Mon. Mar 18th, 2024

Content Assessment: A (Brand) New Approach? Considering the Framework and Structure of eDiscovery Offerings

Information - 90%
Insight - 90%
Relevance - 100%
Objectivity - 85%
Authority - 90%

91%

Excellent

A short percentage-based assessment of the qualitative benefit of the recent post sharing information and considerations related to eDiscovery branding.

Editor’s Note: This fictionalized branding approach was developed from the intellectual exercise of trying to figure out a reasonable and memorable way to descriptively highlight the promise and capabilities of offerings typically delivered by full-service eDiscovery providers. It may not be completely comprehensive or fully normalized. However, the hope of sharing this branding example is that it might help those involved in the branding and communication of eDiscovery provider services and solutions. 

A Data and Legal Discovery System for eDiscovery Providers

From time to time, ComplexDiscovery shares conceptual considerations designed to help data and legal professionals better understand and communicate the components and continuum that comprise eDiscovery-related offerings in the information and litigation lifecycles. This sharing is often as simple as highlighting processes or frameworks that may be useful in understanding eDiscovery. However, today’s post is unique because it presents, using a conceptual brand, how software and service providers might organize and present their offerings as part of a unified and branded system for discovery. 

As we are beginning to see more attempts by providers to present their offerings as platforms, we are witnessing representations of these platforms in ways that range from the pragmatic listing and grouping of technologies as a single suite to freshly packaged and named holistic solutions as part of a single platform. However, as compelling as these offerings are and as attractive as their branding may be, there remains an implied need to describe how platform components are related and applied together to solve data and legal discovery challenges. While there may be many right ways to address this implied need, one approach, shared through the lens of a conceptual brand, might be useful for executives, educators, and practitioners as they consider branding and communicating their eDiscovery offerings. This example approach is shared below as part of a fictional concept brand named Conquest for Discovery.

Conquest for Discovery: A Conceptual Brand 

 “The promise of Conquest for Discovery is that legal and information professionals now can consider their aspirational and actual eDiscovery goals without being encumbered by confidence concerns or unaddressed risks in their approach to data and legal discovery.”

Background 

Moving from brand awareness to brand recognition requires that brands provide an umbrella structure to represent the offerings that make up the brand.

Moving from offering awareness to offering recognition requires that offerings be presented in a framework that organizes the offerings’ promise.

With an accepted branding structure and an established offering framework, an organization can move from having to define a brand and its offerings in each customer conversation and focus discussions on the problems solved and weaknesses overcome through the promise of the brand and its offerings.

The ability to efficiently communicate how an eDiscovery provider can help customers solve problems or overcome weaknesses should accelerate revenue growth and increase provider value.

To objectively think about a brand and its offerings, it may be beneficial to suspend judgment on current branding approaches at the industry and provider level and look at the presentation of a brand and its offerings in a new way.

One readily recognizable historical example of suspending judgment on a traditional approach to create a unique offering can be seen in the development and packaging of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album by the Beatles. In making that famous album, the Beatles stepped away from the traditional approach of recording unconnected individual songs and packaging them on an album. Instead, they used a theme-based approach to create an album that connected a concept (alter egos within an Edwardian military band) with songs to deliver an album that was truly greater than the sum of its parts.

Today’s eDiscovery providers may benefit from the lessons learned in the creation of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album by creating a concept for branding and packaging their offerings within that brand in a connected, theme-based way that represents the offerings’ promise and capability in a way that is easy to understand and remember. 

A System for Data and Legal Discovery

As eDiscovery providers expand their offerings’ depth and breadth, they need to address digital data discovery throughout the information lifecycle, from data creation to destruction.

From an eDiscovery provider’s perspective, this information life cycle continuum consists of both data discovery and legal discovery functions.

  • Data Discovery is exploring patterns and trends within data to uncover insight and drive action.
  • Legal Discovery is identifying, preserving, collecting, processing, searching, reviewing, and producing ESI that may be related to civil, criminal, or regulatory matters. 

In organizing an offering framework for branding through the lens of data discovery and legal discovery, representing the framework as a system (or platform) may be a reasonable approach to presenting the offering framework’s parts.

  • Definition of System: An organized collection of parts.

