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well thanks everybody I'm so excited to be here to talk about something that I think Campbell's actually does particularly well which is governance when I started in my position as marketing content platforms manager at Campbell's last August my manager at the interview was very clear to explain to me that the system was currently midway through being rolled out to Campbell's 12 separate business units it might not be set up how I would have liked it I mean agree with all the decisions that had been made up until that point but there was no going back now the ship had sailed my job is to take the system as is and sell it I was actually pretty excited about that I basically formed my career doing just that up to that point here's this system we bought it's kind of a mess see what you can do to clean it up and get people to use it so what I convinced them that I was the right woman for the job and I was brought on board as the marketing content platforms manager I work on the marketing technology team and I oversee both the dam system and blue which is our workflow tool for packaging design non packaging assets are currently manually uploaded into our dam but hopefully that will change sometime in the near future so as excited as I was to come into this role a how admit is I was preparing for my first week on the job I was really starting to wonder what I got myself into when I arrived what I learned was that our dam which is hosted in adobe experience manager had been rolled out to eight of Campbell's business units Australia their primary brand being our knots was first to launch in January of 2017 they were followed by Campbell's Canada our see fresh division Campbell Fresh which includes garden-fresh gourmet and Bolthouse farms brands pepperidge farm Campbell's US retail division and plum nafs which stands for our North American food service division was next to be launched going live at the end of August 2017 we typically had a month or so between be launches for setup views or permission writing documentation and do completing user training l'chayim which is our latin american division and Kelson in denmark are scheduled to be launched during the current fiscal year if you're wondering like health and sounds familiar it's probably a disappointing childhood memory they make those butter cookies and the big round blue tin but you stumbled across a grandma's house and thought you've found the secret stash of cookies and then open it up to find the tin or been repurposed into grandma's sewing kit that's Kelsey we currently don't have any timeline in place for bringing in newly acquired Pacific and Snyder's lands we've just started conversations with Pacific we're still waiting our turn in the onboarding process for Snyder's Linens so hopefully that comes soon there were definitely some things about the way that dam was set up that concerned me primarily that Campbell's describes its economy as freedom within a framework anytime you're using the word freedom for damn right you start to worry if you should turn around and flee the building so there are five levels within our dam taxonomy each business unit has its own folder at the very top level this example shows a cross section of the structure for our US retail division under each business unit there are folders for each brand within that bu in this example you see Campbell's v8 prego etc as well as folders for non branded and multi branded assets the next level is product level folders for examples Campbell's soups candles juices and Campbell's sauces and then finally to the two levels under that contained the various types of assets level 4 is broken out into packaging displays marketing collateral creative components and logos level 5 which isn't shown on the slide drills down into more specific asset types includes things such as digital renderings mechanical PDFs and dye lines candles freedom went on in a framework guidelines dictate that levels one through three of our taxonomy must remain as we've provided them to you however the individual views are free to add any additional folders they'd like within levels four and five yikes my first thought was that is the worst idea ever we're gonna have a mess there's gonna be folders all over the place people are gonna name them Joe stuff Jane's folder my personal pet peeves other and miscellaneous you've all had somebody ask for oh right I always say call those junk drawer because that's really what they're gonna end up being and then there's the fact that our designated users within hbu and chosen specifically by that bu are their own metadata approvers they have the authority to verify the metadata and each asset they approve for using the system is complete and correct really requires me to have a high level of trust in their level of accuracy and diligence II their policing not only metadata put on assets by our own internal creative studio but they're also managing assets uploaded by multiple external agencies because they're allowed to upload directly into our dam not only did the bees get to decide on their own depth of legacy data as well but they were also able to set their own timelines for uploading any legacy data so one B you might decide to upload a year of historical assets within a six month time frame that they'd set for themselves another might decide not to upload any legacy data at all or others may just decide to do a one-off as legacy assets are needed but when I actually opened the dam and started looking around I wasn't that freaked out it wasn't the Wild West that I really feared I was going to see the taxonomy was well organized assets had complete metadata profiles and the bees seemed to be uploading legacy assets at what seemed like an appropriate cadence for when they were