Organizations know the value of content collaboration, it allows multiple people across the organization to work together on a single piece of content, series, or larger content project. When organizations deploy content collaboration tools within their technology infrastructure, the benefits are endless, including improved efficiency and productivity that keep teams ‘connected’ and eliminates working silos.
As content management tools get their fair share of attention in the market – and organizations become more aware of the value they bring to the entire content lifecycle process – from creation to publishing, and everything in between – it brings to light the practicalities of the difference between a content collaboration platform and content management platform.
Here are five common content collaboration tools myths that need busting:
Organizations have a central repository for content. The benefits of content collaboration are you can share files across the organization, but that sharing scenario actually creates a big risk and can lead to not only version control issues, but security implications too. A content management platform delivers a centralized location that makes it simple to connect individuals or groups of users into the same workflow from one place, eliminating fragmented issues that arise when sharing files across the organization while ensuring top-notch security. Multiple stakeholders get concurrent access and can easily make comments, edits, change requests and replace assets from a single, centralized pane of glass view. Reviews and approvals are faster, increasing the efficiency of the entire content creation state to accelerate time to market.
Organizations can personalize content at scale. With consumers devouring content at an epic pace, taking a self-service approach to finding the information they want and making decisions quickly, it makes it more important than ever that organizations develop meaningful, personalized content that reaches the recipient when, where, and how they want to consume it. You have just one chance to make a positive lasting first impression with your content.
Content collaboration platforms can’t deliver the necessary personalized content at scale. Yes, teams can collaborate on the content and streamline review processes, but it can’t support the necessary adaption of this content for the different print and multiple digital channels. A content management platform with automation at its core will help your business keep pace with customer demands and ensure you create and deliver personalized content while supporting both internal and external scalability requirements, such as localization and translation.
Content created supports the customer lifecycle. Content collaboration platforms help teams streamline the content creation process, but they don’t help you know if the content you actually create is meeting the needs of the intended audience. Content management platforms with built-in analytics can give you the necessary insight into what content is actually being consumed, and importantly, help you determine what type of content should be reused or even retired.
Content meets regional compliance/regulatory requirements. Most content collaboration platforms don’t have built-in tools to ensure content created meets regulatory requirements that vary by industry and region. A content management platform with built-in automation workflow capabilities ensures that critical risk management, compliance and corporate copyright information and branding is accurately enforced and is tagged to a document version in the central repository as part of the full version history, which is easily accessible. This will ensure that content published adheres to compliance requirements and you aren’t faced with hefty fines for not meeting these standards.
Supports omnichannel publishing. Today’s digital-first preference for content consumption among consumers has been a driving factor as to why organizations must assess their content strategies to support digital transformation. Content created must be personalized and include not just information they want or need but provide design elements for interactivity. Content collaboration platforms cannot support a “create once, publish everywhere” (COPE) mantra which allows you to create a piece of content once and publish it to all channels simultaneously without compromising format or design. Content management allows content teams to easily create reusable content components that seamlessly integrate into omnichannel output formats with just a few clicks. For example, XML is auto-generated and your reusable components are tagged directly with metadata for easy searching and tracking across the entire content repository.
Content collaboration tools will always have a seat the table, but as organizations realize the role content plays in supporting business growth, they too, will see that a content management platform with automation is required to support their organization’s most important objectives – from digitally transforming to delivering an excellent customer experience, to meeting regulatory requirements and generating revenue.