Advice for unifying information

bgoldsmith94

Hi GGR community! Does anyone else feel like their org's information is a bit all over the place in terms of where it all lives? Looking for any recommendations on tools to help unify information, or best practices to avoid the mess.

Heather Wendt

Hi @bgoldsmith94 - great question as content management seems like one of those processes that is always being refined.

At my last role, we used Sharepoint as our 'single source of truth' for content. The problem was getting every department to understand what that meant, exactly. As the Director of Content, my goal was to produce very clear playbooks for content managment that would guide teams. This also meant working with the department leaders to make sure they understood the need and make sure the playbook would work with their existing processes.

We had 27 different teams, all of whom had their own material and content, so it was vital that we had a solid, adopted process or else we would have a mess of 'old', 'new', and 'who knows' on our hands.

We set up a monthly system of content overview so it wouldn't go too long between checking what was published versus what should have been.

I am sure there are some great tools to help with this, but we were unable to purchase any. Having strong guidelines and processes are going to be critical no matter what tool is used here.

Would love to hear what others are using!

ashley_martin

@bgoldsmith94 I think this is a great question. In the last two companies I was at we used Google Drive. However, I know that can get messy fast.  But having set folders and access could help.  In my company I work at now we just moved from G-Drive to Sharepoint.  And we also use confluence.  I think Confluence might be a better option because there are content owners and it doesn't allow everyone free range to change information.  Good luck on this...I know it is a big one to tackle.

Brian O'Keeffe

It has been a problem at many places I have worked. Identify all sources, define the single source of truth for CS, make that the CS and customer facing tool. 

Javed Maqsood

This is a very common problem.

A few thoughts - If you have a messy set of systems with data all over, think about setting some standards on data unification, without compromising the usability and integrity of the data. Then in a unified data world, CRM should be they key system for customer system of record. You would build other systems around it that would serve as domain expert for that business unit. For CS, you could choose a platform that integrates well with your CRM. Build your functionalities there. For PS, choose a system that integrates well with the CRM, then perform your specialized PS functions on that platform. 

These are functional systems. For knowledge systems, you can use confluence, egnyte etc. If you can make one your corporate standard, it becomes much, much easier.

Javed Maqsood