Sitecore Content Hub™: Beyond DAM — Part Two

In part one of this two-part interview series, we explored the benefits of content consolidation and the importance of creating a single source of truth for your assets. We also discussed how Sitecore Content Hub (Content Hub) can enhance the delivery of multibrand, multisite and multilingual digital experiences for enterprise organizations. In part two of this interview series, we talk about how Content Hub compares to traditional digital asset management (DAM) solutions, improves operational efficiencies and integrates with external systems.

Makenzie Barket

How does Sitecore Content Hub compare to other DAM solutions in the marketplace?

Chandra Sekaran

Traditional DAM systems were solely created for asset management. Marketers would create content somewhere else and then manually upload it to the DAM system. The DAM was a place where you manage the digital assets, not where you create or deliver them. But a DAM only being an asset management tool creates a lot of problems and inefficiencies. Content Hub gives you a place where you can easily store, manage, create and deliver assets to overcome these issues.

In addition, Content Hub allows you to extend existing data models by adding new metadata fields and taxonomies, and it enables you to create new models. This allows businesses to capture metadata associated with raw imagery and augment products coming from product information management (PIM) systems.

Sitecore Content Hub also enforces a standard workflow for teams to follow and ensures brand compliance. This is especially important for large or complex organizations where different teams use and manage their own tools and processes, which can cause brand inconsistency.

Content Hub’s features and AI capabilities, embedded in a single platform, enable teams to be more creative, produce content at a faster pace and manage the entire content creation process from start to finish efficiently. Additionally, Content Hub’s AI makes it easy for teams to repurpose existing content. All of this makes it simpler to deliver engaging and relevant content that meets customer demand.

MB

Great. Can you think of any other differentiators?

CS

In the digital world, customers use a plethora of tools and technologies. Businesses need to deliver personalized content to customers across these channels. Sitecore Content Hub enables omnichannel delivery and ensures a consistent online presence and seamless customer experience to help you win and retain customers.

MB

How can Content Hub improve operational efficiencies within marketing departments?

CS

Content Hub helps marketing teams take charge of the content lifecycle. It can also accelerate time-to-market. It offers a seamless process to streamline content planning, production, publication and reporting. Content Hub provides tools to manage budgets and track and control every phase of a marketing project. Additionally, it enables you to create different workflows associated with those project phases to give you even more control. 

Content Hub also increases productivity and improves operational efficiency with its notification features. If you have an article that will require several approvals, you don't want users to have to be logged into Content Hub to see if the content is ready for them to review. You need the system to notify users when the content is ready for them to approve, and Content Hub does this. The same thing applies to assets and products that have their own workflows. Companies find it difficult to manually manage those assets. In those situations, an asset is created, someone downloads the asset and they email it to a different user to work on. The next user will approve it and email the asset to another person. This method of asset management leads to version control issues, lost files and delays because all of these tasks are taking place in emails or other tools, not the place where content is created and managed.

MB

Is there anything you can share about Content Hub’s ability to integrate with composable platforms, tools and architectures?

CS

Yes, absolutely. In composable software-as-a-service (SaaS) architecture, integrations play a major role, as monolithic applications are broken into smaller composable applications. This means there is a greater need to have these composable systems interoperate with each other to exchange data.

Content Hub is built with APIs from the ground up. These powerful APIs enable it to ingest data from upstream systems, like PIM solutions and master data management (MDM) tools, and then manage that data inside and deliver it to downstream applications, like content management systems (CMS) and social platforms. 

It also provides a web-client software development kit (SDK) and JavaScript SDK for those who want to leverage content in their front-end applications or for users that are familiar with .Net programming.

MB

What connectors are available?

CS

Content Hub has several prebuilt connectors, like the Sitecore DXP Connector, which you can use with Sitecore CMS to reference assets and marketing content straight out of Content Hub. 

There is a Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connector that enables you to reference assets in Content Hub right in your email marketing campaigns in Salesforce. In addition, Creative Cloud Connector connects the Adobe creative suite to bring assets into Content Hub for creative automation. The Digital Apps Connector connects Content Hub to a variety of third-party apps, like Microsoft 365 and Google Cloud.

Sitecore Content Hub also offers Experience Edge, which provides a content delivery network (CDN) to cache and deliver content faster to end users. Experience Edge is perfect for brands that don't want to build any integrations or consume content in a headless fashion.

On top of that, EPAM has built various connectors that can be leveraged to maximize Content Hub’s effectiveness.

To learn more about EPAM’s expertise in Sitecore Content Hub or to view a demo, visit: www.epam.com/sitecore-content-hub.