A complete guide to architecting your content

10 Reasons to Architect Your Content

A Case Study

Compliance auditors and industry experts agree that poor documentation is a leading cause of non-compliance. When auditors cannot easily find and understand the information they need, the consequences include:

• Longer, more costly audit processes
• Fines
• Shutdowns
• Litigation

The underlying issue is often lack of compliance documentation. If your content is weak, your business runs the risk of failing its next audit. 

I worked with a small IT company who struggled through its annual audits. The biggest issue was that auditors had a difficult time finding information. The process was stressful and reflected poorly on the company, even though the company was doing great work and collaborated with high-profile customers.

Using tried-and-true content strategies, I unified their company documentation and redesigned their intranet site—staying resolute about building and maintaining their file structure. Note: The company’s file structure and file-naming conventions were key to being able to find documents and information and improving their audit scores.

During the next year’s audit, the auditors were astonished with the transformation and the progress that was made. Everything was easy to find. The auditors felt like they were dealing with an entirely new company.

The company passed their audit with flying colors. 🎉

Content architecture can help to establish standards with documentation, procedures, processes, and more. This architecture, in turn, will improve the productivity of your daily operational tasks and activities. As a result, risks of failing internal audits or compliance checks are mitigated.

Here are 10 reasons why content architecture is so important to the success of your business:

1. Your content looks and sounds more professional and modern.
2. Your auditor will give you glowing reviews during your internal compliance audit.
3. You’re able to find what you’re looking for because it’s where it should be.
4. You’re no longer embarrassed to send out your company literature.
5. Your employees are more productive and engaging more frequently.
6. Your information is getting read; people are contacting you.
7. Your content is a powerful communication tool.
8. You win a higher percentage of contracts and projects.
9. You see a significant drop in duplicated effort.
10. You can clearly explain and demonstrate what you do.

Contentiful's content management strategy focuses on developing SOPs that help employees stay on track and stick to new, more efficient methods.

Invest In Your Content

It’s easy to create content. Everyone is doing “it” right now as you’re reading this. However, effective and adaptive content requires architecting. And content architecture involves visioning, planning, and strategic implementation. Not everyone can do that!

So, make it a priority to invest in your content and architect before you develop or design. 📥 Download a branded PDF copy of this top 10 list.