content than ever, and the rate of creation
continues to grow.
hotel company posting property information to
online travel agencies such as Expedia).”
“Content itself has changed too – text and
imagery persist, but there is a larger growth
in the use of more visually-compelling content
including photos, audio, streaming video, social
posts, crowdsourced ratings, reviews and more.
More importantly, a lot of this content is being
created outside the enterprise and is not under
the control of the marketer or line-of-business
user within the enterprise.
And he suggests, there is also a debate brewing
about whether users are expecting a push as
opposed to a pull of digital experiences.
“This poses a huge problem for organisations
trying to manage these content types in a manner
that makes it easy to find, curate and re-use
across all digital touchpoints at the scale that is
required for the enterprise.”
He quotes research from Forrester which says the
average enterprise manages 268 different mobile
and web experiences.
“Imagine the chaos and complexity of maintaining
consistent brand and customer experiences across
all these digital destinations. The content supply
chain is broken, resulting in content duplication,
dated information, content silos, and lack of
brand compliance.
“As well as the content, the channels
through which people expect to access it
have ballooned. Even a few years ago, people
mostly interacted through a browser. Now, they
expect a consistent and connected experience
across their smartphones, tablets, desktops,
laptops, in store, on billboards, on social
channels, and even third party sites (e.g. a
006
SDL Australian managing director Kevin Ross
adds, “ Content comes in many shapes and forms,
but there is a clear trend towards more rich
media and more multilingual content. Moreover,
personalisation requires additional content to be
produced as well.
“Overall, the content explosion continues, and
companies struggle to manage this in a way that
is efficient and that produces brand consistency
over time.”
For companies that are producing content, there’s
an imperative to house and order it well.
“Of course, it depends what sort of content you’re
creating and what it’s used for, but robust content
management can turn brands from disorganised,
messy dumping grounds of information to ultra
efficient content machines,” says Martin Wanless,
Chief Content Officer at Mahlab Media.
“The type of content that needs managing is pretty
much everything you create.” And he echoes
Bateman’s advice that it is especially important for
anything ‘evergreen’ that is likely to be re-used.
“In the sales process, content is being used
increasingly for sales enablement, and knowing
where your content about a specific topic sits is as
important as having it created in the first place.”
He offers a simple analogy, “Look at it this way.
Storing your content in a beautifully organised
factory, where you can identify the location at
the click of a button, is a far more preferable
experience than searching through folders for
hours on end.”
The promise of content management is that as
well as retrieving content, these systems enable
the creation and approval process to be managed
much more efficiently.
“A process of doing this enables efficiency,
version control and approvals, and done
well is significantly more efficient for
everyone concerned.”
And, he adds, software that can give insights into
the performance of content is hugely attractive too.
Adobe’s Marta DeBellis, VP of marketing for
Adobe, Asia Pacific, meanwhile says, “The
changing digital landscape has created new
and exciting ways to engage with customers
across channels and devices via mobile, web,
social, Internet of Things, in-store digital
screens and more.”
Particularly in the marketing space personalisation
has also become a key consideration.
“Creating a personalised, relevant digital experience
has become a priority and a challenge for many
organisations. This is why many organisations turn
to a content management solution for management,
delivery, measurement and ultimately optimisation.
As a result, this will help companies build brand
loyalty and drive demand.