And this looks to be only the beginning, with the disruption still rippling through the ecommerce landscape. While the 2021 IMRG Capgemini Online Retail Index revealed that the online retail market in the UK experienced the lowest rate of growth in 22 years of tracking, online revenue in 2021 was still up 2.7% year-on-year against 2020. This means it still grew, even when compared to that period of unprecedented change. When indexed against 2019 instead of 2020, it was up 39%.

What this means for businesses is that there is no off button, no down time. Those who already had systems in place to adapt to the unprecedented conditions of the pandemic were fortunate. But even these prepared companies have to keen innovating to keep up with evolving customer demands.

For most companies, the pandemic meant bootstrapping systems and workflows to cope with the new conditions. Expectations have changed. Now they must take those bootstrapped actions, review, and refine them so they become part of a sophisticated and responsive omnichannel strategy.

Commentators’ predictions for marketing’s challenges in 2022 give some idea of the task ahead for marketers. Privacy and data breaches will still be top of mind for consumers so extra attention to data management will be vital; storytelling, particularly using video and audio assets will be an important way to engage with consumers; user-friendly tools will be in demand so teams can get on with tasks autonomously, but the need for digitally skilled employees will still be there; social and ecommerce will blend and the metaverse will become more mainstream. In short: becoming a data-driven operation has to be on every company’s top 3 list.

With the wide range of challenges ahead, many companies are aware that they lack the necessary foundational technologies to bring that omnichannel experience to reality. Assets and data are siloed, teams largely blind to what the other is doing, with long, cumbersome, and time-consuming email chains.

But simply deciding to tackle and unifying your content needs can go a long way towards accomplishing a much enhanced omnichannel customer experience, through much enhanced content and the processes behind its creation and delivery.

So, where to start when experts like Scott Brinker’s martech landscape lists 8,000-plus martech solutions? Simply getting organized can have a dramatic impact on cost-efficiencies, team effectiveness and overall customer experience.

Arguably, the modern Digital Asset Management (DAM) system is the lynchpin of modern marketing. Competent DAM platforms quickly and easily ingest assets, making them available to teams, are shareable securely, contain detailed real-time meta information (such as license periods, review information or approval details) and simply make it easier for marketers to keep their content streams – which now permeate every channel on and offline – under control. And last but definitely not least, the right DAM solution in your martech stack should be able to cover the business use cases and KPIs as required now, but be easily adjustable and scalable for growth in the future.

Their benefits are easy to see and censhare has a wealth of customer success stories to demonstrate just what a DAM can achieve for companies large and small, even in tight time windows.

For example, BSH Hausgeräte now manages over 11 million assets through one system, accessible by over 3,000 users worldwide. This allows for prompt and accurate presentations of their products and products stories on a global scale, adapted as relevant to the needs of each regional market, all thanks to an efficient and easy to use content management set up.

But understanding that a DAM system could help you get organized doesn’t necessarily mean that you will easily know which DAM solution is right for you. At censhare, we like to think that we can turn our hand to any organization’s challenge, but the fact is, you need to assess your needs and choose the supplier whose offering fits best.

That’s why we have produced the Martech Buyers Guide: Digital Asset Management, in partnership with Bizibl.

This guide will walk you through DAM’s place in the tech stack, the business objectives it can achieve, how to compare platforms’ relative benefits, and how DAM is likely to interact with other systems and customer data. And if this all seems too complex, the guide will also show you how to access buying support through a well-established network of integrators who understand the DAM landscape and can help you make the right choice.

With the pressures likely to continue for marketers into 2022 and beyond, getting on board with DAM is an effective way of getting on the path to simplicity for greater efficiency and effectiveness. To get started on your journey, download the Martech Buyers Guide: Digital Asset Management.