From Chaos to Clarity: 5 Steps to Transform Your Content Operations and Governance

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In many cases, I have found myself in a situation where an organisation will come up with a statement like “We need to change our CMS; it’s crap”, which ultimately will lead to a discussion about the need to “fix our content actually”.

Last week, at a regular CMS Experts group meetup, Paola said, and I quote: “To fix content, you need to fix organisations.” I couldn’t agree more. Many organisations blame their CMS for content issues, but the real problem is content governance. Without structured processes, even the best technology fails.

Content is the lifeblood of any organisation, serving both internal and external users. You need content to find, onboard, engage, and retain your users/customers to achieve personalisation, marketing campaigns, sales, support, or anything else. You might survive with tactical splinter efforts for some time, but bigger organisations reach a critical mass, which at some point requires some governance to be put into place. If that’s not in place, many organisations start to look at the faults of technology (like their CMS) when, in reality, those faults even exist because the needed strategic planning for governance was not done to warrant scalability.

Organisations struggling with poor content often attempt to fix the symptoms, such as outdated content, inconsistent voice, and lack of engagement, or, God forbid, change their CMS without addressing the root cause: the way the organisation operates.

In my experience, if “content is failing,” most organisations need to revise their structure, roles, responsibilities, and workflows. Before we start talking about a Content CoE, we need to examine the current and target state of how content is authored, managed, orchestrated, and measured.

By examining these areas, one could move away from traditional siloed structures and towards content operations that create and deliver high-quality content at scale, which is easy to syndicate and use across channels. An organisation would need structured governance, clear roles, and a data-driven approach for this to happen.

Areas to address:

1. Content Authoring: How content is created, by whom, and with what kind of governance to support the organisation’s objectives and tone of voice.
2. Content Management: Where content lives, how it’s structured, how it’s accessed and what processes exist to ensure the quality of it.
3. Content Orchestration & Syndication: How content flows across systems, channels and personas, how it’s transformed and what kind of process exists to support effective placement.
4. Content Analytics: How content performance, value and traceability are measured and optimised

Each area mentioned requires dedicated processes, technology, and roles to be achieved, and all areas depend on each other to achieve a result.

Starting with fixing Content Authoring

Many organisations suffer from unstructured content authoring processes, usually due to organisational issues and how they are fundamentally structured. Content can come from parts of an organisation, and the more fragmented an organisation is, the more inconsistent the content and tone of voice will be. For example, in traditional organisations, Digital is a different vertical from Marketing, which might be a different vertical from Product. This creates different contexts, needs, requirements, and problems, and the bigger the organisation, the bigger the need for a coherent and consistent approach.

If we were to start with the basics, an organisation would need to establish dedicated roles that examine content as a product.

Dedicated Content Roles:

1. Content Strategist(s): who are defining voice, tone and structure
2. UX Writers: who craft microcopy for user journeys and digital experiences
3. Subject Matter Experts: who provide expertise, validation and, in some cases, original source material to be transformed and made fit for purpose
4. Content Editors & Reviewers: who maintain quality control

The above roles don’t have to be distinct, and based on the structure and size of an organisation, those are hats that can be worn by multiple people. If so, an appropriate content authoring framework must be created to determine the roles’ delineation and success criteria aligned with the bigger picture. For example, a Content Strategist can sometimes be a Content Editor, especially at the early stages of establishing the process. An SME could be a writer, which, of course, has to do with the area for which they are an SME.

If you are looking to explore the Content Authoring Experience in more depth, I suggest reading “Designing Content Authoring Experiences” by Greg Dunlap.

Content Authoring Governance & Workflows:

• Establish content workflows that guide authors through structured approvals; this will later help define requirements for technology and tools.
• Define clear roles and responsibilities within a content governance framework, which will help you start measuring the process’s effectiveness while taking care of the people.
• Implement a style guide and structured authoring approach to ensure consistency. A comprehensive guide can support the authors in building the proper habits and even be leveraged in automated quality control using AI later in the process.

Fixing Content Management: Moving Beyond the CMS

Content management is rarely about the Content Management System used to conduct it. It’s about effectively structuring content for omnichannel use and reuse.

A mature content organisation ensures content is stored, structured, and served efficiently. The CMS is not the solution to achieve this; it is merely the enabler to do it more effectively and scale it later.

Key considerations:

• Headless capabilities and Composable architecture enable decoupling content from presentation for true omnichannel distribution.
• Rich Content Taxonomy and metadata enable better searchability, filtering, and personalisation by using tagging mechanisms and structures that allow facets to be used across the board.
• Strong governance & access control capabilities, which allow generic and specific workflows to be created that are fit for purpose for the organisation and its ways of working
• Strong structured content models, which help an organisation design modular content which targets to reduce redundancy and improve syndication

By establishing the above requirements and strategy, you can define a framework that helps you audit your current CMS and its capabilities and decide whether the gaps can be filled or whether a new tech stack would help you solve the organisation’s problems.

Fixing Content Orchestration & Syndication: Content As A Service

Once content is authored and managed effectively, it must flow seamlessly across multiple channels, and a content lifecycle framework needs to be implemented. The bare minimum an organisation should implement:

• Syndication capabilities and frameworks in a CMS/DXP that are leveraged to distribute content across websites, mobile apps, marketing automation platforms and any third-party platforms and social media.
• API-first Content Delivery, which ensures channel-agnostic content delivery with the relevant CDN capabilities
• Dashboards and Reporting capabilities allow content managers to organise the content team(s), review the lifecycle process, and view the content syndication status.

