Replatforming your content operations isn’t just about swapping systems. In this episode, Alan Pringle and Bill Swallow share what organizations must consider to successfully replatform. From navigating technical debt, system integration, and the people caught in the middle, they discuss change management, technical debt, and why your exit strategy should be part of the plan from day one.

Software isn’t forever. Systems come, systems go, they get improved. Your requirements are ever changing with the content that you need to manage. Not thinking about your next jump is really to your detriment.

— Bill Swallow

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Transcript:

Disclaimer: This is a machine-generated transcript with edits.

Introduction with ambient background music

Christine Cuellar: From Scriptorium, this is Content Operations, a show that delivers industry-leading insights for global organizations.

Bill Swallow: In the end, you have a unified experience so that people aren’t relearning how to engage with your content in every context you produce it.

Sarah O’Keefe: Change is perceived as being risky; you have to convince me that making the change is less risky than not making the change.

Alan Pringle: And at some point, you are going to have tools, technology, and processes that no longer support your needs, so if you think about that ahead of time, you’re going to be much better off.

End of introduction

Alan Pringle: Hey everybody, I am Alan Pringle, and today I want to talk with Bill Swallow about content operations and replatforming. Hey Bill, how are you?

Bill Swallow: Good, how are you doing?

AP: Good. So I guess we should start this by saying the reason why we want to talk about replatforming is really we have done a few replatforming projects. We’ve had some prospects reach out who are interested in doing it. So I guess we need to explain what it is and some of the things you have to think about when you’re going through the process. So if you would not mind, would you define what we mean by replatforming content operations?

BS: Sure. So generally when I talk about replatforming, it’s in the context of a company having one system in place and maybe it’s time has come and they need to move into a new one. So it’s the entire process of determining what type of system you’re going to need, what your requirements are for that and being able to lift everything up from the old system that you want to carry forward and put it in the new system, configuring it and what have you to get it to work going forward.

AP: So we’re not talking about using a whole new technology or a whole new platform. It’s shifting to a similar platform for some of the reasons that you just mentioned. And I think that’s another thing. There are several reasons why a company might want to do this. And I know our clients have had various reasons for doing this. Let’s focus on those for a little bit. One of them, I know you kind of already touched on this. Sometimes you just outgrow a system. It just… that’s how it is. So let’s start with that kind of, it’s not sustainable anymore because you’re bigger, too big now for what that system can do.

BS: Sure, either you’ve outgrown it or it’s approaching end-of-life or it’s just not meeting the needs that you had five or ten years ago when you bought the system. So there are a lot of different factors there, but basically it comes down to what are your requirements and is it meeting your requirements?

AP: Right.

BS: Are you able to get the things done that you need to do given the fact that, you know, the world is quite different now than it was five or 10 years ago.

AP: Exactly, and there’s another angle here too that I think we need to briefly mention is that sometimes you’re gonna have two sets of requirements because two companies can merge or there can be an acquisition and then all of a sudden you’ve got two content operations platforms that are pretty much doing the same exact thing and I guarantee you the IT department is not gonna have that.

BS: Absolutely.

AP: So there could be a situation where you’ve got two, and one of those is going to go away. And in some cases, and we should talk about this too, it’s not necessarily about picking one. It’s not uncommon to go to a whole other one. So there is quote, “No loser.” That’s also an option.

BS: That’s very common because usually in the case of a merger, you have two established groups with two established systems that may be starting to age out on both sides. And it doesn’t make sense to spend the time and the effort to move one group into the other system when that system is probably going to be replaced in a few years anyway.

AP: Yep. So basically, the circumstances of the merger have provided a perfect opportunity to do something that’s painful. Replatforming is not magical. There’s still going to be technical hiccups and everything else. But at least it’s not as painful because you’re both moving out of systems that maybe aren’t optimal into something that will basically treat your content creators and all the people managing content much better because it’s going to support their needs better.

BS: Or at least everyone goes through the same pain together of learning a new system. It’s team building.

AP: And so you bond through shared pain experiences. Exactly. All right. Yeah. huh. We’ll go with that. We will go with that. There’s some other aspects here too that are kind of related to that. And that are the idea that things, because things are getting maybe rickety, that things are getting too expensive to maintain. You keep making these little tweaks and changes in things that become less and less repeatable. And that adds up. That’s time and money that you have invested.

BS: It certainly does. Aside from the hard costs of licensing and just the general time to use the system, produce things, you do have, after you’ve used the system for so long, you’ve got your workarounds built in and they may not be a best practice and the workaround may solve the problem on its face, but you’re doing a lot of things that you really shouldn’t be doing with that, you know, with that workaround in place. You really should be doing something that’s a little bit more streamlined. And, you know, as you’re bringing new people in and new groups in, whether it’s a merger or whether it’s just another department that realizes that, Hey, you know, they have this, you know, shiny system over here. Why don’t we start using it too? If you have workarounds in place, it takes a lot longer to get people up and running in a new system because not only do they have to learn the system, but they have to learn how you’ve worked around it.

AP: Right, and that’s where you start talking about technical debt because all of those workarounds that you’re describing, that equates to technical debt. And one day, you’re gonna get your backside handed to you because you have all of this technical debt. And replatforming is the perfect time to press that reset button and say, we’re gonna get rid of those things. We’re gonna have a system that addresses those problems in an official, correct way, and none of these weird workarounds.

BS: Mm-hmm.

AP: And by the way, those workarounds, what if the person who did them leaves and hasn’t been documented well?

BS: Yeah, that’s a big problem. My guess is that if you’ve been using one particular system for, you know, 10 years or even more, you probably have a lot of content just si...