A Brand Portal or Communication Shop. You may have heard or seen something about it. Then you will also have wondered whether it is suitable for your organization. Possibly there is already a Sharepoint or some other kind of intranet, or a purchase is being considered. Sharepoint is the most frequently mentioned option for content & asset management but there are more options. That is why I made an article that will help you to create clarity about what option suits your organization best.
PURPOSE OF THE SOLUTION
Share point
Sharepoint is described as an online platform to manage and share knowledge and information. To stimulate collaboration and transformation. With the versatile CMS (Content Management) functionality, you can easily communicate information. With the extensive document management, you can work together efficiently on documents.
Brand portal
The goal of a Brand/Communication Portal is to provide everyone in the organization with tools so that they can create recognizable and professional content.
The CMS functionality is extremely suitable for recording brand, corporate identity or other communication guidelines. While the Media Repository is very useful for managing and accessing large amounts of media files. The template studio is ideal for applying guidelines and media files directly in content.
FEATURES FOR: RECORDING GUIDELINES & INFORMATION
Most of the similarities between the tools are on this part. Both Sharepoint and a Brand Portal offer CMS functionality, but there is a small difference. Sharepoint's is general, similar to a website CMS. The CMS functionality of a Brand Portal is specialized in introducing brand & corporate identity guidelines.
So both tools offer the ability to build web pages. But a Brand Portal offers additional options for brand guidelines recording by means of style elements such as: colour card, logo bank, fonts, etc. This gives a professional look to the reader.
But the main difference between the two tools is that with a brand portal you can easily give external parties, such as agencies and printers, a guest account. Permanent or temporary. They can then access the Brand Portal without needing a company account. With Sharepoint this is often cumbersome.
FEATURES FOR: STORING MANAGE AND SHARING ASSETS*
In Sharepoint it is possible to store photography, video's, logo's and similar media files. This can be done via a functionality that is comparable to your hard disk explorer. So the well-known folder structure.
With a Brand Portal you get away from the folder structure. Instead, an extensive metadata structure is used. This allows you to quickly find the right files with specific search filters and advanced search engine functionality. The endless searching through all kinds of folders is a thing of the past. This structure is also ideal for administrators of the Brand Portal, because they can use the metadata structure to keep control. For example, by working with automatic expiry dates of photography, or by only making images available to a specific user group.
FUNCTIONS FOR: APPLICATION** OF GUIDELINES
This part is missing from Sharepoint. Read here more about Brand Portal tooling with which you can easily create on-brand expressions, without design skills. Find out more about publishing online content from the Brand Portal here.
Conclusion
A Brand Portal and Sharepoint should not replace, but complement each other. A Sharepoint is often indispensable in your organization. Especially with sharing company information and collaborating on office documents. But to realize recognizable and professional communication from every position, a Sharepoint falls short. So it is best to place all brand building blocks for creating content in a Brand Portal. Here are our the three main conclusions:
Sharepoint offers basic functionalities to easily share information and files with your organization. It is sufficient if you know the intranet very well and always know exactly what you are looking for. But if you don't know exactly what you're looking for or where to go, it can be very frustrating and time-consuming to find what you need. In addition, it is a major and continuous job for the administrators to keep the entire library AVG proof.
You do not want to inhibit colleagues in their enthusiasm to communicate on behalf of the organization. That's why you probably only want to show the content that is relevant to them. Moreover, it is very error-prone if everyone has rights to use and/or modify everything. Sharepoint has a rights & roles structure. But with a Brand Portal you can fine-tune this per page, image or template. In addition, a Brand Portal contains workflows for approval and review.
Making guidelines and files available does not guarantee that they are applied correctly. Office templates are very error-prone, and colleagues are still swimming too much in the possibilities. This is especially difficult if you don't have a background in communications. You can facilitate them optimally with smart house style templates from the Brand Portal.
TIP: Use a Sharepoint Connector from your Brand Portal solution. If one searches in Sharepoint for something that is actually in the brand portal, those results are shown via a link to the brand portal. Very handy!
Above you will find a schematic comparison of the most important features. With this overview, you can concretely indicate the differences between the two systems. Would you like to discuss this further? You can always schedule a moment to talk about is here!
'' Did you know that a Brand Portal saves up to an average of 25% to 30% in time for a marketing communication professional. If you also get started with a template module, it doesn't stop there. It turns out that no less than 68% of communication tools are reproductive. Ideal to convert to templates! “
* files like photography, video's, icons, created assets etc.
** brand & corporate identity guidelines are reflected in resources such as printed matter or social posts. Template technology has been developed to apply this correctly and uniformly.