Professional Documents
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CS Content Operations Detailed Findings2
CS Content Operations Detailed Findings2
OPERATIONS
BENCHMARK STUDY
Introduction | Page 3
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 2
S T U DY G OA L S , M E T H O D S , + B E N E F I T S
Interviews | 8 participants
• Providing context from experience with
content operations
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Lack of Content
Maturity
Even though digital business requires a sophisticated content approach,
most companies lack truly mature content operations.
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study
L A C K O F C O N T E N T M AT U R I T Y
Which Of The Following Best Describes Your Organization's Content Maturity Level Now?
What Content Maturity Level Does Your Organization Strive To Achieve Or Maintain?
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 5
L A C K O F C O N T E N T M AT U R I T Y
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 6
L A C K O F C O N T E N T M AT U R I T Y
% of Enterprises Reporting
While this trends were consistent
across all companies, there were
some unique differences between
enterprise organizations and smaller
companies within our study. While
enterprises are more likely to report a
higher level of Content Maturity, they
are also much more likely to report
that the technology at their
organization is insufficient to meet
the demands of their strategy.
51.6%
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 7
L A C K O F C O N T E N T M AT U R I T Y
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L A C K O F C O N T E N T M AT U R I T Y
Level 1 Level 2
As you can see, teams with a task-oriented
Level 3
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 9
“The managers I respected most are
those who had the best people skills
and cared about me. They showed they
cared about me and valued what I did,
and that's passed down to my own
management style.”
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 11
LACK OF CONTENT VISION
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 12
LACK OF CONTENT VISION
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 13
LACK OF CONTENT VISION
15%
73% 18.25% 54.75%
12%
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 14
LACK OF CONTENT VISION
No Content Vision
The majority of teams who reported just slight success were led by task-oriented
leaders, with 86% of these leaders not communicating a content vision and the other
14% not receiving buy-in from their team.
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“As a leader, if you're not establishing a
vision, whoever is following you won't
know what they're going toward. I think
if you're a leader without a vision, it's
almost impossible to be effective. At
that point, you're just a manager of
people or process, but there's no real
leading.”
—Laura Jarrell, CFA Institute
LACK OF CONTENT VISION
Have both clear communication of content vision and buy-in from the team
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 17
LACK OF CONTENT VISION
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 18
Common Barriers to
Success
In general, teams that report the highest levels of success are the ones who
are best positioned to achieve it by their organizations’ processes, structure,
and culture.
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 19
COMMON BARRIERS TO SUCCESS
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 20
COMMON BARRIERS TO SUCCESS
The most common barrier to success reported by
Companies Rated Communication Between
Silos As Very Important Or Critical To Success companies is a lack of communication across silos
within their organization. In What Makes Content
Teams Thrive?, our previous study on the factors
driving the most successful content teams
published in 2015, 85% of companies indicated that
85% communication across silos was very important or
critical to team success. Yet today, 64.5% of
companies still state this is an issue. 50.6% of
From our previous study “What Makes Content Teams Thrive?” companies also state that red tape and bureaucracy
hinder their content operations.
Organizations Reporting
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 21
COMMON BARRIERS TO SUCCESS
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 22
COMMON BARRIERS TO SUCCESS
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 23
COMMON BARRIERS TO SUCCESS
Teams That Don’t Know Their Budget Teams that did not know their
budget faced higher levels of red
tape and bureaucracy (77.8% of
companies) and were more likely
to report a lack of communication
across silos (85.2%). These teams
largely had no direct evaluation of
content (55.6%) and reported
Face significant
levels of red
Lack of No direct
Very limited
having very limited customer data
communication evaluation of
tape and customer data
bureaucracy
across silos content (33.3%).
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 24
Content Measurement
and Intelligence
A wealth of research shows that content decisions informed by data are the
most effective.
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25
CONTENT MEASUREMENT AND INTELLIGENCE
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CONTENT MEASUREMENT AND INTELLIGENCE
Content Creators: Does Your Organization Regularly Evaluate Content Impact And Success?
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 27
CONTENT MEASUREMENT AND INTELLIGENCE
How Does Your Team Measure Success? Of content leaders and teams who measure or
evaluate content effectiveness and success, the
vast majority go beyond measuring volume or
quality. They measure impact on customer
behavior, perception, and sentiment with a
combination of analytics and voice of
customer (about content) data. Compared to
our previous report, the emphasis in evaluation
has become more data-focused. There is less
importance placed on the achievement of
milestones and meeting deadlines, with more
focus on customer behavior analytics and
voice of customer. The percentage of content
teams working to evaluate their Content ROI,
however, remains very low.
