Sitecore Content Hub is a content lifecycle management platform, combining digital asset management (DAM) with powerful planning, creative, and collaboration tools. It establishes a Content Supply Chain model, connecting back office systems to downstream channels where content is delivered through a defined content creation process. Content Hub provides a single “source of truth,” minimizing duplication and unapproved versioning.
Key benefits include:
- Shifting content out of siloed channels
- Integrating content landscape into a clearly defined process
- Streamlining content search and curation
- Modularizing content for flexible publication
SHIFT CONTENT OUT OF SILOED CHANNELS TO REDUCE RISK AND PROMOTE COLLABORATION
As organizations grow in both size and complexity, their need for high-value content is exploding. Content delivery channels continue to proliferate, and content is often authored and managed within those channels. Parallel work streams and overlapping efforts develop over time, resulting in content duplication and inconsistencies that can damage brand integrity and cost companies money.
Sitecore Content Hub solves much of this problem by shifting content creation out of its silos and into a centralized repository, making it accessible to all the producers who feed your various delivery channels. It becomes a single source of truth for content creation and versioning, as well as permissions and approval workflows, which reduces the risk of inconsistency and increases opportunities for collaboration across teams. Content production and revisions become more visible and trackable in the system. Teams across channels can thereby more easily and quickly find the most recent and approved content, effectively decreasing duplicative effort and opening the way for communication among project managers, creators, and publishers.
INTEGRATE YOUR CONTENT LANDSCAPE INTO A CLEARLY DEFINED PROCESS
Content Hub treats your enterprise content landscape as a “Content Supply Chain,” connecting back office technologies to downstream channels through a clearly defined process:
- Define & Plan
- Author & Collaborate
- Manage & Curate
- Publish & Measure
By breaking content creation into a few, high-level and highly adaptable steps, the process becomes more tangible and more easily managed.
First, Content Hub aggregates bits of raw content from ERP and PLM systems, OEM suppliers, and technical documentation from your DMS as the building blocks for future content. Teams can then plan their projects across channels using time-based retro planning, tasks, and resource and budget management. File sharing and browser previews, as well as real time collaborative editing help make authoring and updating content easy. Content and visual assets are curated leveraging a robust taxonomy and flexible metadata and powerful workflows help manage revision and approval processes. Content Hub publishes to a variety of curated and on-demand channels – CMS, Social, CRM, POS, apps, and commerce and retail platforms. The published content can then be measured for effectiveness and further personalized if Content Hub is integrated with Sitecore Experience Platform’s powerful analytics capabilities.
In fact, unlike other content marketing technologies, Sitecore Content Hub accounts for and incorporates both the planning and creation processes into its overall solution, making it a true content lifecycle platform. An optional integration with Adobe Illustrator brings visual asset creation into the Sitecore UI, while another connects the core DAM system with Sitecore’s Marketing Resource Management (MRM) platform to streamline project management and enhance marketing team collaboration with project management templates, planning and budgeting tools, and even Agile collaboration tools, such as shared workspaces, user stories, backlog management, and Kanban boards.
STREAMLINE CONTENT SEARCH AND CURATION WITH METADATA AND MANAGED COLLECTIONS
Content Hub uses robust taxonomy and metadata to provide structure for content curation and search. In addition to basic metadata tagging, Content Hub also provides flexible tools for curating collections, such as seasonal or promotion-based galleries, that provide context for individual pieces of content or highlight especially important or relevant content.
MODULARIZE CONTENT FOR FLEXIBLE PUBLICATION ACROSS CHANNELS
Finally, Sitecore Content Hub’s process approach to content management meets the needs of both curated and demand channels. With its robust metadata and content tagging capabilities, content creators can easily modularize content, allowing downstream teams to streamline approval processes for discreet bits of content that can be made available for curated channels or published directly to selected channels without additional validation.
Sitecore Content Hub is the future of content management, with the potential to connect the entire content lifecycle using powerful integrations between back office and delivery channels, creative and planning processes, and review and publication workflows. It simplifies curation and search and supports content modularization – which can also help streamline the approval and publication process. When integrated with Sitecore Experience Platform, it can flexibly manage revision and personalization cycles as content creators learn which content is the most effective.
If you want to learn more about content hubs, their benefits, and how to prepare for installing one, check out our Guide to Content Hub Software.
