A successful content orchestration strategy involves aligning people, process and technology to streamline content operations. Whilst software for content orchestration is part of the puzzle, there are other factors you need to take into consideration – like strategic alignment and change management.
Here are six things you need for content orchestration success.
Top-down strategy
The role of every business function is to create value for the organization and the content supply chain is no different. Your content operations team needs to meet its own KPIs – such as individual engagement metrics or improving time-to-market – but also KPIs that support overarching strategic objectives – like increasing revenue (for example) by extending customer lifetime value.
There are lots of approaches to content orchestration and no one-size-fits-all. So the first step to content orchestration success is strategic alignment. Knowing what top-down strategies you need to support will inform what your content orchestration approach looks like.
Bottom-up alignment
It isn’t just top-down strategic alignment that’s important, however. Content orchestration achieves strategic objectives by making content operations faster, more efficient and productive. And that requires an in-depth understanding of day-to-day operations, in order to improve them.
Bottom-up alignment means engaging everyone involved in the content supply chain, to understand what works, what doesn’t, what could be better, what could be automated… It also means engaging people across different business functions, to understand opportunities for vertical alignment and integration, breaking down siloes between teams.
Vision
Of course, digital transformation isn’t just about digitizing existing processes. That covers the ‘digital’ side of the equation but not the ‘transformation’ side. True transformation means using technology to unlock new opportunities, business models and ways of working.
But seeing beyond the status quo takes vision. Businesses with the courage and ambition to look beyond ‘refining’ existing processes – to completing ‘redesigning’ processes – will achieve more of the benefits of content orchestration.
Buy-in
Content orchestration can change processes and responsibilities for a large number of stakeholders. The will be easier if everyone is on-board with the rationale and pulling in the same direction. The ‘people’ piece of the puzzle is actually just as important as the processes and technology.
It’s important for stakeholders to understand that content orchestration isn’t about improving every existing step in the content supply chain. It’s about redesigning it and optimizing it overall. That might mean one part of the process gains two additional steps, but this saves ten steps later in the process.
This is where strategic alignment and support from the C-suite is so important. A senior champion can help get buy-in from different groups – communicating the organizational benefits of a content orchestration approach.
Support
Content orchestration delivers much-needed digital transformation for content operations teams. But it is a complex process that involves redesigning workflows and integrating multiple software solutions into a single stack. This requires expert knowledge – to research and optimize business processes, ideate workflows, and build a bespoke software solution.
Two-thirds of IT projects are classified as failures, which shows just how challenging digital transformation can be. Organizations that access expert support for content orchestration – whether internal or external – will be better placed for success.
Software
Of course, we couldn’t create a list of things you need for content orchestration without mentioning software. Content orchestration creates value for a business by using technology to enable more cost-efficient and strategic ways of working. An optimized, integrated software stack is the engine of content orchestration. But what software do you need?
Every organization and use case is unique, so there’s no individual ‘best software for content orchestration’. Your software choices will depend on what you’re trying to achieve and what systems you currently use. An IT consultant will be able to advise you on different software you can integrate and optimize for content orchestration.
Qonqord have been helping publishers and global brands implement successful content orchestration strategies for over 20 years.
Our process and IT experts can help at every stage – from understanding existing workflows and painpoints, through designing new fit-for-purpose processes, to installing a brand new software stack.
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