Siloed content leads to fragmented experiences, and well-architected orchestration models ensure content is consistently delivered across all touchpoints and channels and finds the right audience at the right time.

Fixing Content Analytics and Measuring What Matters

Without analytics, an organisation operates in the dark, and it’s not about collecting data (which, in this day and age, most, if not all, organisations are doing religiously). Still, it’s about taking this data and turning it into insights and then using this insight for effective (or even automated!) decision-making. This can be achieved through:

• Content Effectiveness Metrics, like engagement rates, conversion, and performance metrics.
• Content Governance Metrics include content freshness and update frequency, authoring and publishing lifecycle metrics, and content redundancy and duplication metrics.
• Advanced analytics, like funnels and measurement plans, business KPIs and metrics.

Effective analytics is complicated enough, and implementing it in larger organisations becomes even more complicated. However, the suggestion is to start small and scale when appropriate.

Measuring Maturity and building a blueprint

Most non-mature organisations take a piecemeal approach of fragmented efforts to fix their perceived content issues. The most efficient way to achieve this and keep yourself honest about your progress is to define a maturity model based on capabilities you use as a baseline against measuring your organisation.

That by itself requires effort, but it’s crucial to have as it can ensure that a story is told to the C-Suite and that further executive support is given. Additionally, the culture needs to change, if it’s not already, to allow for “failures” and experiments to be conducted so that you can learn, adapt, and respond to change.

A capability map has multiple levels and addresses People, Processes, Tools, and technology. It can be an excellent vehicle for visualising an organisation’s maturity and showing a holistic view that covers business and technology.

The capability map can be used to change the maturity of an organisation and help create a Content Operating Model Blueprint, which includes:

• Organisation Design: Team Structures, Roles & Responsibilities
• Technology Stack: Tools to support said roles, content management and analytics
• Governance & Workflows: Designing a framework that ensures consistency and efficiency
• Measuring Framework: This focuses on operational and business KPIs that are aligned with the broader business objectives and OKRs of the organisation

Typically, the levels of Maturity of a capability or a model are the below:

1. Ad-hoc/Initial: No defined processes, unstructured content and operations.
2. Emerging/Managed: Basic governance but inconsistent content operations.
3. Operational/Defined: Defined workflows and governance frameworks in place.
4. Integrated/Quantitatively Managed: Fully structured content operations and advanced analytics.
5. Optimised: Data-driven, AI-enhanced content strategy and execution.

Finally, a context architecture diagram is usually helpful in showcasing the ownership and bounded contexts, touchpoints, and integrations between capabilities, departments, Lines of Business, Support teams, and sometimes individual roles.

But where do we start? 5 steps to kick-start your Content Operations

Multiple entry points exist in an organisation’s journey to achieve efficient content operations. I recommend starting from the blueprint, leading to a gap analysis.

1. Get a Service Designer ASAP

A service designer brings a holistic, user-centric approach to content operations. Their role is to map out how content flows within the organisation, identify friction points, and design efficient, scalable processes that align with business goals. Engaging a service designer early helps ensure content operations are structured around user needs rather than internal assumptions.

Who do you need: Authors, Marketing, Business SMEs

What they will produce: Service Bluprints, Journey Maps, Pain Points, Requirements, Value Framework

2. Define Your North Star and Blueprint to Get There

As previously mentioned, content operations can become a series of disconnected efforts without a clear vision. So, defining a long-term goal that aligns with the broader business objectives and creates a clear roadmap is essential. This blueprint should outline how content is created, managed, syndicated, and measured, ensuring that all decision-makers and businesses are aligned on priorities and expected outcomes.

Who do you need: Sponsors, Architects, Business Leaders

What they will produce: Value/Complexity matrix of initiatives, Initial Gap Analysis, Content Operations Maturity Model, Roadmap

3. Identify Role Gaps and Solve High-Priority Gaps

Many content problems stem from unclear roles and responsibilities or plain old lack of ownership, so conducting an audit to determine who is responsible for content strategy, governance, creation, and measurement is the immediate next step. Addressing role gaps by hiring new talent, redistributing responsibilities, and upskilling existing staff is important, and the necessary executive support needs to be won.

4. Implement Quick Wins

Transformation takes time, but quick wins can build momentum that can be leveraged to make strategic change. Identify and implement immediate improvements. Even small changes can deliver visible improvements and encourage buy-in from leadership so you can continue to build on previous wins. To create quick wins, focus first on high-impact issues defined by the Value/Complexity Matrix, such as content bottlenecks or governance failures.

5. Rinse and Repeat: Start with Analytics

Content operations should be iterative, not static. Once the initial framework is in place, continuously measure content performance and workflow efficiency. Use analytics transparently to refine processes, optimise content, and eliminate inefficiencies. You need a central place where you regularly revisit governance, workflows, and content models to ensure they evolve with your organisation’s needs and new capabilities coming to market.

If you want to read more about content operations, I recommend reading “Content Operations from Start to Scale: Perspectives from Industry Experts”, edited by Carlos Evia.

Where do you see the most significant gaps if you’re struggling with content governance and operations? Use the comments below to discuss.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are my own and do not necessarily reflect my employer’s official policy, position, or approach or any affiliated organisations. Affiliate links are part of the article and as an Amazon Associate, I earn commission from qualifying purchases.