You'll learn how they streamline content production and connect internal silos. You'll also learn how the systematisation of this process makes prospectus content production easier, cheaper and the content itself more valuable year after year.

1.
How the universities of Aberdeen,
Leicester and Keele streamline the way
they produce & deliver prospectus
content
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Content Operations Platform for Higher Education

2.
How the universities of Aberdeen, Leicester &
Keele streamline the way they deliver prospectus
content
When producing a prospectus, course descriptions, open day announcements or
any other myriad of student recruitment content, a constant requirement is for this
content to be useful and helpful. Both for the organisation and the audience.
With a prospectus there will be an annual requirement, with a clear timeframe, for
when content is needed. But whilst that frequency makes the process familiar, that
doesn’t mean planning, producing and delivering that content is any less
challenging.
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3.
The challenges of producing student recruitment content
Prospectuses are the cornerstone of student recruitment content and the key
economic driver. Every year they must be delivered with the highest quality and
legally sound content possible.
After talking with 100s of University teams we’ve identified three key
challenges in producing a successful prospectus:
1. The content needs to be published digitally and in print (often with varying
requirements for each)
2. Creating alignment around the content production process
3. Managing involvement from people across different departments and teams
Without clarity on the people, processes and technology involved, the process of
delivering this content can be chaotic, frantic, and frustrating.
This short guide aims to unpack these challenges and explore ways to improve
them with real examples from three UK based universities.
Elements required for successfully delivering prospectus
content
Before diving into examples it’s worth taking a moment to understand what we have
identified as four of the key elements required for delivering prospectus content
efficiently:
1. Clearly defined roles
2. An agreed workflow
3. Structured content types and templates
4. A content style guide
Clearly defined roles for producing prospectus content
You need clearly defined roles to establish who is involved in the process and what
they each need to do. By providing clarity on responsibility, it’s easier for people to
do what’s needed with accountability.
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4. Content workflows for producing prospectus content
A workflow is an agreed process for how the clearly defined roles fit together,
mapping out each stage the prospectus content must pass through. Contextual
workflows set a clear process for the team to follow, help to alleviate bottlenecks
and keep content moving.
Structured content templates for producing prospectus content
Inconsistent content is a big problem when lots of people are involved, and made
worse when those people work in silos. One Subject Matter Expert (SME) may
provide one paragraph for their course description, but another SME may write two
pages. Structured content types and templates ensure consistency across all
departments.
Content style guides for producing prospectus content
Content style guides are also an antidote to inconsistent content. The rules and
guidelines around content production will empower content creators to produce
content in the brand voice, tone, style and format.
Bringing all of these elements together can be challenging, but investing in your
prospectus content production process can have great benefits for the business and
the audience.
Now that we understand the challenges of publishing high quality prospectus
content, let’s have a look at how three UK-based universities took control of their
content production & delivery processes.
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5.
How the University of Leicester is streamlining processes
for successful digital transformation
The University of Leicester committed to digital transformation, deciding key
projects to enforce and achieve this were their prospectuses.
The online and print prospectuses were treated as separate entities with different
processes for creating, editing, approving and publishing the content. As part of the
transformation, processes needed to be streamlined by moving content production,
editing and approval to a centralised model.
The Marketing and Communication team worked to:
● Bring both versions of the prospectus into one workflow to ensure clear and
visible communication around it’s production
● Create structured content templates for Subject Matter Experts
● Provide clear guidelines for the style and format of content
The team decided to move away from processes they knew caused problems: Lots
of manual tasks that were prone to errors – collecting content from many
departments in Word Documents and managing the process using spreadsheets,
emails, annotating PDFs, and many other frustrating annoyances.
The University of Leicester chose GatherContent as the centralised place for all
content production.
Read the full University of Leicester case study
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6.
Because their online and print content had previously been produced in isolation of
one another, despite there being a significant overlap in content, there was
repetition of tasks too, so neither ideal nor efficient.
They ​defined a structure​ for both versions of the prospectus which would ensure
consistency in the content provided by the subject matter experts. The ​content
templates​ were provided to Subject Matter Experts so they could populate them.
They also included guidelines with the templates that guided the content creators
on word lengths, formatting requirements, and style. This resulted in greater
consistency across all of the content.
Here’s a quick example of customisable template in GatherContent:
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Content Operations Platform for Higher Education

