Content supply chain - securing systematic content production

What is a Content Supply Chain?

A Content Supply Chain (CSC) is a business process encompassing content planning, creation, management, and delivery. It is comparable to a traditional supply chain, where raw materials are transformed into a finished product and delivered to the end customer. In the Content Supply Chain, however, digital content such as text, images, and videos are transformed through various steps and actors into publish-ready formats and distributed across different channels.

Working with content always involves many people who perform different tasks but work towards a common goal: providing content for successful customer experiences.

The key actors are:

• Clients: Product managers who want to promote their product; brand managers who want to strengthen their brand; event managers who want to draw attention to their event; communication managers who want to set themes.
• Creatives: Responsible for creating images, videos, audio, and text, they are in a constant process of idea generation, implementation, and revision, working in exchange with their clients.
• Managers: These specialists advise clients on what is desirable and feasible and work with creatives to advance the implementation as efficiently as possible to deliver content of the expected quality at the agreed time.
• Publishers: They receive the checked and approved content for publication across various channels, whether digital channels like websites, newsletters, and social media or classic communication products like brochures, posters, displays, and similar items.
• Analysts: They check whether the created content has achieved the desired goals and use collected or generated data to determine where future optimizations should be applied.

The multitude of actors already indicates that the complexity of the content production process is high, and thus the susceptibility to errors and inefficiencies is also high. Ongoing coordination is then accompanied by extensive administrative effort, which is often perceived as unsatisfactory by the participants.

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How can a Content Supply Chain strategy be implemented in a company?

To coordinate the various steps of content production and organize collaboration, specialized software solutions are necessary. The goal is to minimize the number of solutions used to enable seamless interaction among the involved actors.

In the context of digitalization, Digital Asset Management systems have been established, and optimized for the provision of image, audio, and video content. However, these systems no longer meet the demands of an increasingly differentiated media landscape. Content 2.0 is in most cases a combination of digital assets with texts and meta-information, such as keywords, hashtags, or thematic assignments, for retrieving content in the company's inventory. These combinations gain exponential growth through progressive personalization and localization, further increasing complexity.

Content Operations systems like Scompler, Contentbird or ContentPaul take this a step further, enabling companies to capture, store, and recycle their complete content across various dimensions. Unlike solution providers like Adobe, which integrate numerous offerings for specific tasks into an integrated Content Supply Chain, Content Operations systems are natively built as Content Supply Chain solutions, allowing users to comprehensively map their content within them - from content and assets to the thematic and temporal planning of all communication measures.

Why does my company need a Content Supply Chain strategy?

There are many reasons for a Content Supply Chain strategy. These concern both the content strategy within the company and the organizational simplifications of the production process.

Control over communication and brand personality

Often, different channels within companies are also organizationally separated. There is the web team, the social media team, the newsletter team, and the team for tactical measures or campaigns. Due to the specific technical definitions of their channels, they often work in completely different systems, whether it be the website CMS, the social media suite, or the newsletter suite. Accordingly, they may align in overarching meetings about the content, but specific peculiarities often emerge in implementation, which can only be eradicated with a lot of manual effort.

A unified Content Supply Chain mapped with a central software solution makes all content visible to all participants, clearly shows the temporal and thematic planning, and enables the reuse of created content beyond organizational boundaries, ensuring consistent brand and company communication.

Securing strategic themes

Categorizing content across various dimensions allows a company to determine at any time that strategic themes are being addressed in the right scope, on the appropriate channels, and in a targeted manner, and that sufficient content is being developed for them. The fully mapped content inventory also allows for quick and comprehensive adjustments to existing content. Successful content is quickly identified and serves as a basis for further expanding thematic fields and extending the content footprint. All content can be analyzed, optimized, and supplemented according to search-engine-relevant keywords or social-media-relevant hashtags.

Control over content production

A well-established Content Supply Chain also brings organizational harmonization, transparently showing all participants what is pending in content production and which tasks are assigned to each individual. The Content Supply Chain allows all actors, from clients to the executing specialists, to have an overview of the planning, implementation, and publication of content at any time.

Rationalization and simplification of the production process

By using a centralized tool with integrated workflow solutions, the organization of participants is efficiently designed, and the production process is sustainably simplified. The systematic approval process ensures quality at all times, and the recording of each work step allows the identification of possible error sources. In total, the creation and provision of content is significantly accelerated, resulting in lower production costs or the possibility to shift resources from administrative tasks to higher-quality work such as conception and creation. Ultimately, production can be significantly scaled.

How do I implement the Content Supply Chain strategy in my company?

A specialized software solution is necessary to map and implement the various steps.

ContentPaul was developed for this purpose and offers a wide range of features that are continuously being expanded. The core functions include:

• Planning content measures
• Providing templates for structured content
• Flexible workflow tools for collaboration and automation
• Organizing teams in work areas
• Setting up approval processes
• Publishing content on various platforms
• Storing and categorizing content
• Analyzing the content inventory
• Storing digital assets

Advantages of a Systematic Content Supply Chain

• Structured planning: Defined processes and roles make content planning efficient and targeted. All participants know exactly which tasks are pending at what time and who is responsible for them.
• Efficient creation: Creative teams can focus on their core competencies, supported by specialized software solutions that optimize the entire creation process.
• Seamless collaboration: A central platform enables seamless collaboration between all actors. Misunderstandings and coordination problems are minimized as everyone works from the same information base.
• Automated workflows: Using workflow tools, repetitive tasks are automated, and approval processes are accelerated. This reduces administrative effort and allows teams to focus on strategic and creative work.
• Centralized management: All content and digital assets are managed in one central location. This facilitates the reuse of content and ensures that all materials are always up-to-date and consistent.
• Targeted distribution: The Content Supply Chain enables the targeted distribution of content across various channels, ensuring that the right content reaches the right audience at the right time.
• Comprehensive analysis: Continuous analysis of published content allows its effectiveness to be measured and optimized. This enables future content to be better aligned with the needs and interests of the target audience.

In summary, the content supply chain enables efficient and effective management of the entire content lifecycle. This allows companies to meet the increasing demand for content while simultaneously improving the quality and consistency of their communication.

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