Centralized, decentralized or hybrid - Bridging the Gaps in your Content Ecosystem

Centralized, Decentralized, or Hybrid: what’s the right model for you?

When setting up your Managed Content Service, you can take a centralized, decentralized, or hybrid approach. Below we outline how ownership of key tasks breaks down in each scenario.

Decentralized Model

In a Decentralised Model, the end users of the systems are responsible for asset management, in particular, asset upload. In this model, the responsibilities are shared among brand & marketing teams, other internal marketing users, or agencies working on behalf of brands.

Agency	Brand Marketing	Managed Content Service
Uploads assets and baseline / minimal metadata	Rationalizes and approves	Ensures DAM taxonomy matches the purpose of content to be uploaded, prior to upload
	Provides guidance on tagging	Trains agencies on upload process
	Distributes assets	Enriches metadata as needed for specific campaigns and re-use, and ensures quality
		Identifies opportunities for streamlining and automation

While a decentralized model may seem like a good fit because the business units own their own content, it tends to be the least effective. It doesn’t always work as intended due to brand and marketing teams being understaffed, having high attrition rates, and not having the system or metadata expertise to perform the necessary tasks.

Centralized Model

In a centralized model, the Managed Content Services provider is responsible for the DAM. In this model, the responsibilities are shared among brand & marketing teams, other internal system users, or agencies working on behalf of brands.

Agency	Brand Marketing	Managed Content Service
Provides assets and baseline metadata to MCS team	Rationalizes uploads	Asset upload and tagging
	Provides guidance on tagging	Quality assurance
	Distributes assets	Supports all system users
		Supports the DAM product owner
		Leads user training and manages user access
		Manages brand and market assets, fostering re-use

Sometimes, one model doesn't fit because businesses can be complex, especially in global, multi-brand environments. In these instances, a hybrid approach, or a combination of both centralized and decentralized models, may be more effective.

Hybrid Model

A hybrid approach can cater to different levels of engagement with agencies globally, while supporting a centralized data quality model. It can also facilitate the content collection & data rationalization for assets, driving consistency & speed to market.

In a hybrid model, large agencies producing content frequently could be adopted within a centralized approach, in order to speed up time to market. However smaller agencies producing fewer assets less often could continue to operate in a decentralized fashion.

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