AT&T: Connected content experience for all customers

A unified content strategy across all of AT&T helped them consistently create content that solves people problems, streamlined daily operations, reduced cost, and optimized the use of technology.

Project Objective
Create a flexible design system that allows content to be developed by different teams that is on strategy, on brand, and appears as a seamless, delightful experience to AT&T customers.

Approach
Create a repeatable process for content creation, make standardized templates for atomized content across all digital channels, and support it with accountable individuals to manage a content playbook the whole organization can follow.

The Work
A discovery exercise that involved content audits and interviewing stakeholders helped reveal the unique challenges AT&T was facing, along with its strengths. The consumer experience was mapped out to identify different places AT&T customers engaged with content.

We developed a detailed playbook for AT&T to utilize in order to standardize the creation of content. It included guidance, best practices and standards around:

• Auditing existing content
• Managing digital assets
• Documented process
• Roles and responsibilities
• Editorial guidelines
• Target audience and segmentation
• Strategic approach
• Personalization guidelines
• Internal deliverable templates for the content creation process
• Publishing and distributing content
• Measurement and optimization
• Governance

To roll this new approach out to the organization, a collaborative workshop was planned and designed in order to share thinking with key stakeholders while helping them feel ownership and accountability with the new process.

Deliverables

• Stakeholder Interviews
• Content Audit
• Unified Content Strategy
• Content Playbook
• Client Workshop

Allstate: Transforming how knowledge is managed

A major operational shift in how Allstate manages knowledge for its internal stakeholders and agents affected tens of thousands of documents, over a dozen departments, and set the stage for a new center of excellence in the organization.

Project Objective
Develop a new operating model to bring together the decentralized knowledge in the organization.

Strategy
Implement a hybrid operating model that lets decentralized experts create their own content to a common set of standards, monitored by a center of excellence, and housed in a centralized content management system.

The Work
A thorough exploratory was performed, interviewing stakeholders and reviewing examples of knowledge documents over the course of several weeks. Given Allstate’s unique culture, constraints, and objectives, we aligned to a hybrid model that leveraged key aspects of decentralization and centralization.

We developed a detailed plan for migrating knowledge from several legacy systems into a standardized, single source of truth. A new taxonomy was created for this system which would house tens of thousands of documents at any given moment.  A repeatable migration method would guide decisions about how to migrate, update, and archive in compliance with stringent insurance requirements.

Once the content was migrated, a governance system to manage the knowledge was needed. In-depth workflows were created for each type of content, showing each step of the process for multiple types of content. Decision trees and approvals were mapped out from the initial request for content updates to the moment it was published in the system.

To manage the massive migration and management effort, Allstate’s current org chart and staffing was evaluated. We identified the necessary roles and responsibilities, the effort required, and mapped that to actual personnel within Allstate. A proposal to reorganize staff, shift responsibilities, and tap into temporary resources for the surge needed during migration was outlined.

A two year roadmap and change management plan was created in collaboration with Allstate in order to set this massive project and cultural shift up for success. An initial communication plan and key checkpoints were established in order to ensure new learnings and challenges were quickly incorporated or addressed as the plan progressed.

Deliverables

• Stakeholder Interviews
• Content Audit
• Governance Strategy
• Content Architecture
• Process Design
• Roles and Responsibilities
• Change Management Plan

Chicago Booth School of Business: Empowering students to use resources

After reorganizing the wealth of student resources on Chicago Booth Career Services, student satisfaction and engagement with tools and content increased.

Project Objective
Develop a new taxonomy for the Chicago Booth Career Services intranet.

Approach
Identify categories and nomenclature that allow students to accomplish key tasks.

The Work
The first project phase involved discovery – auditing the content to reveal over fifty potential topics and stakeholder interviews to understand content constraints, challenges, goals, and the most common tasks students seek to accomplish.

Next, we performed a card sorting exercise to brainstorm different approaches to reorganizing the content in a meaningful way for students. Navigation labels were created to help gain initial alignment on nomenclature.

These cards were reviewed with a focus group in a clickable document that prompted actual students to attempt to accomplish a task using only the category and topic names as a guide.

After learning what resonated and what didn’t, we updated our nomenclature and organization. This final taxonomy was implemented on the intranet within the existing design templates and website. Some content rewrites were kicked off as there were several opportunities for content consolidation identified.

Deliverables

• Stakeholder Interviews
• Card Sort
• Taxonomy & Nomenclature Matrix
• Focus Group Testing