Templafy survey finds almost half of organisations have no-one responsible for secure, system-wide content alignment despite relying on content for business success
New research from Templafy, the next-gen document generation platform pioneering the content enablement space, shows that British enterprises are suffering from a lack of content infrastructure, putting their business success and reputation at constant risk. Templafy’s Content Is Everything global research report was conducted in the US, UK, Australia and Germany surveying 2,296 full-time employees at enterprise-level companies. The report aims to determine the structural and financial consequences enterprises face when they lack automated, integrated technology solutions that support and connect content throughout employee workflows.
The role of content in the digital HQ
Content is – and always has been – a critical business asset. But in an increasingly digital-first work environment, now known as the “digital HQ,” content is a business’s direct bridge to its stakeholders, particularly customers and employees. In fact, 68% of UK survey respondents agreed that content is the most important driver of business success, while 87% said content is essential to their organisation’s financial wellbeing.
As the role of content evolves, so does the definition of content itself. While the majority of UK respondents agreed they consider marketing materials and legal and financial documents to be content, many also agreed that productivity assets (48%) and classification and metadata (27%) are now considered business content as well. That means businesses need to be thinking about and managing content more holistically across their organisation – everything from emails to pitch decks and content-components comprising them like metadata must be governed in some way, otherwise, they may face ramifications throughout the entire business.
Enterprises’ content creation problem
Managing content has proven to be no small feat: despite acknowledging content’s integral role in business success, companies are not prioritising content infrastructure. Nearly half (41%) of UK respondents said their company struggles with content standardisation and added that when creating new materials they are not confident they are using the latest company-approved assets. This lack of consistency and integrity across all business content is called “content anarchy,” and it’s a multimillion pound problem.
Poor document governance and a lack of content infrastructure cause enterprises to lose thousands of employee hours per year. Templafy’s report found the average employee spends 15 hours per week creating content, and almost half of UK employees (49%) said their company’s process for reviewing and approving content delays other work. To put that into context, at a 1,000 person company, this is 15,000 hours lost per week and over 700,000 hours lost per year. This wasted time leads to lost revenue, with staggering 88% of UK employees citing that company revenue would increase if content bottlenecks were eliminated.
To streamline content in the enterprise and eliminate bottlenecks, organisations need to ensure that contextualized content is being actively served to employees within the places they already work so it can actively support business processes. That way business documents consist of the right pieces of content like the latest logo or legal disclaimer. Without tech solutions to do this, organizations risk jeopardising brand reputation, violating security requirements and losing out on content-associated revenue.
Security is on the line
Content anarchy and a lack of document governance pose significant security risks for today’s enterprises. 92% of UK respondents who work for companies that deal with sensitive client information indicated that having inconsistent, incorrect, or unreliable content shared externally can be detrimental to their business and cause security risks. While 88% of UK respondents acknowledged security requirements are increasing and believe upholding strict requirements is more important than ever before, the scary truth is that over half of UK respondents also confessed their company has mistakenly shared a sensitive document with an unauthorised party. So, despite massive investments in security to prevent outside breaches, poor document governance remains a huge cause for security concerns.
Why is this? Nearly one third (31%) claim their company lacks secure, system-wide alignment when it comes to content, and 28% said their company urgently needs a better system to support mandatory document sensitivity classification.
“Content is mission-critical to the success of any company, no matter the industry, size or location,” said Christian Lund, Co-Founder at Templafy. “Historically, static content solutions like enterprise content management (ECM) tools were enough for a company to get by, but in today’s digital HQ it’s simply not possible for users to navigate the exponentially growing amount of enterprise content and data anymore. More content is being created across a plethora of applications than ever before, and that content needs to drive value rather than introduce risk. Enterprises need a solution for these pain points, and we’re confident that content enablement technology is the key.”
Additional key findings of the report include:
- Metadata is introducing meta risk: 54% of UK respondents agreed a lack of control when it comes to metadata and classification poses a significant financial risk, while half of UK respondents said the same for brand risk. Additional ramifications include damage to business (59%), reputation (78%), customer trust (74%), legal ramifications (70%), loss of revenue (52%), and loss of employee trust (53%).
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- Inaccurate content is proliferating through the sales org, hurting revenue: 88% of UK respondents said inaccurate or outdated information in content can harm sales, yet a whopping 97% said their team has pulled outdated information into sales pitches and content, including 59% who admit to using Google to search for company images or logos.
- Poor document governance hinders efficient, accurate brand scaling: 52% of UK respondents indicated their company struggles with backward compatibility, i.e. making sure that materials and templates in use are routinely updated with the latest information. This means that when enterprises update their branding, it is extremely difficult to ensure those updates are reflected across all existing collateral.
- Automation is the answer: During the next 12 months, over half of UK respondents said their organisation will prioritise document creation automation; 28% said their organisation will prioritise content creation automation; and 25% said their organisation will prioritise consolidation of software.
To learn more about the Content Is Everything report and access the global findings, click here.
