The business case for Sitecore Content Hub

Sitecore Content Hub allows marketing teams to plan, find, create, and distribute all the content required for marketing campaigns.

Content Hub uses headless content delivery. Headless decouples content assets like images, words etc. By separating back-end content from the front-end presentation layer, seamless experiences can be delivered to all channels. This enables digital marketing teams to seamlessly deploy content at pace across a multitude of touchpoints.

Content Hub integrates five key elements of content delivery:

• Sitecore DAM (Digital Asset Management): Manage and store all your digital assets, preview content, and enforce digital rights management

• Sitecore MRM (Marketing Resource Management): Allows your team to collaborate, plan, and deliver marketing campaigns across different brands, countries, and channels

• Sitecore CMP (Content Marketing Platform): Manage your content strategy, and plan task streams across different stakeholders within the business

• Sitecore PCM (Product Content Management): Manage and maintain all product-related content and data

• Sitecore W2P (web to print): Generate printable product sheets for customers

Sitecore Content Hub is part of the Sitecore Composable DXP. By integrating it with your ecosystem you’ll be able to:

• Free up time for your team to work on the things they do best

• Take advantage of Sitecore personalisation by easily managing the content that drives it

• Use machine learning for simple content tagging

• Deliver omni-channel content marketing that delivers results

• Store all brand marketing assets in one system that fully integrates with Sitecore

• Be certain that content is always ready for all marketing campaigns, audiences, channels, and different countries

• Sync teams by collaborating across the entire content workflow

• Have a single source of truth for all product content across catalogues, ecommerce websites, apps, etc.

Content Hub allows your content team to:

1. Plan a content calendar

2. Produce text-based content

3. Collaborate with team members

4. Manage content versions and rights

5. Curate content for easy searching

6. Publish content and measure its effectiveness

1. Plan a content calendar

With Sitecore Content Hub, not only can you pull in existing content from other systems, but you can plan the creation of new content. You can do this by subject, persona, and campaign, or in any way you need for your business. You can also plot your content production dates and publication timelines across multiple channels on the calendar.

2. Produce text-based content

Sitecore Content Hub lets you ideate and author text-based content directly within the platform, allowing you to review and approve before publication. You can use your usual software, such as Word, Photoshop, or InDesign, or you can write your blog post, article, or social media post directly with some powerful interactive authoring tools.

3. Collaborate with team members

You get a full suite of collaboration tools and features allowing your team to:

• Share files

• Manage content versions

• Preview content

• Check in / check out files

• Collaboratively edit content in real time

• Add comments and annotations

• Proof and review content

• Manage workflows from start to finish

• Manage projects with Gantt-style planning, tasks, resource, and budget

• Share workspaces and user stories

• Utilise backlog and Kanban tools

4. Manage content versions and rights

When it comes to content, Sitecore Content Hub acts as your brand’s single source of truth. With version management and rights management when you look at any piece of content, your team can see:

• The original source file

• The file size

• File properties

• Who created the file

• When and how the file can be used

• When file usage needs to stop

5. Curate content for easy searching

Searching for content is simple. By adding metadata to each file and piece of content, administrators can make it available for quick discovery.  Best practice metadata management is vital in order for the content you’ve spent hours planning, reviewing, and creating, to be found, and used. Without good, accurate metadata, personalisation and localisation are virtually impossible.

6. Publish content and measure its effectiveness

If you’ve got a Sitecore website, then you know about Sitecore’s publication, personalisation, and analytics capabilities. You also get these features with Sitecore Content Hub which means your teams can:

• Search for and make use of all the content

• Publish it directly on your website or other channels

• Build a personalised, audience-specific experience that drives real results

Building the business case for Sitecore Content Hub

Before building a business case for Content Hub you should consider the following:

• Does it take your team a while to find the right content?

• Do you often find you have the same content in different systems?

• Do you suspect you’re not quite as fast to market as you could be?

• Do your team feel frustrated by all the different content systems they have to use?

If the answer to any or all of these questions is ‘yes’, then you have a very good reason to build a business case for getting Sitecore Content Hub implemented in your business.

Find out from your creative and marketing team how much of their time is spent looking for, downloading, and uploading digital content assets to different tools or systems. If, for example, they’re spending 1 day a week doing this, then the potential savings you could gain by implementing Sitecore Content Hub and having your team better spend their time creating new content for new campaigns could be significant.

Gather all the data you can on the pain points and challenges your creative and marketing colleagues face in their day-to-day dealings with content and systems. Then build your business case to help your business deliver:

• Improved marketing creativity

• Complete content asset visibility and traceability

• Productivity and faster time to market

• Happier and more responsive creative and marketing staff

Building a project team

Getting a new system off the ground is never easy, but as with all new projects, there are a few key people you need to identify and get on-board for your plans to succeed.

• Executive Sponsor: A senior member of staff with the authority to grant you the money for the project, and is fully bought-in to help push the project through to the end

• Content Hub Owner: The ultimate Content Hub champion, this person will manage the project day-to-day, look for continuous improvements, and will drive company-wide training and adoption.

• Content Hub Champions: The ultimate super-users, the ones who know Content Hub inside out. These are people who act as the first line of support for local teams or brands

• Technical Guru: You’ll need someone to own the configuration and integration of Content Hub with Sitecore Experience Platform or Sitecore Experience Commerce. This person will work closely with the Content Hub Owner – this might even be an expert Sitecore agency like Codehouse!

Your team should meet regularly to discuss project launch status, and the ongoing maintenance and optimisation of the Hub. When you eventually launch, report back to the business on its success. Be sure to track the success metrics / pain point improvements that you established in your business case from the start!

Success won’t be immediate but over time the benefits and ROI will become apparent. For example, easing content reuse, faster time to market, and giving time back to your teams to work on important initiatives.

With more businesses creating more content to service their diverse customer base, and with marketers having less time on their hands to deliver results, if your business has a Sitecore website, then there’s never been a better time to investigate getting Sitecore Content Hub.

Working with Codehouse

At Codehouse we have over 15 years of Sitecore integration experience. We’ve implemented integrations for many global businesses spanning a variety of industries. And we’re also trained in Sitecore Content Hub.

Whether you want to learn more about Sitecore Content Hub and what it could do for your business, or whether you’re ready to go ahead and you just need an implementation partner, get in touch.