brought on board I realized that the reason for the lack of chaos was governance Campbell's has established well-defined and active governance for its dam there's a purpose statement as you see her on the slide a Charter and bylaws the Charter clearly states the scope of the project and clarifies the role definitions for everyone involved in the project the governance Council is made up of voting representatives from all of the business units who are active in the dam as well as other key stakeholders those include legal records management IT creative studios and corporate archives they don't necessarily directly handle assets but they still have a vested interest in the success and proper management of the system council members hold a variety of positions within the company including marketing coordinators IT managers production artists marketing directors and project managers the governance Council is the primary governing body for the entire damn program it provides a direct connection between the business unit level users and the dam program and its needs successes and challenges maintains over said to the dam to ensure ongoing compliance across all the business units and alignment with enterprise business goals governance council meetings were originally held by weekly but we've recently moved to a monthly cadence as we found we generally have fewer action items as we move from launching to maintaining this system we adjust our meeting times and an ongoing basis to accommodate all of the time zones and we've recently started sending out doodle polls a couple of weeks before we scheduled each meeting to see what time days and times work for the majority of our council members luckily for us our Australia division all seem to be early morning people which makes scheduling a whole lot easier meetings are scheduled for one hour but if we get through the agenda quicker we will end the meeting early and give everyone the time back we send out the meeting agendas one week in advance and council members are expected to have reviewed the agenda completed any specific pre work and be arrived at the meeting fully prepared to participate in the discussion and vote if a council member is unable to attend they have the option to either submit their votes and comments ahead of time to me via email or they can send a representative to the meeting to speak and vote on their behalf each business unit an additional stakeholder group is allotted one vote a simple majority rules not all agenda topics require a vote we also use the meetings for discussion and knowledge sharing among the different business units council members can submit and present their own agenda topics one recent example is we had one of our representatives wanted to hear from the other members how their users were handling the flux of automated emails coming out of the system that were generated by workflows because that was something is users were struggling with he was able to gather ideas and potential solutions from the discussion with the group that he could take back to his business unit we take roll call at the beginning of the meetings if we don't have a quorum or we don't feel we have the proper representation for that meetings agenda topics we will postpone and reschedule we have a designated timekeeper who make sure we stick to this time frames that were preset in the agenda for each topic and all of our meeting minutes are recorded all decision made decisions made through council votes are also recorded in a decision tracker document that contains a record of the final decision alternate options we discussed and everyone who voted in agreement of the final decision the agendas meeting minutes decision tracker along with all the rest of our governance documentation is stored on a SharePoint site that's open and can be accessed and reviewed by council members or any other damn user at any time occasionally sub council workgroups are formed around specific major decisions that's to ensure we have additional due diligence conducted as well as to relieve time and workload on the main governance council in the initial stages of our project we formed work groups around metadata and the integration of AEM in blue any active work groups are required to report on their progress to the governance council at each meeting so Campbell's governance has all the key components needed for its success a purpose statement bylaws charter we've clearly defined the roles and expectations for active Council members and we meet and communicate with them regularly we keep ongoing documentation that is available for anyone to review at any time so you might be wondering what do I do if the dam is ruled by governance council what need is there for an individual dam manager well as the content platforms manager I play a leading role in the dam governance I schedule the council meetings I set the agendas and I run the meetings I ensure that the members of the council regularly attend and participate and I arrange for the installation of new members or replacement of existing members when needed to make sure everyone is properly and if necessary I can escalate to upper management if we have issues with lack of a purpose lack of participation from a particular area thankfully I haven't had to do that very often but how do I feel about the majority rules method of governing a dam does it bother me not being able to make all the decisions call all the shots it took some getting used to I will freely admit in my previous roles managing systems other companies that lacked in governance I basically made all the decisions and called all the shots of course I talked with the users I considered their needs and opinions but ultimately I was making all the decisions it stomachs to some extent at the time that seemed right to me I'm