leading brokerage’s investments in content strategy...3 intranet content strategy architecture...

Industries: Financial Services

Intranet Content Strategy + Architecture

Leading Brokerage’s Investments in Content StrategyPay Off for Financial Advisors

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Intranet Content Strategy + ArchitectureLeading Brokerage’s Investments in Content Strategy Pay Off for Financial Advisors

The Client

Handling trillions of dollars in client assets through its thousands of

financial advisors, our client is one of the world’s leading providers of global corporate

and investment banking services. Many corporations, financial institutions, governments,

mutual funds, hedge funds, pensions, and endowments rely on this brokerage for

mission-critical investments across dozens of countries.

The brokerage’s financial advisors need the right information at

the right time to help choose the right products and services for clients. Since financial

advisors heavily rely on the company’s intranet for important information, the internal

content strategy must work to promptly answer questions and provide accurate, up-to-

date information.

Like any of its financial investments, when the brokerage realized that it needed to

reimagine its financial advisor content, they wanted a sure dividend. As a result, they

reached out to Content Science. In this case study, learn about our client’s situation, our

solution, and the results.

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The Situation

With such a wide variety of complex content needed to help financial

advisors do their jobs every day, the company grew concerned when they heard that

overall Intranet satisfaction was low. Specifically, financial advisors complained that the

Intranet was hard to use, full of irrelevant content, and lacking good search functionality.

Complicating the problem, content creators and managers struggled with the high

volume of existing pages and collateral pieces that made it cumbersome to find content

and manage timely updates. Complex navigation and site architecture made it difficult

to remove content, a lack of governance resulted in inconsistent content styles and

missing metadata for financial advisor search results, and platform limitations crippled

additional attempts to govern content.

As a result, the company needed to:

• Redesign and consolidate existing collateral and content into a new financial advisor intranet experience.

• Simplify content, improve the user experience, and streamline the ongoing maintenance of the intranet.

•Reduce costs associated with producing and maintaining content across systems. In other words, the company wanted a return on its content investment, so this renowned brokerage turned to us for high-end consulting.

In other words, the company wanted a return on its content investment, so this renowned brokerage turned to us for high-end consulting.

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Our Solution

Our consulting engagement began by talking extensively with the company’s core team.

We mutually decided that strategic analysis, recommendations, and initial guidance

were in order. Our goal? To develop a strategy, plan, and roadmap to help the company

implement a content strategy that helped reimagine the content, architecture, and

governance of their Intranet.

To start, we conducted an extensive analysis.

Analysis

Focusing on the brokerage’s user goals, content, and ecosystem, we conducted a

thorough set of analyses.

Content DiscoveryWe talked to people across product teams, product marketing, marketing, compliance,

legal, technology, and advisory leadership to understand the current landscape, future

vision, and related priorities.

Field ResearchWe took the time to understand user needs and expectations related to the financial

advisor intranet experience.

Editorial ResearchWe also understood stakeholder needs and expectations related to the financial advisor

intranet publishing experience, including current state publishing procedures, important

impacting factors, and opportunities for improvement.

Content Audits and Analysis We performed a scientific sampling and analysis of pages and documents to understand

the extent of content issues, gaps, and redundancies.

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Our Solution continued

Structure + Ecosystem Analysis We examined where the company has content and how it works together as

a system.

Template AnalysisWe looked into how the company organizes, presents, and surfaces content to users.

Through our analysis, we discovered that much of the web content and

documents were geared for the wrong audience, difficult for financial advisors to

find, voluminous, repetitive, and lacking actionable next steps. The more quantitative

technical analyses confirmed the qualitative findings from talking to users.

Our overall analysis helped the company better understand opportunities of creating a more searchable, actionable, and relevant experience for financial advisors through applying content strategy and architecture best practices.

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Recommendations + Roadmap

As a consultancy, we rarely offer analysis and recommendations at the same time.

Strategic recommendations take deep thought. We don’t simply spout off best practices

as recommendations. Why? Because a collection of best practices is not a strategy. This

leading brokerage came to us for advice on how to make content work for their unique

situation, not a cookie-cutter solution.

So, we synthesized our research and analysis into a series of strategic

recommendations and a clear roadmap. We took time to consider different possibilities,

develop recommendations, and think through the impact of each recommendation on

the others. We also planned how to implement the recommendations realistically.

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The result was a set of recommendations that complemented each other and

worked together as a roadmap. Our recommendations turned the company’s challenges

into actionable opportunities. A clear roadmap outlined a plan to execute upon this

strategy, and emphasized getting the basics right.

