Sitecore Content Hub: powering the Enterprise

Sitecore is the global leader in digital experience management software. Sitecore’s Content Hub offering is a unique, integrated solution that incorporates critical components required by modern marketing, communications, and product teams. It helps drive the Sitecore Experience (XP) platform with content to ensure improved personalisation and experiences.

Furthermore, Sitecore Content Hub can also help underpin content distribution platforms, such as Marketing Automation tools like Salesforce Marketing Cloud via the Sitecore Connect module.

Instead of managing multiple vendor tools to plan, manage, create, edit and publish varied types of content, Content Hub One facilitates a unified approach on a single platform with a shared data store and schema to provide maximum usability and efficiency.

What is Sitecore Content Hub?

1. Sitecore Digital Asset Management (DAM) is a solution for your team to store, manage, distribute and search for digital assets, including visuals, images, videos and text associated with products. Content storage resides at the heart of the Sitecore DAM solution. It manages elaborate digital asset management scenarios including; complex metadata, security, and Digital Rights Management (DRM), ensuring compliance and reducing risk. Other key features in Sitecore DAM include in-built filters, faceted and full-text search, and the ability to send DRM requests via an email template. Sitecore DAM capability allows you control of your assets with real-time smart crop and resize, and you have the batch option to upload, download, edit, and delete assets. You can preview images, videos and other file types in context, and make use of intelligent dashboards, reporting, and analytics.
2. Sitecore Content Marketing Platform (CMP) enables your team to monitor how your content is performing. It also allows you to plan, authorise, collaborate, and distribute various content types that drive your marketing strategy while enabling campaign management. The focus of this marketing personalisation is to effectively plan and work on content strategies while streamlining production by arranging simultaneous task streams of different content stakeholders. Furthermore, marketing personalisation integrates with DAM for centralised and approved assets in your content marketing play. Your team can optimise content usage and distribution to target audiences across all channels, increasing visibility and governance.
3. Sitecore Marketing Resource Management (MRM) supports and measures marketing operations, which helps manage and control marketing project phases. The workflow, review, and approval tools of Sitecore MRM allows you to plan, schedule, and organise content production more effectively. With MRM, you can manage, plan, control and execute specific elements of a marketing campaign, plan an annual marketing calendar, and create visual dashboards. Your colleagues can also collaborate in real-time with online proofing tools, visualised marketing plans, span channels, markets, brands with consistent metadata, and configure email and real-time auto-notifications.
4. Sitecore Product Content Management (PCM) stores, centralises and automates the management and maintenance of product information that your team uses for e-commerce web sites, print catalogues and ERP systems. The main focus is on customer-facing product information, like commercial descriptions. Sitecore PCM facilitates consistent product information; you can integrate your existing data and unify product text across various digital and print mediums for complete consistency. PCM also represents data from other systems within the Sitecore Content Hub so you have a single view with all of the information about one product.
5. Sitecore Web-to-Print (W2P) allows your team to convert approved content into on-brand print content, creating personalised documents for customers and visitors to print out. Your colleagues can quickly and easily access content as well as layout templates from the Content Hub, which ensures consistent and brand-approved collateral, thus enforcing brand guidelines. The key features include its user-friendly browser-based UI for quick collateral creation, ability to create and control personalised and centralised templates and combine layout templates with product content.

The Content Crisis

Effectively handling content management is critical due to the increasing importance, diversity and demand for content across numerous consumer channels. Therefore, the ability to publish content fast and cost-effectively must be a priority. However, with the proliferation of digital channels, content is often lacking quality and quantity.

Challenges with generating content arise when marketing departments use multiple tools, fragmented systems, convoluted processes, and have limited content performance visibility. This dysfunctional process inevitably filters down into other areas of your team where the content crisis can manifest in many ways. Your social media team, for example, may create additional content that is not consistent with your brand. Moreover, if you do not organise your content, your team will struggle to find assets in the right format and for the correct channel. Many of your colleagues may struggle to share information with all team members, customers, suppliers, and partners adequately. The content crisis partly results from a lack of integration between the content management system and fundamental business applications. Therefore, it is vital to streamline your processes to strategise, plan, create, approve, and publish content across all channels. A unified platform saves time as it ensures all of your resources are in one place. You can quickly locate them, see what other team members are doing with the content and understand which content is successful so you can improve future strategies.

