Akeneo DAM: Asset Manager or a dedicated DAM system?

What does "Akeneo DAM" actually mean?

Searching for "Akeneo DAM" leads to two different answers — and mixing them up costs projects time again and again.

The Asset Manager inside Akeneo

Akeneo ships its own asset management with the Asset Manager, which Akeneo itself now markets as "Akeneo DAM". You store images, videos and documents in a structured way, give them their own attributes and link them directly to products and product models. It all happens in the same interface where your product data is created — no system switch, no second login.

The Asset Manager is not part of every edition, though. The Community Edition has no structured asset management; if you need more images there, you create more attributes. Since October 2024 the Asset Manager is available in the Growth Edition, and in the Enterprise tiers anyway.

Akeneo PIM plus a dedicated DAM

The second reading: you keep Akeneo as your PIM and put a full DAM system next to it that talks to Akeneo through an interface. Assets then live in the DAM, product data in the PIM — and both systems exchange whatever the other one needs. That is exactly how TESSA works with Akeneo.

This is not an either-or against Akeneo, it is a division of labour: Akeneo stays the single point of truth for product data, and the DAM becomes one for media.

Asset Manager and DAM system compared

So the line runs along the question of what your media are for. Anything that only ever hangs off a product is in good hands in the Asset Manager. As soon as media are needed without a product reference — campaign visuals, trade-fair photos, logos, brand films — the PIM has no proper place for them.

For the broader distinction between the two system worlds, see our article on PIM and DAM: differences, interplay and when you need which.

When the Akeneo Asset Manager is enough

The built-in Asset Manager is the pragmatic choice when:

• your media are almost exclusively product images and data sheets,
• the assets are maintained by the same people who maintain the product data,
• you work with a few, always identical asset types per product,
• print production, license management and external download portals play no role.

In that setup a second system would be overhead. Save yourself the integration.

When a dedicated DAM alongside Akeneo pays off

A dedicated DAM is worth it if you answer "yes" to more than two of these questions:

• Do your media originate in many places — photographers, agencies, suppliers, locations?
• Do you need the same visual in several formats, resolutions and color spaces (web, print, marketplace)?
• Do you produce catalogs or print and need 300 dpi data with proper color management?
• Do externals — dealers, press, partners — need to access approved media themselves?
• Do you have usage rights with expiry dates, for model photography or licensed music?
• Is there brand material that does not belong to any single product?
• Do your assets sit on network drives or in cloud folders today, stored several times over?

The more of these apply, the more expensive it gets to squeeze your media world into the Asset Manager — and the bigger the leverage of an integration.

How Akeneo PIM and a DAM are connected

The SKU as the shared key

For PIM and DAM to work together they need one common attribute. In practice that is almost always the SKU: it sits in the asset's metadata or in its file name and links media and product record unambiguously. The exchange runs over an API — with TESSA, through a certified Akeneo-TESSA app that shows you assets right on the product in Akeneo and, the other way round, lets you work with Akeneo product data inside the DAM.

Rule-based assignment

Once the rules are defined, the matching runs without manual work. A product number and an "H" in the file name for the main product image are enough — the DAM recognizes both and attaches the file to the right product as its cover image. Nobody has to touch that image a second time. This is exactly where the time saving that carries the whole integration comes from.

Delivery to the channels

On delivery, the DAM converts into whatever format the channel needs: JPEG at store resolution for the webshop, TIFF at 300 dpi with a CMYK profile for the catalog, square crops for the marketplace. On request, the files land directly on a CDN so your product images are served quickly and reliably in the store. Which products are included is controlled by the assortment definition in the PIM.

What the integration delivers day to day

On top of that come the effects any clean PIM/DAM integration brings:

• You make changes in a single place, and they apply to every channel.
• You keep control over product data, with one reviewed and approved version.
• All assets are available, in the right size, the right format and the right version.
• Time-to-market drops, because asset and product data no longer have to be merged by hand.
• Brand consistency across all channels, because only approved assets are delivered.
• The team works without overhead — and measurably prefers it.

Users love TESSA

„TESSA the perfect match for our PIM system, Akeneo."

TESSA is an important tool for us worldwide. In combination with the connector, TESSA creates the perfect match to our PIM system, Akeneo. EIKONA Media thus helped us to digitalize our processes even more worldwide and to achieve a significant improvement in time-to-market.

Myriam Bohr

Digital Marketing Manager, C. Josef Lamy GmbH

For what this looks like in an international brand setting, see our LAMY case study.

Rolling out Akeneo DAM: what to watch out for

1. Draw the line first, then integrate. Decide which assets stay in the PIM and which belong in the DAM. Anything else leads to duplicate maintenance.
2. Define the key cleanly. SKU, GTIN or an ID of your own — what matters is that the attribute is reliably maintained in both systems.
3. Nail down file-name and metadata conventions. Rule-based assignment is only as good as the convention it builds on.
4. Think about channels from the output backwards. Define deliveries by the formats your store, marketplace and printer actually need, not by what happens to sit in the archive.
5. Test the update paths. A replaced image in the DAM has to arrive in Akeneo and in every channel. Verify that with real products before go-live.

To see which other systems TESSA connects to — from shop and CMS systems to creative tools — have a look at our integrations overview.