In the rapidly evolving landscape of content creation and management, automation is the underlying force that can drive efficiency, accuracy, and scalability across the entire content supply chain.
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Conversations between brands and marketers tend to find their way to the topic of Generative AI (GenAI). Leaders want to know how they can start using it to accelerate content production. Before diving in, leaders need to ensure their organization is GenAI-ready, meaning that they have established the foundational governance and workflows required for success. And one step in that process is automating the content supply chain.
Automation is a key driver of the Content [R]evolution that enables organizations to streamline their content supply chains, reduce costs, and improve efficiencies. A well-oiled, automated workflow creates the foundation for enhanced throughput and content velocity. And that can allow for effective GenAI integration.
This is particularly important as content demands balloon. In 2023, our research revealed that marketers saw a 54% year-over-year increase in the volume of content that they were expected to deliver, and evidence suggests that demand only continues to increase.
We found in this same research that organizations with a very high level of automation meet their content demands 24% more often than peers who use a low or moderate level of automation. And not only does automation help companies meet content demands, it also helps drive revenue. Brands incorporating a very high level of content automation also reported that their content marketing has a greater impact on annual revenue.
The role of automation in the content supply chain
Automation in content workflows can be likened to a physical supply chain. Just as automation drives efficiencies in manufacturing, it can also streamline content creation and distribution across a brand’s marketing ecosystem. It can help solve for manual inefficiencies, reducing errors and costs while supporting standardization and consistency.
Imagine a factory with three workers, each doing quality control on 10 items per minute. Now, picture increasing the number of items each worker must review in a minute by 10x or even 100x. It would be impossible for those three workers to manually review all items given the influx of volume. Similarly, there is no gain in producing more content if you cannot manage or review it all, since high-quality, engaging deliverables should be the primary goal of production. If your infrastructure isn’t effectively automated as your need for content grows, it won’t be able to feed your content supply chain effectively.
This is particularly true when it comes to investments like GenAI. Content at scale is only as good as the processes that are built to handle it. Without a strong process infrastructure, the potential benefits of powerful content accelerators like GenAI can be lost or wasted.
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An illustrative journey across the content lifecycle
A brand is looking to reduce manual inefficiencies in the creation of their content by leveraging automation at every stage of the content supply chain. Below is an illustration of what the automated end-to-end content lifecycle would look like.
A connected tech stack to enable automation
A connected tech stack is essential for enhancing the flow of data and collaboration across tools that help automate processes and scale personalization efficiently in a rapidly evolving content landscape. By making a tech stack cohesive, marketing teams can better ensure that all systems and applications within their organizations can communicate seamlessly, reducing siloes and enhancing real-time data sharing as a result.
This proactive collaboration allows for more agile and responsive content creation and management. By integrating tools and platforms to work together across the tech stack, organizations can create a unified environment that supports continuous improvement and innovation, which can ultimately drive the success of their content strategies.
Automation in action
Automation in the content supply chain can encompass a wide range of potential benefits and outputs across the content lifecycle. By first assessing creative teams’ current capabilities and then building a content workflow that suits them best, organizations are then ready to effectively optimize how they plan, create, and review content with automation. Automation can also enhance creative teams’ efficiency and creativity.
Examples of automation at work:
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Automation can help identify available resources and assign tasks. For example, when a new website landing page is requested, human creative resources can be automatically identified when they have available capacity and assigned the work via an automated email.
Automation can help implement marketing resource management (MRM), which is a collection of software tools that help ensure content versions are managed efficiently. Once content is created and the status is updated by the creator, a notification can be sent to the reviewer, including the content for review, a section for comments, and options to either approve for automatic publication or return to the creator for adjustments.
Automation can significantly reduce the burden of repetitive tasks. Content teams can use it to templatize legal language and other standardized modules to streamline the production of highly repeatable materials.
Automation can assist teams by preplanning content on an editorial calendar and generating new content ideas.
Automation can populate digital tags based on content type, upload date, and inputs from creators, then automatically transfer those tags from the MRM software to the content management system.
HOW TO GET STARTED WITH AUTOMATION
ESTABLISH: To begin automating the content supply chain, organizations should ensure that their operations have a strong foundational workflow process for the content lifecycle. Automating a broken process will not fix inefficiencies, but rather emphasize their existence. As a first step, define a content strategy and governance process and begin to map that to your existing MRM. (And, if needed, research possible changes or upgrades to your systems.)
AUTOMATE: Once you have a successful process in place, it’s time to reduce manual inefficiencies through marketing technology (MarTech) tools. This automation makes handoffs and traffic control of your content seamless and sets up your organization to handle a larger volume of content.
SCALE: After your workflows are automated and your business is ready to handle a higher volume of content, you are ready to scale. Introducing GenAI to support your creative team can accelerate content production, creating more time to drive strategic and responsive content planning and to fine-tune final content.
Automation is the backbone of the Content [R]evolution
Automation provides the foundation to integrate GenAI and transform content supply chains. By integrating automation, organizations can achieve greater efficiency, accuracy, and scalability in their content creation and management processes, ultimately helping them reach target audiences and drive demand for their brand.
About the author
Rachel Whitt leads the Content Strategy practice at Deloitte Digital and serves as a leader in content supply chain and GenAI. With a comprehensive and holistic approach, Rachel delivers content expertise across industries, bringing a passionate, entrepreneurial, and user-first perspective to help clients deliver impact and ROI.
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