Estimate your ROI for content operations with our calculator

Communicating the value of content operations can be complicated. We created an ROI calculator to help. 

Maybe your writers are spending the majority of their time manually formatting content for different outputs. Or, perhaps your organization wants to start selling into new regions but can’t localize content fast enough. We could run through many other scenarios, but no matter what situation you’re facing, you may recognize that your organization needs to change how content is produced. 

Change requires funding. To get funding, you need to build your unique business case for content operations. 

What are content operations? 

Content operations are the processes by which your company creates, manages, and distributes content. This includes all content types such as product, learning and training, marketing, knowledge base/support, and more.  

Why is it hard to communicate the value of content operations? 

Much like an iceberg, the true scope of your content operations lies below the surface. But if you look at the value that content provides to your organization, you have a much better chance of building a compelling business case. 

Content (and subsequently content operations) adds value to these five business needs: 

1. Compliance
2. Cost avoidance
3. Revenue growth
4. Competitive advantage
5. Branding

To communicate the value of your content operations, consider how your organization’s content—and therefore your content operations—factor into these business needs. 

Evaluating content value within five business needs

Many organizations have compliance requirements that inform what content you create and how you create it. In those cases, meeting compliance requirements is a baseline factor for staying in business. 

On the other hand, branding, competitive advantage, and revenue growth, drive big-picture business change. These are areas where organizations eventually see massive growth opportunities after they invest in their content operations. However, when building a business case, these factors are very hard to quantify. 

Cost avoidance, therefore, is a factor that lets you estimate numbers and quantify business value.

This brings us to our content operations ROI calculator. By focusing on efficiency and cost avoidance, it estimates savings in two areas: how much you save by: 

1. Reducing/eliminating manual formatting, which is a cost that’s often hidden in staff salaries. 
2. Enabling content reuse, especially when you’re localizing content for new languages and regions. 

Though it’s helpful for your business case that these elements are numerically quantifiable, it’s important to keep in mind that content operations offer much more value than simply “cutting costs.” To articulate the full value, check out these resources:

• The business case for content operations
• Content accounting: Calculating value of content in the enterprise
• Building the business case for content operations (webinar), featuring special guest Mark Kelley
  

Are you ready to estimate your ROI for content operations? Try our content operations ROI calculator below!