Specifically, our recommendations addressed how to change the company’s approach

to its intranet content. Our recommendations built upon the company’s business goals,

user needs, and operational capabilities.

Our strategic recommendations included:

• Refocusing content on known and anticipated financial advisor needs. That meant removing content that didn’t address common questions and tasks, filling in content gaps, and providing more access to related and contextual content.

• Rewriting and reformatting content using best practices and principles. We know and apply proven ways of making content work thanks to our study of disciplines and fields such as content strategy, technical communication, journalism, cognitive psychology, and more.

• Establishing more effective content governance. We made recommendations concerning cross-team oversight, editorial responsibilities, and editorial style.

• Revamping the content publishing process. We suggested ways for the company to create reusable templates, use automation to make workflow and metadata tagging more efficient, and better evaluate content.

After we agreed on the strategy, the company sought our help with implementing it.

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Concepts, Messages, Writing, + ToolsWe created several concepts and tools to assist with implementing our

recommendations that included:

• A site map covering the reimagined, consolidated new intranet experience.

• A taxonomy and metadata library to assist with tagging and search.

• Wireframes of product detail publishing forms that illustrated how content would be captured, approved, and published.

• A content matrix identifying source material and content gaps for creating, reusing, and eliminating content on the new Intranet site.

These tools helped the company’s team create structure around content development and gave stakeholders and content creators some ways of better maintaining their content over time.

Wireframe

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The Results

After we helped develop and implement the company’s content recommendations, the

team gained some results immediately.

First, the stakeholders felt they had a clear plan and direction.

Second, the company felt they had a system in place to make content work harder

and publishing more reliable and efficient. That meant:

•Creating content once and publishing everywhere that financial advisors need the content.

•Automating workflow to support the publishing process.

•Automating the content lifecycle to trigger archiving, removing, or updating content.

Third, our recommendations impacted people’s focus on planning, creating, and

gatekeeping the right content for financial advisors. That meant:

• Clearer roles and responsibilities for everyone involved with content.

• Content creators understanding and following an appropriate publishing process.

• Better data and insight into whether content is effective for financial advisors, and how to improve it.

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The Results continued

By making content publishing more efficient, consistent, and less prone to risk, our work has advanced key business goals.

Better Client Service + EfficiencyThe right content is available more reliably and consistently where financial advisorsneed

it. Not only does the content continue to meet compliance, but the new approach also

minimizes the risk of financial advisors using outdated content or becoming confused by

redundant content.

Stronger CommunicationContent planners, creators, and publishers have better feedback about financial advisor

needs and content, which in turn helps them offer the right content for financial

advisors.

Reduced CostsThe new approach minimizes the risk of investing in content that financial advisors

don’t need or that is similar to content another team creates. The process for planning,

creating, and publishing content is more efficient, saves time and, as a result, costs. And

maintenance resources are not wasted on content that is no longer relevant.

In short, our recommendations continue to help the brokerage’s financial advisors

perform their jobs more efficiently by accessing intranet content informed by our

content strategy. The company continues to expect improved employee productivity

and satisfaction, and its content stakeholders are now aligned around a common set of

strategic recommendations and best practices. They clearly see the content possibilities

that await.

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Why Partner with Us

If you’re experiencing problems with your website and think content

might be the cause, we can help you find out for sure, then advise you on how to solve

those problems.

Partnering with this leading brokerage was a success because

it transformed not only their intranet content but also the team and processes that

produce it.

If you work with us to invest in your content, you could gain benefits

such as

An analytical—not knee-jerk—approach to improving content.

A credible outside perspective that overcomes internal resistance to change.

A clear understanding of your current content situation, including the challenges and opportunities.

More efficient internal processes for producing searchable, understandable,

and actionable content.

Fewer customer service calls.

A framework for evaluating content performance.

A strategy that works immediately and for the long haul.

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About Content ScienceWe’re an award-winning content intelligence and strategy firm headquartered in Atlanta, GA.

We have advised the world’s leading brands, nonprofits, startups, and government agencies on making content make a difference to their goals.

Why Content Science? Because content is, indeed, a science. We study what works well—and what doesn’t—so you can make informed decisions about your content.

Our services include consulting, research, and training. Our focus areas include content analysis, content strategy, content marketing, user experience, and content systems.

Our subscription products include the innovative software ContentWRX, which takes the hassle out of understanding whether your content is effective. We also created the online magazine and training platform Content Science Review to empower you and your team with research, tools, and insights.

Our CEO is Colleen Jones, author of the popular content book Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content and frequent speaker.

Want to make your content work for your organization? We can help. Contact us to find out how. content-science.com/about/contact-us

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