should find the right asset in seconds, using the words they already use.
• Integration. The DAM should connect to the tools where content is created, reviewed and used.

Write these down as scenarios as well as features. A scenario such as “a brand manager in Spain needs the current approved leaflet” tells you far more than a tick box.

4. Build a taxonomy people will use

A taxonomy is the set of labels you use to describe and find content: brand, product, therapy area, market, language, audience and content type. It is easy to underestimate.

Keep it simple. Use the terms your teams already use, make the important fields mandatory and resist adding labels that nobody will fill in. Give the taxonomy an owner, and agree how new terms are added, so it stays consistent as you grow.

5. Put governance in place from day one

A DAM stays useful only if someone looks after it. Agree from the start:

• who owns the platform, and who owns each brand’s content,
• the rules for uploading, labelling and approving assets,
• what happens when content expires, and how it is archived, and
• who can see and use what, inside and outside the organisation.

Build Privacy by Design into the set-up. If assets feature people, such as patients or healthcare professionals, make sure consent and usage terms are recorded and respected.

6. Plan the integrations

The value of a DAM grows with every system it connects to. Common connections include:

• content creation and review tools, so approved assets flow straight into the DAM,
• Salesforce, so sales and customer engagement teams use only current, approved content, and
• your websites and other channels, so updates and withdrawals happen in one place.

Ask each vendor how these integrations work in practice, and who will build and support them.

7. Run a fair selection

Shortlist a small number of platforms that fit your requirements, then ask each to demonstrate your own scenarios using your own sample content. It is the quickest way to see the real differences.

Compare the total cost over several years, including licences, storage, integration, migration and support. Then speak to references from organisations like yours, ideally in Life Sciences, about how the platform works day to day.

8. Plan migration and adoption

Moving to a new DAM is a chance to tidy up. Decide what to migrate, what to archive and what to retire, and clean up labels as content moves.

Then bring people with you. Involve brand and market teams early, train them on the tasks they do every day and make the DAM the only place approved content is shared. Adoption grows when people find it faster than the old way.

If you are choosing or improving a DAM platform, I would be glad to share what I have learned.

Kerry Gilzene, Executive Vice President, Health & Life Sciences, Phoenix Consulting