How much data do you think your organization creates on a daily basis? Probably a lot more than you think! By 2025, it’s estimated that 463 exabytes of data will be created each day globally – that’s the equivalent of 212,765,957 DVDs per day. That’s a lot of data!
A smart content management strategy is absolutely necessary for all organizations, small or big, not only to manage the huge volume of your data efficiently but also to enable intelligent decision making and provide quality assurance for all your information assets.
In this blog, we’ll look at a content management strategy in detail, so that you can learn what it actually is and where to begin.
What is a Content Management Strategy?
A content management strategy is a structured plan to create, publish, and govern your organization’s content and data. A content management strategy is critical to organizational survival, as it underpins effective information management, which is vital to surviving and thriving in the digital age we’re living in now.
Why You Should Implement a Content Management Strategy
When done well, content management allows your organization to improve your processes, manage resources more efficiently, and increase your ability to mitigate risks.
There are various reasons why you should implement a content management strategy, but cognitive operations, knowledge management, and information management are 3 of the major reasons.
1. Cognitive operations automate intelligent decision making, planning, and operations
A content management strategy allows advanced automation technologies (artificial intelligence, machine-to-machine, neural networks, etc.) to work together to discover, analyze, and act on the right insights.
2. Knowledge management enables intelligent decision making, planning, and operations
A content management strategy allows system integration, business intelligence, and process management (all powered by a foundation of quality information) to work together to discover, analyze, and deliver insights in user-friendly formats (e.g. dashboard, BI reports, and various content assets) on any device.
3. Information management provides quality assurance for all information assets
A content management strategy provides a solid foundation of information accuracy, consistency, and completeness, enabling optimal findability for users.
4 Steps to Implementing a Content Management Strategy
So, it’s clear what a content management strategy is and what benefits you will get out of it. Now you need to know where to start. Here are 4 steps to keep in mind when deciding to implement a content management strategy. Remember, a content management strategy is like a living, breathing thing. World-class content management capabilities are not built overnight, so getting started with a solid plan is highly recommended.
1. Understand the major motivations and the most desirable benefits of implementing your content management strategy
Before making a move to implement a content management strategy, first evaluate the exact reasons why you want or need one. Put together a business case outlining your organization’s pain points, what you hope the implementation of a content management strategy will solve for your organization, what the desired outcome will be, etc.
2. Set the scope of your content management strategy
As mentioned above, a content management strategy can’t be built overnight. It is easy to be too ambitious and set the scope too big. It takes time and resources for your organization to implement a successful content management strategy, and, as you start planning and designing it, you’ll learn from your discoveries. Knowing the major motivations and the most desirable benefits you expect (from Step 1) will help you determine the scope of your content management strategy. If you need to, you can always break down your content management strategy into smaller, “bite-sized” phases, implementing a little bit at a time.
3. Involve stakeholders in developing your content management strategy
Have you ever been stuck in the middle of a project due to some issues that you did not previously foresee? Costly delays, the added stress… It’s a nightmare! Engaging all major stakeholders can help you avoid the headache. Keep in mind that problems may still arise in the future, so your content management strategy has to be scalable and flexible enough to handle those as well.
4. Build an implementation roadmap and execute
Based on the information you’ve gathered by following the Steps 1 to 3, you can now build an implementation roadmap. To help reduce the friction when executing your roadmap, design a coordinated action plan. Again, working with an experienced team who has helped many organizations implement a content management strategy is a good idea, especially because, by doing so, you can learn from the mistakes made in the past by other organizations and wisely avoid them.
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Ready to Implement a Content Management Strategy? 3 Final Tips to Keep in Mind
When you begin to implement your content management strategy, here are three final things to keep in mind:
✔️ Tip 1. Content management is critical to organizational survival
If you want to survive and thrive in this digital era, you need to have a solid content management solution, and a strategy to implement it. Is your team rapidly growing? If so, a content management strategy is even more important. A content management strategy is one of the necessary elements to support your organization’s growth.
✔️ Tip 2. Involve stakeholders when designing a content management strategy
Make sure that all major stakeholders are engaged with developing your content management strategy. Stakeholders in charge of different functions or departments in your organization will certainly have different insights, so having these people at the table during the beginning of the design and implementation of your content management strategy can help you avoid issues and challenges on the way. Another reason to involve your major stakeholders early on is that you will need to change your organization’s behaviour to embrace your new content management strategy. By involving everyone in the process right from the get-go, it creates a vested interest in the project and secures buy-in from everyone.
✔️ Tip 3. A content management strategy needs to be scalable and flexible
As your organization grows, content priorities can change. Keep in mind that this new strategy will be a part of your organization for many years to come. And, as mentioned above, remember that world-class content management capabilities aren’t built overnight. Be realistic about what you can achieve now and what you can set aside for future growth.
Let us Help You
Understanding the importance of a content management strategy to your organization’s long-term success is the first step. Implementing that content management strategy is another. But it’s not always cut and dry, black and white. Sometimes you need help to get on the right track.
For over 15 years, ProServeIT has been assisting companies both large and small with implementing content management strategies. We can help you explore your content management strategy options and help you develop your roadmap. Do you want to unlock your content’s capabilities that can power innovation? Talk to us today and let us help you get started.
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