Keeping pace with today’s digital demands is harder than ever. Even with groundbreaking tools such as generative AI, businesses are overwhelmed by the need to build exciting experiences across new channels and formats – and in untapped regions worldwide. 

As Chief Executive Officer, I’ve seen firsthand how technical silos and manual processes can cause businesses to stumble in today’s fast-paced digital landscape. 

Overall, reimagining your content supply chain is the most effective way to streamline your marketing efforts and thrive as a digital brand. Here are seven good reasons why modernizing your content workflows couldn’t be more urgent. 

1. Content demands will rise 10x in the next two years. (Source: Deloitte)

Customers have raised the bar for digital content. Reports suggest content demands will spike by 10x — or even as high as 20x (IBM) — within the next two years.

That’s a lot of content! The issue isn’t just volume, either. Customers want high-value, personalized and cross-channel experiences. New technologies may also come into play, adding content complexity. 

In other words, brands need to get a handle on their content supply chains now, before they become even more complex. 

2. Enterprise content will increase to 155 exabytes by 2026, compared to 47 exabytes in 2021. (Source: IDC)

As demand grows, businesses will have more content assets to manage — up to 155 exabytes by next year. 

This challenge is even more acute when you factor in new content-rich formats (such as XR and 3D), as well as localized/translated assets for regional targeting.  

Plus, companies are already struggling to store and find previously made content, with 90% of professionals reporting they need easier access to content assets (IBM). 

Having a solid content supply chain in place ensures proper storage, meta tagging and search capabilities, so you can better safeguard and repurpose assets.  

3. 68% of creatives cite process bottlenecks as a top challenge to creating effective experiences. (Source: Adobe)

Creating excellent content is an intensely collaborative process. Without uniform and interconnected workflows, the intake-creation-feedback-approval cycle can become stilted. 

A modern content supply chain unifies your end-to-end process and automates key areas for an overall smoother lifecycle. 

4. 46% of business leaders are concerned about organizational silos, complete with complex stakeholders and competing agendas. (IBM) 

I’ve been leading the development of customer experiences for a decade — and seen it all. Along the way, I’ve learned that the more complex your content process is, the more you’ll benefit from a modern content supply chain. 

Whether you’re an enterprise with complex content workflows or a startup just laying down the groundwork, having a content supply chain that unifies your organization, stakeholders and assets means making workflows smarter. 

And the sooner, the better — especially if you’re using a legacy system and need a full overhaul to get your systems ready to support an integrated content supply chain. 

5. 78% of businesses want better on-time, on-budget performance by unifying assets, campaign data, and reporting. (IBM)

Businesses often struggle to meet their content KPIs — such as timeline, budget, analytics — due to a lack of clarity. A modern content supply chain brings together assets and data so your teams finally get end-to-end vision of the process. 

What’s more, unifying your content workflows improves key outcomes, such as brand alignment, consistency and more. 

6. 94% of marketing leaders believe that generative AI will free teams from tedious tasks. (IBM)

As your marketing teams handle greater content demands, they may look to generative AI to eliminate manual tasks from their workload. A whopping 94% of leaders believe AI will help automate certain areas, leading to better efficiency and cost savings. 

It’s now considered a best practice to incorporate AI into content supply chains – ideally directly into your management platform. 

For example, AI can not only help generate and personalize your content at scale, it can also automate content tagging and provide predictive analytics. Businesses are already seeing results, with automation reducing costs by 32% and boosting capacity by 27% (Deloitte). 

7. 49% of leaders are worried about orchestrating change management re: content supply chains. (IBM)

Modernizing your current content supply chain may involve new technologies, processes and roles for your teams. Getting your teams on board these changes is essential to success. 

As you update your content supply chain, take special care to plan for change management, including regular communication, training, evaluation and more. By incorporating all elements of management into a single platform, you can make this change seamless. 

What is a modern content supply chain, anyways?

Now that you understand the urgency of getting your content supply chain up to speed, let’s talk shop. In essence, a next-gen content supply chain covers the end-to-end process of content delivery. Key steps include: 

• Strategy: Defining content goals, audience targets and technologies, as well as briefs/assignments. 
• Creation: Writing content and creating relevant multimedia (images, graphics, videos, etc.).
• Review: Managing feedback and revisions with key stakeholders. 
• Distribution: Delivering tailored content across all channels. 
• Analysis: Assessing KPIs and optimization actions post-publication. 
• Storage: Managing assets for convenient repurposing and industry-standard governance.

Ideally, your content supply chain should be managed from a single, unified platform. At Conexio, we’re experts in the Adobe for Business suite (including Adobe GenStudio) and leverage its many modules to build custom workflows that encompass your full content needs. Plus, other tools/platforms may also be right for your specific business case, depending on your current tech stack. 

Level up your content supply chain in today’s digital era

Today’s top brands are only meeting their fast-growing content demands only 55% of the time (Adobe). By modernizing your content supply chain, you can bring this number up to 100%, and reap key advantages of a unified management process, including top metrics in: 

• Value creation
• Process optimization
• Content-to-activation rate
• Content ROI
• Customer engagement 
• … and more!

It’s never been more urgent to create a smart, customized content supply chain. At Conexio by Nearsure, we’re on the cutting-edge of building innovative customer experiences and the technologies behind them. Learn more about our expertise and how we help your brand thrive in today’s digital world.