How much marketing collateral does your firm create? Many firms face ever-increasing consumer demands to create personalized content addressing regions, markets, and audiences or personas. Unfortunately, many content creation and management tools are siloed from project management tools, resulting in huge inefficiences.

Firms demand a transformed, orchestrated marketing content creation process that delivers quick results and cost savings with with no increase in headcount.

Adobe Workfront, working with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), is such a solution.

Why content demands are increasing

Why are content demands increasing? Because consumers need additional content tailored to their needs.

In 2022, Adobe released the results of a study of 1,115 consumers in the United States. Among the many findings from this study were revelations about the type of content that consumers want.

• Consumers want personalized content. They “are expecting — even demanding — that experiences are personalized to their own individual needs and interests.”
• Consumers demand this personalization across all channels. “Consumers also want seamless shopping experiences that span the entire buying journey, across all channels, that cater to where they are and how they prefer to shop.”

What does this mean for content creators? It means that a company’s content may need to be personalized in a myriad of ways. Assume that:

• A company has 1,000 products.
• Each of the 1,000 products requires 25 assets, resulting in a total of 25,000 assets.
• Each of the assets must be distributed in 25 global regions or markets, resulting in 375,000 pieces of custom targeted content.
• Within each region or market, there are at least 10 audiences or personas that need individual attention. This dictates 3,750,000 pieces of custom personalized content.

Siloed, non-orchestrated content creation can’t meet the demand

How do content creators create potentially millions of pieces of content today? In some cases, with great difficulty because the content creators must employ different silos to perform the work.

• The content creators employ a variety of tools to create and manage the content, often including both Adobe and non-Adobe tools.
• Project management requires a separate set of tools such as Microsoft Project, Jira, Asana, or others. Even if these tools advertise themselves as “integrated” with the content creation and management tools, the integration is not seamless.
• Because of the required coordination, content creators don’t get to spend a lot of time creating. In fact, 70% of a content creator’s time is spent managing projects, managing review or request cycles, sitting in meetings, and bogged down in administrative work and ad hoc requests. That leaves only 30% of a content creator’s time for productive work.

How can creators spend more time creating, collaborate to ensure the content is accurate, and meet ever-increasing demands for personalized content?

Adobe Workfront orchestration maximizes content velocity

Content creators need a solution that forms a seamless part of their content creation applications—a solution with powerful collaboration capabilties that relieve content creators of time-wasting administrative chores.

Adobe Workfront is a project management and work orchestration solution. It empowers teams to set team goals, connect projects and individual tasks to these goals, and adjust project plans as needed. In addition, Adobe Workfront provides three important benefits to marketing teams:

• Ensure asset brand compliance. Teams ensure that assets comply with corporate brand standards by employing Adobe Workfront’s collaboration capabilities to allow team members to comment, request changes, and deliver approvals-all with a complete audit record documenting all changes.
• Remove silos preventing completion of work. Adobe Workfront forms a seamless part of your existing Adobe tools, such as Adobe Creative Cloud and AEM. You can achieve all of Adobe Workfront’s benefits without leaving your existing Adobe applications.
• Maximize content velocity. Adobe Workfront’s automations, templates, real-time reports, and Agile boards let content creators work more quickly with less overhead, supporting consumer needs for potentially millions of pieces of content.

Adobe Workfront delivers real-world results. The wireless carrier T-Mobile was challenged in 2018-2020 to create content for multiple brands (T-Mobile for Business, Metro by T-Mobile, Home Internet, Assurance Wireless) support an ever-growing number of subscribers, and digest the corporate acquisition of Sprint. As detailed in Adobe’s case study on T-Mobile, implementing Adobe Workfront alone saved the company more than $2 million while increasing the marketing team’s productivity by 47%—all without an increase in headcount.

How Adobe Workfront works with AEM

The method of integrating Workfront with AEM Assets depending upon whether you are using AEM 6.5 or AEM as a Cloud Service. The latter includes several features for native Workfront-AEM Assets integration:

• Quickly set up the integration inside of Workfront.
• Automatically create folders linked between Workfront and AEM.
• Easily sync metadata for existing linked assets.
• Automatically update project metadata when it’s changed in Workfront.
• Smoothly connect several AEM Assets repositories to one Workfront environment, or several Workfront environments to one AEM Assets repository across Organization IDs.

If you take advantage of the Workfront for AEM enhanced connector, you can perform the following once the integration is complete:

• Auto-create linked AEM folders in Workfront and organize the folders based on Workfront Portfolios, Programs, and Projects.
• Synchronize Workfront project metadata with linked AEM folders.
• AEM metadata updates with new versions.
• Set Workfront object statuses based on configurable conditions using AEM workflows.
• Publish assets to AEM publish environment or to Brand Portal.

The enhanced connector must be deployed and configured by either Adobe Professional Services or by certified partners to be eligible for support from Adobe.

Once AEM Assets and Workfront are integrated, the power of the integration extends to other AEM components. You can manage content fragments (undesigned text and images) and experience fragments (designed web content) using the linked project metadata, ensuring that changes to the workflow are reflected in the content you create. You can propagate and customize the revised fragments for any delivery channel or screen size, quickly ensuring that your consumers receive the correct information quickly.

The end result of these integrations? Content velocity that addresses consumer demands.

How can you transform your content production with Adobe Workfront?

Adobe Workfront is a vital tool that enhances your ability to rapidly deliver consistent omnichannel experiences with AEM.

To ensure that Adobe will provide support for your Workfront-AEM integration, and to ensure that you get the best possible results from the integration, you need to plan and implement the work with an Adobe Certified Partner.

KBWEB Consult is a boutique technology consulting firm specializing in the implementation and delivery of AEC technologies, such as AEM Sites and AEM Assets. You can learn more about me and about KBWEB Consult on our About Us page.

Are you already taking advantage of KBWEB Consult’s services? If not, isn’t it time to see what we offer? Schedule a free, confidential 30-minute consultation to learn what KBWEB Consult can (and cannot) do for you. Perhaps we can suggest some ideas about how Adobe Workfront can best work for your company’s needs and improve your company’s effectiveness.

You can book a 30-minute confidential meeting on our Let’s Talk page.