A capital producer understood the complexity of navigating international regulatory environments. Operating across nations in numerous fields of specialization, the organization had to uphold diverse and disparate ordinances, many of which have changed over time. Dedicated to providing high-quality services to their customers, the organization sought a solution that would help them better navigate revisions to compliance requirements and ensure adherence to rigorous standards of excellence.

Like many companies, the capital producer relied on manual processes to identify, track, and communicate regulations across the organization. Unfortunately, manual approaches exposed the organization to human error, a possibility that threatened its ability to remain compliant. Since regulatory adherence depends on numerous team members throughout the organization, there were various potential points of failure, many of which were unknown. Staff had to personally determine how to best share sensitive information between groups, which created inefficiencies and risked information exposure. When these processes were performed correctly, they frequently included periods of redundancy where staff members duplicated each other’s efforts, thus diminishing organizational productivity. 

The Solution

To facilitate the organization’s compliance with regulations and standards, EK provided the capital producer with a comprehensive content management strategy rooted in knowledge management (KM) best practices. EK’s recommendations were informed by 11 separate interviews, four system demos, and 28 business unit validation workshop participants. EK spoke to executive stakeholders, content owners, system owners, and process performers throughout the organization. Based on these conversations and demonstrations of the organization’s current processes, EK developed a content strategy at the intersection of content and knowledge management. Recommendations for the organization were divided into five separate workstreams, based upon EK’s proprietary content strategy for KM evaluation framework, and broken down into the strategic and business impact of each item.

Leveraging EK’s expertise in semantics and data-driven knowledge management, EK delivered a content strategy with an emphasis on the structure, metadata, and management requirements for key organizational content types. For example, contracts exist currently as unstructured content, and in this organization’s use case can continue to be managed as such. Formulas for certain products, however, require robust security and personalization to enable regulatory compliance across multiple countries. These complex requirements necessitated a recommendation for structured formula content managed in a Product Information Management System (PIMS). 

Additionally, EK created a technology solution approach that not only identified existing pain points in the organization but also mapped each challenge to a corresponding technology solution. EK prioritized technical approaches that could easily work within the capital producer’s current technical ecosystem, minimizing the cost of integrating these solutions. At the start of the engagement, the organization was leveraging SharePoint for all content management needs. EK’s technology recommendations included strategies to optimize the use of SharePoint for appropriate use cases as well as recommendations for specialized contract management systems for product lifecycle management and contract management.

Implementing technological and procedural changes within the capital producer will allow the organization to continue to grow globally while providing compliant and high-quality products for its consumers. EK’s proposed content management approach will enable staff to better create, protect, share, and utilize compliance content to ensure the seamless continuity of operations, establish secure intellectual property, and achieve operational efficiencies. 

The EK Difference

Our team worked closely with the organization’s stakeholders to produce a content management strategy that would help them achieve larger knowledge objectives. Establishing processes and avenues for information sharing will enable the organization to not only uphold international standards of compliance but also increase productivity over time by efficiently sharing information and preserving tacit knowledge.

This engagement operated within the intersection of content management and KM. EK leveraged its KM background to guide this content strategy approach and used KM best practices to conduct knowledge-gathering activities, including document review, stakeholder interviews, stakeholder workshops, and system demos. After reviewing this information, EK was able to use its proprietary current state and target state framework to conduct a content management analysis at the organization. 

EK additionally utilized an ontological data modeling approach to guide its advanced content management strategy. The capital producer was exclusively a document-based organization at the beginning of the engagement; with EK’s support, they identified a future-ready content strategy for prioritized content use cases. There are a variety of content management approaches that can be used to provide structure to digital materials. These methods can be viewed on a continuum from file-level management to semantically enriched component management. However, not all approaches are the right fit for every client. Our content strategy and operations experts were able to ascertain the right level of content management for various use cases at the organization and ultimately provide them with a detailed technical plan for how to implement the right content management strategy.