We have been called in to rescue enough digital asset management implementations to see the same three failures.
It sits outside the workflow. If a designer has to leave Photoshop, open a browser, log in and upload, they will not do it consistently. Adobe Assets connects directly to Creative Cloud, so the work is filed where it is made. That single integration does more for adoption than any amount of training.
Metadata is somebody else's job. Assets arrive untagged, search returns nothing useful, people go back to email. AI-assisted tagging gets you most of the way, but the taxonomy still has to reflect how your team actually talks about products — season, campaign, brand, territory — rather than how a consultant thinks they should.
The storefront isn't connected. If merchandisers still download from the DAM and re-upload to Adobe Commerce, you have added a step rather than removed one. Native integration means the product page references the asset, and updating the asset updates the page. Everywhere. At once.
Get those three right and the library becomes the path of least resistance, which is the only way this ever works.