The State of Content Operations in the IT Industry in 2021: 5 Key Findings

Content Science released an in-depth report about content operations maturity in 2021: What Makes Content Operations Successful? To help specific industries address their unique content challenges, Content Science is releasing a series of briefings looking at how different sectors are performing and what the state of content operations is within each industry. 

This article reviews 5 key findings from our briefing about the IT industry. 

For the What Makes Content Operations Successful? report, we analyzed data collected from more than 100 leading content professionals with diverse organizations. Of those responses, 26 were from the IT industry. 

We found that organizations in the IT industry have both strengths and opportunities for improvement compared with all other industries. 

1. The IT industry is leading others in content operations maturity.  

More organizations in the IT industry are at the highest level of content operations maturity or are striving to achieve that level compared with all other respondents. Among IT industry respondents, 8% are at the highest level of content operations maturity, the thriving stage, meaning they are sustaining while also innovating and seeing return on investment. And 42% are striving to achieve that level. This percentage is twice that for all industries combined.

2. Recognition is a strongpoint for the IT industry.   

Recognition is something the IT industry is doing well, with just 8% reporting this as a barrier to success, compared to 27% across all industries. In terms of other potential barriers to successful content operations, IT industry professionals were also less likely than others to say that lack of clear communication across silos and red tape are issues. 

3. The IT industry struggles more with having the right content roles. 

The IT industry is more likely than all industries combined to report challenges with having the right content roles/staff (31%). This compares to 25% among all other industries. IT industry content professionals were also less likely than others to report having certain modern content roles, such as a content strategist, content manager/director, and a content designer/UX content strategist. 

4. Slightly fewer IT industry organizations have a clear content vision. 

The IT industry is slightly less likely than all respondents to report that their organization has a clear content vision. Among those in the IT industry, 35% of respondents said their organization has a clear content vision compared with 37% in all industries combined. 

5. The IT industry is much more likely to be using AI for content measurement.  

Half in the IT industry are using AI or machine learning for measurement. This is 43% higher than the percentage of all respondents who say the same. However, those in the IT industry are less likely to be using AI for content distribution, composition, and conversion. 

For more IT industry content operations findings, download the full briefing [Content Science Review subscriber access only].