At first glance, the title may be puzzling. While one can see the relationship between marketing, creativity and collaboration, where does document management come in?
At Document Advantage Corporation we use our own product, DocuVantage OnDemand, as a marketing tool. It is the front-end of our marketing process. Yes, it is an online document management system and yes, we use it for other purposes too. But in our marketing efforts, we work as a team. And as a team, there is a lot of collaboration and review of each other’s efforts.
Let’s use this blog post as an example.
After it was written, it was saved to DocuVantage OnDemand so others on the team could review it, comment and edit. There is only one copy, or version, of the post and it lives in DocuVantage. This one and only version was routed, edited and approved. Every time anyone on the team made changes to the document, the document was checked-out for editing and that revision was automatically stored in the system. This ensured that no one’s ideas were discarded or lost. Best of all, it also means that the team was always working with the correct and current version of the document.
So how exactly does this work?
First, a team member, or even an external vendor, creates a document and stores it in the system. Then, depending upon the type of document it is, it is routed to the correct person. If they need to edit the document is is checked-out and that revision is automatically stored. Users can add notes and messages within the system maintaining the conversations in one secure location, instead of in emails.
Once the draft is approved we move the status to final, enter the date to publish and then it is uploaded into HubSpot, another marketing tool, and published. At any time we can query DocuVantage for content by approved or published dates, text, keywords, author, collateral type or any other metadata.
Many of us can work virtually so whether we are traveling or working from home, we need a seamless way to easily access and collaborate on ideas while controlling and protecting the content that is created. Using DocuVantage OnDemand we are automatically connected to our work.
When one person inserts comments, reviews or approves a document, or completes an assigned task, the system notifies the next user. This iterative process ensures that we produce quality content in the most efficient manner. We are able to instantly search our repository for the content needed enabling us to re-use previously created collateral versus always beginning from scratch because no one could find the files needed.
However, it’s not just used for blog posts. Every piece of marketing content is stored in DocuVantage OnDemand.
Our content is always available to the team no matter what it is or where they are. We even manage tasks and brainstorm ideas within the system.
When was the last time you tried to find the correct logo file needed?
Having worked in other companies’ marketing departments I can tell you that without a document management system people constantly waste time looking for documents and previous marketing campaigns. Worse yet, the number of times people have lost documents, or duplicated efforts, is almost unbelievable. Document management eliminates all these issues.
How many steps and how much time is in your content creation, review and approval process?
If you removed the redundancy how much more content could you create for your audience?