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 30
CONTENT MEASUREMENT AND INTELLIGENCE
When looking at reasons for this success, these teams are better positioned to succeed
across the board:
My team has clear goals and understands how to achieve them. 86.2% 38%
My team is empowered to take risks and has permission to fail. 72.4% 22%
Internal and external stakeholders trust my team’s leadership and members. 86.2% 44%
*In our previous study, 72% of respondents indicated that possessing the tools, technology, resources, and organizational support to succeed
was very important or critical to team success.
**In our previous study, 86% of respondents said that employing effective decision-making and problem-solving processes was very
important or critical to team success.
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 31
A d v a n c e d Te c h n o l o g i c a l
Approaches
There are currently no shortage of options for content development and
management, with simple document-focused platforms sharing the landscape
with advanced technologies that allow high levels of customization and rules-
based delivery. The technologies used by our participants ranged from high-end
enterprise content management platforms like Hyland OnBase or OpenText
Suite, to collaborative development tools like GitHub and Sharepoint, to self-
developed custom solutions.
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A D VA N C E D T E C H N O L O G I C A L A P P R O A C H E S
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A D VA N C E D T E C H N O L O G I C A L A P P R O A C H E S
Does Your Organization Seek To Provide A Personalized Content Experience For Each User?
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A D VA N C E D T E C H N O L O G I C A L A P P R O A C H E S
35
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study
“AI and machine learning is the only way
we’re going to be able to deal with the
fact that the demand for content is
increasing exponentially. We’re going to
have to automate the production of
certain aspects of content.”
—Noel McDonagh, Dell EMC
Content-Focused
Tra i n i n g
Despite content-related roles and skills increasing in importance to
digital business, content teams and leaders have little access to content-
specific training.
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C O N T E N T- F O C U S E D T R A I N I N G
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C O N T E N T- F O C U S E D T R A I N I N G
42%
75% 71%
8%
Teams with training are more likely 71% of respondents in our previous Teams with content-focused training
to practice effective content study on content operations said were also more than 5x as likely to
standards and planning procedures effective content standards and report clear communication across
planning procedures was very silos within their organization.
important or critical to success.
Teams With Content-Specific Training
Teams Without No Content-Specific Training
Teams with training are more likely to practice effective content standards and planning
procedures (79%), which 71% of respondents in our previous study on content
operations said was very important or critical to success. Teams with content-focused
training were also more than 5x as likely to report clear communication across silos within
their organization.
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 40
C O N T E N T- F O C U S E D T R A I N I N G
What Style Or Format Of Training Program Would You Be Most Interested In?
Online courses and webinars appeal to over half of respondents interested in content-
specific training, and certification programs are also a very popular option.
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 41
“A d o p t i o n o f t e c h n o l o g y i s o f t e n a
barrier to success, and that ties into
education and training. People are
so busy with day-to-day tasks that
they don’t have enough resources
l e f t o v e r t o s a y, “ O k a y, l e t ' s l o o k a t
where we can improve and learn new
software." It's not that the
technology doesn't exist – it's that
i t ' s n o t b e i n g u s e d .”
—Tina Kister, Teladoc
Other Factors
Contributing to Success
Teams reporting very or extremely high levels of content success share quite
a few things in common.
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O T H E R FAC T O R S C O N T R I B U T I N G T O S U C C E S S
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O T H E R FAC T O R S C O N T R I B U T I N G T O S U C C E S S
Highly successful content teams also reported that the following factors contributed
to their success:
77.2% of highly successful teams indicated they have clear goals and
understand how to achieve them.
72.8%
“The campaigns we enjoy working on are the ones where we participate
My organization values equally in concepting and contributing ideas, then are given freedom to
my content team’s
opinions execute in the way we see best. Where our marketing partners behave as
equals aiming at the same goals to create the best content for our audiences,
and not as managers or bosses giving us orders.”
—Survey Respondent
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“The role of content has changed, and getting
people to understand that change and the
required skillsets and getting them to buy into it
is key. We’re not a technical writing community
anymore – it’s really information. We’re not all
writing text – animation, video, interactivity, data
analytics, they’re all key to moving us forward
and keeping us relevant.”
—Noel McDonagh, Dell EMC
CONTENT LEADERSHIP +
OPERATIONS
BENCHMARK STUDY
Your Opportunity
YO U R O P P O R T U N I T Y
Contact us at enterprise@content-science.com
for a complimentary consultation.
What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 48
About Content Science
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closes the content gap in digital transformation.
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ABOUT CONTENT SCIENCE
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W H AT I S C O N T E N T S C I E N C E ?
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W H AT I S C O N T E N T S C I E N C E ?
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What Makes Content Operations Successful? | Content Leadership + Operations Benchmark Study 52