the expert aren't I I have a degree in this I know all the best practices if they don't like the way I've set things up or the guidelines I've put in place because they don't know I'm doing this for their own good this is the right way but I've quickly learned that having one single system manager unilaterally making all the decisions isn't really ideal it's certainly not the best way to get buy-in for your system and have your users feel some sense of ownership in that system while I may know all the best practices I'm not in there actively using this system as an end user every day yes best practices or best practices for a reason certainly but they don't always work in every situation you can't force the best practice if it turns out to not be the best solution for your users I need to trust that my users know what they want and have voted for what's best for them that being said I do have a fair amount of control and influence over the process as I mentioned before I set the agendas for the meetings when we're voting I designate the options we are voting on I give an A and a B option sometimes the see writing options are not allowed I present the pros and cons for each option and I try to remain as neutral as possible with that information a previous vote as you see in this example had decided that we were going to change a multi-select metadata field to a free text field we discovered that we had two options for handling the version of that field and we asked the council to vote on which option they would prefer we take so this was a slide that was sent out to them ahead of time to read review and think about how they were going to vote I am able to recommend a specific option over the others but I do try not to do that unless a council member specifically asked me to and I'll say they don't tend to ask they all have their own very strong opinions usually I don't get a vote but if there's a tie I am the one to make the deciding vote again I haven't had to do that yet but we'll see usually the vote goes the way I'm hoping it will well it will but not always changing a multi-select field with a lovely controlled vocabulary to a free text field for example just a random example yeah in most cases in the cases where the book doesn't go my way I realized that's what the users want it's what makes their lives easier it's what will make them happier using the system and it's what will make them more likely to remain active in it so I need to go along with what they want not all decisions are significant enough to require a vote in those cases I don't need to seek approval from the governance council I just need to inform them that I've made a change voting is required for major decisions such as adding or removing a metadata field adding or removing the required designation from an existing field or adding or removing a folder from the taxonomy levels one through three for updates such as adding a new term to a field that already has a controlled vocabulary for example if we get a new brand name a new product name or a new flavor or if I'm updating titles or metadata terms to reflect a business change originally I recently had to change creative service history if Studios we don't need to vote on that I can just make those changes and then my only obligation is to communicate the change out to the council so that they can then communicate it out to all of their users so everyone knows what's going on in the system our governance documentation was prepared by activity advisors at the start of the project and regular meetings were held before the dam was even open to any users I think this was the key to success I've worked for companies who tried to establish governance after the system was up and running and it's not easy getting governance to stick in an already active system is exponentially more difficult not impossible so if you're there don't give up but it is definitely more challenging so if you can start with governance if you wait to incorporate governance after the system business you use a lot of decisions have been made if you try to bring people on board with governance at that time they may say why are you asking me now you already made all the decisions if you'd asked me before I would have told you this isn't really what I want can we go back get them involved from the very beginning it gives them ownership encourages them to be invested listen to them trust them allow them to have input and contribute to the project from the very beginning then you need to keep them involved their job isn't over and their value doesn't decrease just because the system has rolled out as the system evolves and grows decisions will still may need to be made and they should always be involved in the decision-making while you'll use your knowledge and expertise to guide them and make some recommendations the decisions are ultimately the heirs the system is theirs and its success largely depends on them over time as our system has been in use now for over a year we tend to fewer action items our meetings have shifted to focus more on discussion and knowledge sharing our current primary focus is on sharing ideas for increasing user adoption across all the business units we're discussing how to bring in more active users increase the activity level of current users and we're identifying some training gaps that we need to address since they've been actively involved with the system from the beginning the members of the governance Council have valuable insight and experience that is helping to drive these discussions they're the direct link between me and all the end users they truly feel invested in this in the success of the system and they're as invested as I am ultimately the success of the dam depends on their involvement as much as it does my leadership [Applause]