7.
Following this they defined a bespoke workflow to ensure there was an agreed
process for delivering content and people were assigned to each stage. Their
workflow stages were:
1. Content added
2. Sent to department
3. Amends made
4. Ready for design
5. Website updated
This agreed workflow removed the previous uncertainty around who needed to do
what, and by when. There was now transparency in their process and they could
easily track progress from draft content, through to published. The workflow also
allowed them to identify bottlenecks and gaps in the process which they could
resolve to keep content moving. Gone were the frustrations of the previous process
where nobody knew the status of content, what version was the most recent and
how close they were to having it all approved.
Starting with a pilot project before going all in
Rather than change their entire way of working overnight, the university decided to
test their new structured content and workflow on a pilot project for their
Undergraduate prospectus, which initially involved 10 departments. Following the
success of this the new production process was to be rolled out to 24 departments
for the Postgraduate prospectus.
The benefits of digital transformation for the University of Leicester
Investing in their process as part of the wider digital transformation project yielded
significant benefits:
● Combining content production and organisation for their printed and digital
prospectuses
● Significantly reduced email traffic between Marketing Team and the
academic departments
● Streamlined workflow to make it easy for people to focus on what they
needed and to avoid bottlenecks
● Structured content templates helped to deliver consistent content, produced
on time
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8. Connecting two processes also connected people, with content at the heart. It was
a prime example of how investing in people, process and infrastructure can ensure
content operations are efficient, and as a result, content is effective.
Further reading: ​How University of Leicester connected two prospectus processes
to go digital-first for efficient content operations
How the University of Aberdeen connected silos around an
agreed workflow
The University of Aberdeen require printed copies of their course prospectus, but
the university also identified a need to improve their online course information
offering too. They have three work streams for producing a prospectus: content,
technical and information architecture.
This requires efficiency and orchestration when it comes to bringing lots of people
together. To encourage collaboration during the content production phase,
members of the marketing team run workshops with the academics. The key
outcome of the workshops is to agree what their course pages on the website need
to communicate to prospective students. Marketing can then write the content
based on that insight and then check with academics to see if it is a fair reflection of
their programme.
This created clear roles, and clarity on the responsibilities for each of those roles. A
key component for that collaboration being successful is the workflow. The
university used GatherContent for this project as a central platform their workflow
and progress could be tracked within.
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9.
Read the full University of Aberdeen case study
Once the team had an understanding of the content requirements and finalised the
information architecture and structure for the online prospectus and content, they
moved through their agreed workflow which consisted of the following stages:
1. In progress
2. Academic involvement ​- content is passed to the subject matter expert for
technical input and accuracy
3. Review content for the web
4. Marketing review
5. Second academic review
6. Approved
There is a bridge here between all parties involved and all those included in the
workflow have a clear task to complete. There can be a lot of people needed for
delivering student recruitment content, and that is fine so long as they serve a
purpose in the process.
We recently surveyed our customers in higher education and asked:
What is the average number of people a piece of content passes through
before it is published?
The average was 4. It's difficult to say if 4 is a lot or not many at all as it is different
for every organisation, and often different across various teams and projects within
the same organisation. Also, a ‘piece’ of content is quite subjective, but the purpose
of the question was to get a sense of how many people can be involved in content
production.
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10.
The extremes of the answers given were 2 and 10. Content only including 2 people
from draft to published. That seems efficient and frictionless. 10 people on the
other hand seems like it opens up that organisation to risk delays, compromises,
bottlenecks and chances of content causing issues. That’s a little presumptuous,
but often, more people means more politics, shifting goalposts and conflicting
priorities. Yet sometimes content will need to pass through 10 (or more!) people so
the focus shouldn't be on how many people, but ensuring all those involved have a
clear role and workflow to follow.
How Keele University is systemising prospectus content
production
Keele University has recently experienced a cultural shift in collaborative work by
investing in the people, processes and technology they need to put content first.
This is all part of a web transformation project which is a university-wide initiative.
They recently used their undergraduate prospectus project as a pilot to try a new
way of working. Their undergraduate prospectus is one of the University's most
important assets, acting as their leads document. This document also influences
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11. other requirements throughout the academic year. On the content side, the content
in the prospectus informs the accuracy of content on the website.
How Keele University changed their content production workflow to
become more efficient
Previously, Keele University created their prospectus using a plethora of Word
documents that would fly back and forth on email and sit in random folders across
people's own drives and multiple email inboxes.
Challenges Keele University faced with their previous content production workflow
The symptom of this process was different versions of the content, and prevalent
silos meant that whilst some Subject Matter Experts were working on version 5,
others were on version 2. It also meant people didn't understand where they fit in
the process and what they were meant to be doing. Senior Managers were
copywriting when they only needed to be fact-checking.
Keele University created a bespoke workflow in GatherContent to alleviate these
issues and bring a new level of clarity to roles, responsibilities and process. This
workflow in GatherContent was the same as when they created the prospectus in
Word documents, except now it all happened in one place, with real-time
collaboration, version control, and greater transparency.
There were 73 people involved in the undergraduate prospectus project, and a
further 20 people who had a view of all the content and activity. The content
amounted to ​194 individual items​. Every subject area across the university
engaged with the project (and GatherContent) in some way.
Managing almost 100 people across almost 200 items of content (as well as all of
the people and content outside of the prospectus project) shows the enormity of
why it is important to have the right and best people, processes and technology in
place.
Today, Keele University continue to use a bespoke workflow for their content
production, they assign clear roles and responsibilities, use content templates, and
embed a content style guide in their templates. All inside ​one central platform​:
GatherContent​.
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12. Refining the content production process for the prospectus content has set out a
roadmap for how they plan to change how their print projects happen and how they
can improve development of content so that it isn't a once-a-year process, but
rather ​a rolling process of iteration and continuous improvement​.
Conclusion: Reduce human and technical friction for effective
content
There are no silver bullets when it comes to content, and even with efficient ​content
operations​, mistakes can happen. But by reducing human and technical friction,
you’re giving yourself the best chance to deliver effective content for your audience,
whilst meeting those all important student recruitment goals.
The three universities in this guide all overcame challenges you may recognise. We
are proud that the GatherContent platform is helping all of them be more efficient
and successful in their daily work and consequently is freeing up their team’s time
to work on critical activities to drive revenue through student recruitment.
If you want to give GatherContent a try and the timing is right for you we’d love to
show you how other universities have found success using our platform. You can
sign up with a free trial​ to get an idea of the platform yourself or get in touch to have
our team show you show it works.
Organise a time for our team to show you how
GatherContent works
Or ​learn more about the platform
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