SEMT203 Headless Content: Wrapping Your Head and Hands Around Large Content Libraries
12:15 PM - 1:00 PM Thursday, October 24
Expo Hall: Emerging Tech Stage
Managing a large or growing library of learning content is an expensive and time-consuming exercise. The issue is compounded when the content creation or maintenance workflows contain many different stakeholders, the team’s timelines are at the mercy of upstream business units, and the learning material itself is delivered in different formats to different channels.
What lessons can L&D groups learn from other types of business that create, manage, and deliver large volumes of content? How can best practices from high performing, data-driven organizations be applied to learning assets that are diffuse and complex? And how do team leaders continue to maintain effective learning strategies while decreasing cost, improving compliance, and maintaining a responsive partnership with the wider business?
In this session we will review the impact on training organizations of the evolution in best practices for managing large volumes of critical business content. Concepts such as content strategy and information architecture continue to mature in other business areas such as operations, product documentation, customer support, and sales enablement, and these techniques and benefits are also being applied to training content development.
Our session will use examples of technology and architecture, how to categorize content and enable separation of content from storage and from delivery, and the downstream benefits of this “headless content management” practice. These benefits include more accurate resource planning/release management, better operational performance in compliance-heavy industries, additional revenue opportunities, and improved learning outcomes.
We will look at some of the key drivers that motivate training organizations to adopt these strategies, such as decreasing visibility and control as content volume increases, disparate skills and tools required for different learning modalites, and the (in)ability to innovate quickly or to be nimble with requests from clients or the business.
Finally, we will touch on some of the key change management concerns faced by training organizations that either prohibit improvement generally or cause project friction while change is underway. This session is designed for training organizations that do—or will—create and maintain a large library of content and are looking to improve management of this valuable asset. The examples used are from Author-it clients and are applicable to any organization.
In this session, you will learn:
- How to identify whether your organization would benefit from a headless content approach to content development
- How to separate training content from storage and from delivery
- Examples of this separation in current technology
- How to start content strategy conversations within wider organizational strategies and workflows
- How to identify the first high-value/low-risk projects to test
- How to identify critical change management issues for people, processes, and technology
Technologies discussed:
Content management, learning content management, Author-it Cloud, MS Word, xAPI, SCORM, QMS, PLM, HRIS
Target audience:
Designers, developers, managers, senior leaders (directors, VP, CLO, executive, etc.)
Matt Armstrong
Director, Business Development
Author-it Software Corporation
Matt Armstrong has been working with organizations in the USA, Asia, and Europe for almost two decades, helping them streamline content development practices to support operational improvements, revenue growth, and customer satisfaction. This includes projects for operations and support material, training content, technical communications, and sales enablement applications. Matt's current focus is using technology to rapidly innovate from existing content assets. Matt has successfully designed large multi-national projects with complex implementation, custom development (including vendor selection), change management, and target attainment. Matt has led business development activities that identified and entered new market categories, enabling organizations to grow revenue by more than 100%.