To overcome the content crisis, your department needs to work in synergy by choosing a platform that supports your content management process. The Sitecore Content Hub can help you achieve this goal because it connects everything. The five components of the Sitecore Content Hub help your team deliver personalised digital experiences while managing your content lifecycle. It gives you the necessary tools to find a direction while providing enough flexibility to accommodate how you run your business.

When you view content creation and delivery as a process, structured like a supply chain, providing a technology platform to execute the procedure can effectively manage the content crisis. It allows your marketing department to manage operations, projects, and budgets with data and content governance. Furthermore, it helps your content marketers manage and distribute content across all channels, and your web editors can facilitate content creation and collaboration. It allows for visibility across the entire digital marketing workflow and provides feedback on content performance.

DAM vs MRM vs PCM

We marketers are flooded with acronyms and jargon to the point that they lose meaning. What is the difference between DAM, PCM, and MRM? Let's review them one by one:

Digital Asset Management (DAM) is a technology solution that gives you the freedom of sharing, storing, managing, and distributing content from a central hub. It enables you to gain increased value from digital assets which can be anything from images, videos, photographs or audio clips. The ability to store, organise, and distribute your digital assets in a central location helps you to connect your digital assets with your team, enabling them to find these assets faster. An effective DAM solution ensures your brand remains consistent throughout each campaign.

A DAM system has several advantages; however, four main benefits are:

• Storing information in a secure, centralised location.
• Managing content throughout its lifecycle - from creation to archiving.
• Distributing material with colleagues, third parties and suppliers, and having the option to publish this content.
• Measuring and understanding who uses your content.

A Product Content Management (PCM) system enables the collection, management, enrichment of product information, marketing data, and associated assets. PCM incorporates PIM functionality, but it is much more than that. The purpose of a PCM is collaboration and unified information across sales and e-commerce channels, depending on your requirements and goals. Doing this ensures optimal customer experiences through the delivery of accurate, up-to-date information.

Like the DAM system, a PCM component has several advantages; however, three main benefits include:

• Collecting and gathering product-related information from different data providers to provide a single window to all the information.
• Enriching and enhancing product descriptions.
• Enabling easy distribution with up-to-date product catalogues that allow for multiple partners and channels.
• Grouping assets from the DAM into product ranges and providing a logical structure for product management.

Marketing Resource Management (MRM) allows you to efficiently manage the back-end operations and processes that run the marketing campaigns. Assisting with workflow, as well as having the ability to plan, track and allocate marketing resources more efficiently, a MRM system ensures you direct your time into the right goals.

A MRM system addresses the following process, which yields many benefits:

• Planning and monitoring through comprehensive overviews of all marketing activities.
• Manageable workflow, with organisation and process alignment to make sure deliverables are on track.
• Collaboration is vital with centralising content, information, and processes.
• Managing people and resources to ensure timely delivery of tasks.

Sitecore DAM, MRM, and PCM

Sitecore Content Hub is not just DAM, or MRM, or PCM - it is all three. Your assets, data, and processes are synced and integrated into one platform, making it the Enterprise Marketer's dream tool by combining content management with commerce and customer insights.

With Sitecore DAM, you can quickly search for any marketing content or asset while storing and managing your assets. Moreover, with Sitecore PCM, different departments and locations can effectively manage product data that you need for your e-commerce website, as well as your product brochures. This helps you avoid typos and errors, support brands, and create transparency about the use of assets across various channels.

Sitecore MRM increases your colleagues' efficiency by providing the necessary tools to better plan, schedule, and organise content production. You gain control of marketing campaigns by planning your annual marketing calendar and organising your content production through streamlined processes.

With Sitecore Content Hub, you can streamline your asset management while simplifying operational marketing processes, allowing your marketing team to effectively and quickly plan, monitor, and deliver campaigns with rights-approved assets.

Creative Folks and Sitecore Content Hub

Sitecore Content Hub is a platform to deliver fundamental content process transformation that provides efficiency gains and better experiences for customers and suppliers. Creative Folks is uniquely positioned to guide organisations in the discovery, planning and implementation through our proven approach and 20+ years of experience in delivering successful content management solutions. Our technical consulting and integration services ensure that the data in business systems is augmented into the platform to add value and that the content reaches the distribution platforms with reduced steps. We focus on the outcomes and guide the change of management, so the business objectives are met on time and on budget.

Creative Folks is a Sitecore Gold Partner and the first authorised Content Hub Specialist in Australia.