Contently is a SaaS content marketing platform from the company of the same name headquartered in New York, containing features a collaboration space, calendar, and workflow controls, engagement metrics, and rapid access to a high volume of original content from freelance creative talent, researchers, and journalists.
Contently has received approximately $12.3 million in funding since its founding in 2010.
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PathFactory
Score 8.3 out of 10
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PathFactory enables you to unlock B2B revenue with AI-powered content intelligence which allows you to generate personalized, engaging, and conversion-focused experiences across the entire B2B buyer journey. Per the vendor, you can accelerate deal velocity and grow your pipeline by recommending the next-best assets for individual buyers and target accounts alike.
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SAP Fieldglass
Score 8.3 out of 10
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A Vendor Management System (VMS) used to find, engage, and manage a global external workforce – including temporary workers, freelancers, contractors, consultants, and service workers.
It's helpful for top of marketing funnel writing that we can sometimes lose sight of because we are so ingrained in the product day to day. Contently is also helpful for long written pieces and ebooks that will take a significant amount of employee time to put together. I avoid using Contently for mid to bottom funnel marketing writing because my team will often have greater insight into the product function or use-case or product release, making them more adroit to the tone of the written piece and able to produce the content quickly.
It's a great tool if you want to create experiences on web and share content with your audience - especially if you want to create bingeable content. For a microsite, I would like to see more modules that build up a page, and great examples for inspiration
SAP Fieldglass seems to be well suited to contingent workforce management. When compared to other products I have experienced, it is more advanced. Extremely well suited if you have SAP Ariba and SAP (ECC/S4) due to the seamless, pre-built integration between SAP Fieldglass and these other SAP systems. We used it in a regional (North American) scope, but that was based on business decisions and not system limitations.
Consolidating my work in one place to make my work life easier
Contently is unique from other content marketing organizational tools in one key way. It hands you a network of freelance professionals eager for delegated work.
You can search through a database of professionals to find the perfect person for your given project. Find individuals in your budget offering the exact skills and experience you need.
Microsite was very hard to build ourselves. Changing the site can be really confusing and is not always intuitive. We have trouble knowing how to update items to get it to work the way we want it to.
Better instructions on how to customize tracks and use the different tools.
Users that come in without UTM parameters should still be included in all data reporting.
Usability to be improved (to allow more end users to act directly in the system)
Rate card management / Fx rate management
Documentation of the functionality (There is so much functionality available in the system, it would be great to receive more instructions how to configure).
AI usage to ensure more intuitive entries, based on past usage and other users' experience/work
We have seen a lot of value from our team's use of Path Factory. We also like working with this vendor as they actually take our feedback and implement it on their roadmap. A great vendor with a great product
Usage of the web interface it’s easy and user friendly. iOS app it’s quickly and simple, with just a foto it’s possible to store the invoice and system automatically recognize the expenses. Good integration with credit card company to and excellent functionality to assign the credit card expenses to relative invoice.
Overall, I think the tool is fairly easy to use to get a basic content uploaded to create a track and even the more complicated features become easier once you become familiarised with the process
Web interface and iOS app are so simple and user friendly. The functionality that recognizes the expenses working very well. The integration with a credit card company it’s a an excellent functionality that simplify a lot the expenses management
I think there was only one time where we had issues reaching our account manager, otherwise PathFactory was always willing to hop on the phone to talk through strategy, to work through issues, and help build custom solutions to fit our needs. Customer service is a big selling point of PathFactory.
The analytics and reports feature is fairly new and have proved very popular with many areas of our business and is growing in popularity. The metrics that are attainable are very insightful and provides a clear picture on the performance of the track.
I'm giving them a 10, but honestly, I've never reached out to them. I do see them putting out regular content on social media, so they might be responsive to questions there as well as regular customer support. In their posts and communication, they do seem to value their community, so hopefully, they have good customer support. And I've seen them asking for pitches from their community to publish well-paid articles during this stressful coronavirus time, and I really appreciate that.
We meet weekly with Jennifer and I can't say enough about her. When issues have happened or we need help, she jumps on it quickly. If she doesn't know the answer, she pulls in Reggie or another on her team that can help. She goes above and beyond and has been very supportive, even when we had a lot of hard questions to answer from higher-ups. All this is on top of just being an awesome person.
I was able to browse around the tool quite easily once some basic training was given. I learnt much from using those method and only needed further help when wanting to learn about Reports, External codes and adding forms.
The customer service, from technical through to customer success, is one of the biggest reasons I'd recommend PathFactory. This is true of their training. It can be as bespoke as you like, at least in my experience, and the team is always willing (where possible) to incorporate your suggestions.
The PathFactory team was very helpful when implementing the product. They gave us a lot of recommendations on best moving forward. As a note to new users, when implementing I would make sure that you create with your team a system to make sure that the platform is scalable. My team was able to do this through creating a foldering structure, naming conventions for tracks and assets, and ensuring tagging is used on all content uploads. I would also make sure when implementing that you have an understanding of how your team will track success and that your brand team is involved to make sure that there is consistency in the look and feel of the tracks
I also opened an account with Skyword in 2019, which is a similar service. The person that recommended it was a travel writer, and since I've done that as well, I thought it might be a better fit. To this point, I've received no work from it either, and don't hold out a lot of hope. As previously mentioned, where I think Contently does well is by giving you an online portfolio, additional resources like a blog for learning, and a rates database for publications.
I used Uberflip in a past company. I think they are pretty comparable. From what I remember, Uberflip was more intuitive to use, but I think PathFactory might have more capabilities. Although this was years ago, I am not aware of Uberflip's functionality now. I have had good experiences with both.
SAP Fieldglass offers extensive capabilities for managing contingent workforce, statement of work (SOW) projects, and services procurement. It seamlessly integrates with other SAP products (e.g. SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba) and external systems, providing a unified ecosystem for enterprises using SAP’s suite of solutions. It is highly scalable, suitable for large enterprises with complex workforce management needs.
Pathfactory is growing in popularity amongst individuals from different parts of the organisation and it would be difficult to forecast how scalable this can become
Contently contributors have produced some great inbound marking posts and creative materials saving our marketing team significant time allowing them to focus on more strategic plans for the business.
The amount of time Contently has saved our internal creative writing staff has more than paid for itself!
We saw ROI within the first 9 months of using PathFactory.
Our onboarding team saw quicker adoption of our product while using PathFactory to engage them during the onboarding process.
We've been able to more accurately understand our content needs and what works best when prospecting for specific segments. (eg. SMB, mid-market, and enterprise)
I would have to say Fieldglass has made a positive impact, only in that having access to it has opened up some client relationships we didn't have before. I am a vendor to clients using Fieldglass, so I can't really report on the financial successes they may have had by implementing it.
The negative side to Fieldglass, or any VMS, really, from an agency perspective is that it cuts out manager contact. That has a negative impact, both to the agency and the hiring manager. No longer can the managers really explain what they need, and no longer can an agency understand the req deeply. We have to work off of a scrubbed job description which is generally pretty vanilla.