The all-in-one guide to structured content: benefits, technology and AI readiness

What is structured content?

Let's start with a definition. Structured content is content that's organized in a predefined way and follows a set of pre-defined rules or 'content model'. Structured content is also known as 'componentized content' because the content is made up of components or building blocks, whose locations in the final output are defined through the organization's content model. Contrast that with unstructured content, such as a document written using standard word-processing software, to which no such rules or model apply.

Let’s explain further using a simple example. The traditional way to create a new document is to open a word-processing app and start typing – creating what will be the final piece of content as you go. Using formatting such as headings (H1, H2 and so on) or bold or colored text, you loosely identify the meaning of various content elements within the document.

When you take a structured content approach, you exchange your word-processing software for a structured content authoring (SCA) tool that will generally store the content you create in a component content management system (CCMS). When you're ready to write, you need to switch gears conceptually: rather than thinking about writing a document from start to finish, you need to think in terms of authoring individual content components, each of which will serve a specific purpose. A component may be, for example:

• A heading
• An introduction
• A step-by-step instruction
• A warning statement

Another thing that's different about structured content is that you don't need to apply any formatting to the content components you create. Instead, formatting happens when the content is published.

So, having created your content components and stored them in your CCMS, how do you bring them together to form the final output, such as a PDF? You simply select the relevant components and put them in the right order – rather like building a house with Lego^® blocks.

As you bring the components together, you don't actually copy any of the content: you simply reference the individual components. In the publishing phase, you pick your output option (in our example, "PDF") and the appropriate style sheet will be applied automatically.

Explore our blog post for a more in-depth look at what is structured content.

Why should I use structured content?

By now you may be thinking that working with structured content doesn't sound as straightforward as creating a document in the usual way using a word processor. But let’s go back to the definition of structured content: it's a type of content that's organized in a predefined way.

That makes structured content an ideal solution for organizations that need close control over how their content will display in any channel or publication, no matter how many products and product versions they have, or how many regional markets and languages they need to address. Because structured content separates content from presentation (or formatting), authors and reviewers can focus on the content itself – creating and validating content components without worrying about (or being distracted by) how the content will be formatted. As briefly described above, the final deliverable is created through a separate publishing phase, in which the content components are assembled and a style sheet applied to format the content.

Its component-based approach makes structured content ideal for managing complex content, especially if the content:

• Can or should be reused across deliverables and output channels
• Is frequently updated
• Needs to be translated or localized

In the next section, we'll explore how structured content can make things easier for you and anyone else in your organization who's involved in creating, managing and delivering content.

5 key benefits of working with structured content

You may already have grasped that a structured content approach can help make content creation more efficient. Beyond those efficiency gains, however, structured content can also help unlock real business value from your content by enabling organizations to get to market faster with more accurate, higher-quality and compliant content – even in multiple languages; and streamlining omnichannel experiences for content users.

Let’s explore five of the main benefits of switching to structured content operations.

1. Efficient, collaborative content creation and review cycles

Business-critical content assets often require input from a wide range of contributors and stakeholders, including:

• Technical writers and authors

• Subject-matter experts (SMEs) from different parts of the business

• External advisors and reviewers

• Owners of the content development process, such as regulatory operations

Having potentially dozens of people – both in-house and external – involved in seeing a single document through to completion can make for a complex and time-consuming process that's challenging to manage and must be repeated for every document. The issue is exacerbated when documents run to hundreds of pages, especially if different people are contributing to or reviewing different parts.

In contrast, structured content authoring (SCA) – or structured authoring – allows individual content components to be produced in parallel, rather than sequentially. Each team member can focus on their own activities, such as drafting, reviewing or translating those components.

This componentized approach helps organizations to streamline the writing and review of business-critical and regulated content – enabling it to be delivered faster and to a higher standard in a process that's less laborious, repetitive and error prone. It's an approach that also offers scope for workflow automation. Read more about what is structured content authoring in this blog post.

2. Content reusability for consistency and ROI

How many hundreds or thousands of publications in your organization feature the same chunks of content? If you're not using structured content, what happens when an author can't find the content chunk they want to reuse, or doesn’t know it already exists? Typically, they'll write it from scratch, potentially duplicating content that's already been created and approved, and expending time and effort that could have been better used.

If an author does find the chunk they want in an existing document, they might copy it and paste it into the one they're creating. But if the original content chunk is subsequently amended or updated, how do you make sure those changes trickle down to all the copied instances? If there's no system to keep track of the relationship between the original and the copied version(s) of the content chunk in all the places where it's been reused, they can soon get out of sync, which can lead to issues around aspects like consistency and compliance.

To mitigate these risks, some authoring teams manually track which content chunks have been reused where, and make the same updates to all the copies if the original chunk gets updated. But if you're working with large, complex sets of documentation or multiregional and multilingual content, things can soon get out of control.

