Single Source Publishing - Regain Command Over Content

It could be argued that the advent of digital turned most companies into publishers but actually, digital platforms and output channels have simply multiplied the number of places and opportunities brands have to talk to their customers and market their products, highlighting the need for centralized and controlled content management.

A company’s assets have been producing data and related content since the moment of their inception, and at some point during this lifecycle, these assets will have required some kind of cataloguing, even if that was merely for internal purposes or a one off external communication.

This scenario will be familiar to most enterprises. However big or small they are, their information resources and requirements will no doubt have grown organically over time. And it’s very unlikely that they have done so neatly.

There will be product information siloed in the supply chain databases. More, almost identical data will be stored in merchandising. Marketing will have multiple systems holding duplicate details to feed web, mobile, social, direct mail, customer services… and the list goes on.

The strains of locating, managing, and maintaining such a huge range of resources spread across the width and breadth of an organization are huge and usually extremely costly. Staff are constantly retracing their steps by requesting information that has already been shared multiple times before, procurement pays over and over again for the licenses of multiple versions of the same image, and data storage increases exponentially as companies seek somewhere to store all of this stuff.

When looked at like that, a centralized point of truth for all assets and data doesn’t seem like a bad idea. In fact, it begins to sound like an imperative idea the more that you consider it. Not only would a single storage source for all content be a Godsend in terms of eradicating the issues and their effects listed above, but also in that it allows for efficient and optimized content production through centralized automation, workflows and collaboration between departments.

“… ‘single source publishing’, the idea of centralizing the content publication process to sit across typical business silos such as marketing, sales and services so that content assets are visible and accessible to all with a ‘single version of truth’.” - from The Power of Single Source Publishing, censhare Whitepaper

There is only one problem – in order to truly make the switch to a centralized content approach and, moreover, to get the most out of it, your organization must be willing to transform into one which sees content as a valuable business commodity, as a business asset which is key to reaching its ROI goals. In other words, the business and its employees must become publishers in both mind and act. After all, they already are.

But the argument for single source publishing isn’t simply theoretical. The Power of Single Source Publishing, a censhare whitepaper, shares several examples from companies of all sizes which demonstrate the value of accepting your brand-come-publisher destiny and equipping yourself accordingly.

Take Jaguar Land Rover, for example. By using a centralized content system, the company’s inhouse agency saved £65m over the past 6 years and sped up content production by 68%. On the other end of the scale, 200 person holiday company, Newmarket Holidays organized thousands of images that are now tagged and searchable for the wide range of inspirational content the brand produces as well as stores 8,000 images for 400 of its tours in a way that would have proved unmanageable in the past.

There are many ways in which an organization can take advantage of a centralized content system and the world of process, optimization and efficiency possibilities which it opens up, and it depends on what kind of organization you are as to which of these advantages will be of most benefit to you and of most value to your customers . But all in all, there is very little to lose and a whole lot to gain by exploring the power of single source publishing.