Quark recently broadcasted the third episode of season 2 of their “Close the Content Loop” webinar series which talks all things enterprise content lifecycle management. This episode, titled: What’s Our Ideal Content Technology Strategy and Who Should Be Involved in Defining It?” discussed why it’s so important for organizations to do their homework when evaluating technologies to support their content strategies. We also discussed the importance of involving relevant users across the enterprise when making decisions around content technology.
I was delighted to join Emerson Welch and Sam Courtney in the discussion and share some insights. For the last 30 years, Content Rules has worked with large companies across a variety of industries, helping them select content solutions that support content teams and meet business goals.
Cutting Through Content Technologies and Options Available
Many enterprises are modernizing their content operations infrastructure to support content consumption needs in today’s digital first era. They consider whether to build customized tools in-house to support a specific content workflow or turn to technology vendors. There are many great options and the variety of content management and creations tools available to enterprise to choose from continues to grow.
A content technology platform, however, benefits both enterprise content creators and consumers. It unifies content teams by connecting each contributor and optimizing their individual and collective processes. It can provide content according to customer needs, giving your organization the power to deliver the right content, to the right audience, at the right time and via their preferred device for optimal consumption. (Learn more about personalization in The Personalization Paradox (XML Press) by Val Swisher and Regina Preciado.)
Who Are the People That Will Benefit the Most
Many people are involved in the enterprise content lifecycle, from graphic designers to subject-matter experts, to content architects and IT operations managers. During the podcast, we discussed the importance of each individual role and why everyone’s voice must be heard when creating an enterprise content strategy. Cross-team input will help define content operations infrastructure needs and uncover gaps that you hadn’t considered as part of the strategy.
When working with clients to determine content and tooling needs, Content Rules approaches the issue with a “bottom-up” and “top-down” approach, simultaneously assessing the business needs of the content while collecting and analysing input from authors, reviewers, graphic designers, and any other content operations personnel.
Remember, the people working with the tools on a daily basis will be impacted the most by new technology. Bring everyone to the table and understand what they need from technology and what they want the technology to improve. Understanding how things are working for them today and how they would like to work in the future will help your organization make smart content technology decisions to support your business objectives.
A New Way of Working in Action
Modern content platforms like Quark Publishing Platform (QPP) NextGen enable content teams to spend less time on outdated processes and more time working better independently and collaboratively.
During the podcast, Sam mentioned how a Quark customer in BioTech is transforming their medical communications content by leveraging QPP to create a new strategy for managing the variety of collateral pieces they use.
Their current role-based operational structure is being refined for an improved customer experience and the processes they follow are being streamlined for better efficiency and compliance. Authors now have a simple, robust user interface that guides them for content creation and updates. They also use a custom citation library to provide translated citations in multiple language outputs.
Conclusion
Mature, capable technology enables a successful enterprise content strategy. Quark’s is a single-vendor solution, providing a tested, integrated platform for all content creators and consumers.
Remember, implementing a content technology strategy is more than an IT staff decision. For a content technology strategy to be successful, you must gain buy-in and enthusiasm from all people involved in the content lifecycle. Awareness of the use case scenarios defined for the roles involved are key to accurately capturing the ROI and value achieved from your content technology investments.
You’re not alone on this journey. Content Rules has 30 years of experience solving complex content challenges and we would love to hear about yours