With structured content, on the other hand, a content chunk or component is created once, and can then be found by anyone and used anywhere it's needed. This is known as the create once, publish anywhere (COPE) principle. It sounds simple, but the impact can be huge. A key aspect of SCA, content reuse enables the reuse of any approved content component, without copying and pasting or otherwise duplicating it, because the CCMS tracks the relationships among all the content components.

Let's take as an example a company that creates user manuals for its products. The company can reuse approved content components relating to the current version of each product across publications, language versions and regional markets. When updates to a product call for updates to a content component, the CCMS ensures the changes – made and approved once – are propagated across all versions of the documents and publications where that component is used, enabling agile, efficient publication of consistent, up-to-date content.

Learn more about the advantages of reusing content in our content reuse blog.

3. Personalized omnichannel experiences that increase satisfaction

Working with structured content as the single source of truth for all your content, you can enable seamless content delivery across diverse channels and output formats including:

• PDFs
• Websites
• Mobile apps
• AI-driven voice assistants (such as chatbots)
• Content formats that must follow strict regulatory guidelines, such as instructions for use (IFUs) for medical devices

Delivering exceptional omnichannel experiences of your content offers benefits to both employees and customers.

Employees, especially those in customer-facing roles – such as salespeople, customer support representatives and field technicians – have immediate access to accurate, up-to-date content published on internal platforms from their computers, laptops and smart devices. This helps them, for example, provide reliable information to customers or resolve issues faster. Enhanced levels of customer service can help to lift customer satisfaction rates and reduce escalations.

In addition, you can build a knowledge base of training materials that are automatically updated to reflect the latest information, which helps improve learning and development for team members.

Customers (or other external users, such as partners) who access content directly will benefit from an improved user experience with content that's always accurate, up to date and optimized for the channel they're using – for example, a product manual, a support article on your company's website, or a response from a chatbot or AI agent to a query.

To help customers and other external users find product details, FAQs, support materials or other information even faster, you can enrich your content using metadata or semantic AI – options a CCMS can provide. When the information behind, say, a search portal is tagged using semantic AI, the portal will seem to read the user's mind, offering autosuggestions as they type, as well as personalized results and recommendations based on things like their location, role or recent online activity – another way to enhance customer satisfaction or improve information exchange with partners.

Streamlined content creation with structured content

4. Faster regulatory reporting and documentation creation

In regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals and medical devices, the technical documentation required for regulatory submissions must be well organized, unambiguous and readily searchable. In-house teams must collaborate with the relevant regulatory bodies to ensure that the evidence of conformity provided meets strict legal or other requirements.

Replacing a document-centric approach with one based on structured content can help streamline the submission process by enabling content reuse of up to 60%, more efficient collaboration (both internally and with regulatory bodies and consultants), and a 100% accurate audit trail.

Using structured content, a content operations team can:

Improve the quality and consistency of regulatory documentation, which can lead to more successful approvals

• Enable a faster time to market, which can open up revenue streams more quickly
• Support a translation and localization process that costs less and can be 70% faster
• For more about faster and less expensive translations with structured content, read on.

5. Lower-cost, faster translations

Using structured content can help reduce the time and effort involved in translating complex documentation and keeping those translations in sync when information changes. Translation time can be cut by as much as 70% with a structured content platform that empowers teams with:

A single platform for managing all language versions. All language versions of all content components can be stored in the same CCMS, making it easier to manage and update them. When a content component is created or updated in the source language, it can be sent for translation into the required languages. All versions are then integrated back into the CCMS for propagation across channels and output formats.

Precise component-based translation. Instead of localizing entire documents, language specialists work with granular pieces of content. The ability to pinpoint exactly what needs to be translated allows faster delivery of translations at substantially lower cost.

Easy integration with translation management tools. A CCMS can be integrated with a translation management system (TMS) to further speed up translation and reduce costs by enabling:

• Re-use of pre-approved translated content held in the translation memory (TM)
• Integration of machine translation (MT) capabilities to perform an initial translation of content not present in the TM, which is then validated by human language specialists

End-to-end translation optimization with human-centric AI tools

A more efficient, lower-cost localization process can allow an organization to translate its content into more languages – helping it deliver better customer experiences in more markets, or expand more quickly and confidently into new regions.

To learn more about how the impact of structured content on translation ROI, explore our ROI white paper.

Ready for an AI-enabled future

In the discussion above on delivering omnichannel experiences, we mentioned using metadata and semantic AI to tag content and so help users find information faster in online portals and internal knowledge bases. Generative AI (GenAI) is taking these capabilities to a new level, allowing users to ask chatbots to find information on their behalf. But why do we sometimes hear about chatbots providing inaccurate or false information? One possible scenario is that the chatbot is running on a document-based knowledge base, rather than on a portal fed by semantically tagged structured content. So, the chatbot has to parse information in unstructured sources (like PDF documents or web pages) to generate an answer, with no way to validate it against a robust structured content model.

To provide high-quality responses to questions, a chatbot ideally uses a technique called retrieval augmented generation (RAG) – which depends on having access to structured and tagged content. When a user asks a question, the chatbot searches the structured content knowledge base, using metadata (such as tags identifying a product model or version) to narrow down the information it retrieves. It then extracts the relevant detail from that subset of data and constructs a response to the question (including references to the information sources) that can be relied on for its accuracy and relevance.

