Organizations who were reluctant to move digital felt the pain from this and most of them eventually moved online too. The pandemic has been an accelerator, fueling digital business and digitization. It has also fueled both digital consumption and expectations. Organizations’ customers are working, surfing, and are being entertained online. Demands are high, and so are their expectations. The sheer amount of content is becoming a challenge.
We used to adapt and adjust based on the needs of the channel or the systems, fueling these channels. Though this has been a way to solve the channel requirements, a growing amount of content variations lived within the organizations’ ecosystem of suppliers, departments, and system storages.
We organically and slowly introduced organizational complexities and procedures to meet content requirements throughout the organizations. But in these times of accelerated digitization and increasing content consumption, we need to reshape how we deliver omnichannel content across our channels and platforms.
A logical step would be to introduce centralized storage of all content that can be used in more than one channel. But that approach has some important downsides. First of all, not all content is created equal. As content is often developed from the perspective of a channel, it won’t automatically be suitable for other channels. Secondly, history tells us that centralization is a mirage. Channel systems are there because they’re good at providing an editorial environment for managing content in the context of a specific channel. A single system that can be the best at everything does not exist.