RAG-based GenAI mechanism

And what of GenAI's role in content creation itself? Chatbots working as 'virtual assistants' can help authors quickly find information in structured content knowledge bases in support of new copy creation. And while we're still some way away from GenAI tools being able to handle complex structured content tasks on their own, capabilities have emerged to support authors by, for example, proposing rephrasing to enhance readability, summarizing text, checking spelling and grammar, or detecting incorrect use of terms and suggesting alternatives.

It's still relatively early days for GenAI capabilities but the technology is evolving fast, with untold innovations just around the corner. Clearly, organizations that adopt a structured content strategy sooner rather than later will be better prepared for an AI-enabled future, in which their content will be consumed by machines as well as humans.

7 steps to adopting an AI-driven structured content strategy

We've discussed what structured content is and how it can help large enterprises take control of their content lifecycle from start to finish. Now it's time to ask: how does an organization go from managing unstructured content to managing mature, AI-ready structured content?

Management support and buy-in are pre-requisites. Fortunately, the proven success of structured content helps make it easier to demonstrate the substantial business benefits to management. Most deployments pay for themselves in efficiency gains, agility improvements or translation savings within a year, as well as helping the organization to shorten its time to AI-ready content.

Step 1. Audit your current content

Start with a thorough audit of your existing content to identify redundant, outdated or irrelevant materials and pinpoint areas for improvement. By understanding the current state of your content, you can make informed decisions about what needs to be updated, archived or transformed into structured content. This step is crucial for eliminating clutter and ensuring you retain only valuable, relevant content.

Step 2. Create or choose your content model

Working with a structured content consultant, create or select a content model that aligns with your organization's needs, goals and content strategy. The model may be a predefined industry standard (e.g. DITA) or a derived model tailored to your specific requirements.

Step 3. Adopt an SCA tool and a CCMS

To create structured content from scratch you'll want to use an SCA tool in combination with a CCMS, such as Tridion Docs, to centralize and streamline content creation and management.

Step 4. Convert your unstructured content to structured content

With your content model in place, start converting your unstructured content into structured content. This generally involves using a data conversion service to break down large, unstructured documents (including PDFs and paper documents) into smaller, reusable structured content components (or modules) that fit within your chosen model. Each component should be tagged with metadata to enhance searchability and findability.

A capable data conversion service provider will use a combination of methods such as OCR, computer vision, algorithms and text analysis, as well as automated software for checking content quality; and should be able to achieve a 99.9% accuracy level.

Step 5. Train your team

Invest in training programs to equip your team with the skills they need to create and manage structured content. Training should cover the principles of structured content and best practices for content creation and management, as well as how to use the SCA tool and CCMS. Ideally, you'll choose an SCA tool that's as intuitive for users as familiar word processing apps. Helping your team become proficient in these areas will help to foster a culture of consistency and quality, leading to more efficient content operations and better outcomes.

Step 6. Integrate AI tools to automate tasks and optimize workflows

Content generation. You can use GenAI authoring tools to generate initial content drafts by analyzing existing content and working with predefined guidelines. Content creators can then focus on refining and customizing the drafts, rather than starting from scratch. This approach can reduce turnaround times and increase productivity, helping your team to produce high-quality content at a faster pace. GenAI authoring tools can further support authors during content creation.

Content tagging/Smart Tagging. For rapid content classification with semantic AI, Smart Tagging automatically applies the relevant taxonomy tags to components in a CCMS (such as Tridion), using natural language processing to analyze the topic. Authors can classify topics in just a few clicks, making content easier to find by humans and machines.

Personalized content delivery. AI can be leveraged for personalized content delivery, tailoring content to individual user preferences and behaviors. This approach enhances user engagement and satisfaction, making it easier to navigate large volumes of information and helping ensure users receive content that aligns with their needs and interests.

Step 7. Monitor and refine your structured content strategy

Once you've implemented your structured content strategy, you'll want to monitor and review performance metrics (e.g. content reuse rates, content ROI), gather feedback, and make any adjustments required to keep improving content quality and delivery effectiveness. This ongoing process of evaluation and refinement will help keep your content current and accurate, ensuring it meets the evolving needs of your organization and audience, and remains aligned with prevailing industry standards.

Tools for working with structured content

To efficiently run a structured content operation for a large enterprise, you need an end-to-end structured content solution which includes the following functionalities:

• Structured content authoring (SCA) tool
• Component content management system (CCMS)
• Content taxonomy and metadata management
• Translation and localization management, if content is required in more than one language
• Publishing capabilities
• Analytics and reporting (to understand, for example, volume of published vs. unpublished content, content reuse rates)
• Connectors for integration with other systems to streamline content and data flows

Are you looking for a structured content solution?

Explore how Tridion Docs can help you manage your end-to-end structured content operations and get your organization ready for an AI-enabled future.