In describing an offering framework for branding through the lens of a system, the descriptive term conquest may be a reasonable example name for a concept brand that can be used to model and share how to communicate the promise of a brand and its offerings concisely.

  • Definition of Conquest: The overcoming of weakness.
  • Definition of Concept Brand: A brand created primarily for pulling together the promise and capabilities of a group of offerings into an identity more significant than any given individual offering delivered under that brand name. 

In further representing the promise of a brand and its offerings, introducing the ideas of insight and intelligence as features (promise) may be a reasonable approach.

  • Definition of Insight: Understanding cause and effect based on identifying relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario.
  • Definition of Intelligence: The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skill.

In translating the high-level framework elements of data discovery, legal discovery, a collection of parts (system), the overcoming of weakness (conquest), insight, and intelligence, into a short and understandable description, an illustrative concept brand description for an eDiscovery provider and its portfolio of offerings might be represented in the following fictional example.  

Description: Conquest for Discovery is a data and legal discovery system that provides insight and intelligence from digital data to support audits, investigations, and litigation.

  • Conquest for Discovery = Primary Branding
  • Data and Legal Discovery = Continuum of Offerings
  • Insight and Intelligence = Promise of the Brand
  • Audits, Investigations, and Litigation = Focus of Offerings
  • Digital Data (Electronically Stored Information) = Target of Offering Capabilities

In further developing and naming the discrete yet connected collection of offerings of this example concept brand of Conquest for Discovery, the following descriptors may be reasonable for concisely describing a set of five overarching system elements (sub-brands) that might make up the underlying structure of the concept brand and its offerings.

  • Educate: Represented as Conquest Educate and consisting of all information and education activities supporting awareness, demand generation, and customer service.
  • Operate: Represented as Conquest Operate and consisting of core offerings in the areas of cybersecurity, data discovery (interrogation, indexing, preservation, and collection), and legal discovery (ingestion, processing, analytics, and review).
  • Protect: Represented as Conquest Protect and consisting of all security, privacy, and information governance-related offerings.
  • Automate: Represented as Conquest Automate and consisting of all automation, AI, and applied sciences activities for cybersecurity, data discovery, and legal discovery offerings.
  • Integrate: Represented as Conquest Integrate and consisting of the packaging and support of all provider capabilities (Educate, Operate, Protect, and Automate) into managed services and managed infrastructure.

A Sub-brand Quick Look: From Concept to Commercialization

The further development of this fictional concept brand requires a general explanation of the individual sub-brands. 

Conquest Educate

The promise of Conquest Educate is that legal and information professionals can have immediate and collaborative access to the latest knowledge and most informed experts available to help translate their aspirational and actual discovery goals into action.

Conquest Educate consists of all information and education activities supporting awareness, demand generation, and customer service and includes the following offerings:

  • Conquest Educate for Corporations 
  • Conquest Educate for Law Firms 
  • Conquest Educate for Consultancies

This sub-brand is organizationally supported by consulting, sales, business development, marketing, and customer service teams.

Conquest Operate

The promise of Conquest Operate is that legal and information professionals can have a complete set of operationalized offerings under their immediate control to address data and legal discovery challenges and opportunities from data creation to destruction.

Conquest Operate consists of the operational delivery and support for cybersecurity, data discovery, and legal discovery offerings, including:

  • Conquest Operate for Cybersecurity
  • Conquest Operate for Forensics (from interrogation to collection)
  • Conquest Operate for Analytics (from ingestion through analytics)
  • Conquest Operate for Review

This sub-brand is organizationally supported by operations, information technology, and project management teams. 

Conquest Protect

The promise of Conquest Protect is that legal and information professionals can have the tools, techniques, and talent immediately available to address security, privacy, information governance risks and opportunities.

Conquest Protect consists of all security, privacy, and information governance-related offerings, including:

  • Conquest Protect for Cyber Risk
  • Conquest Protect for Information Governance
  • Conquest Protect for Managed Security

This sub-brand is organizationally supported by information security and information technology teams. 

Conquest Automate

The promise of Conquest Automate is that legal and information professionals can have the ability to intelligently automate discovery, review, and security efforts for increased efficiency, accuracy, and understanding in data and legal discovery.

Conquest Automate consists of all automation, AI, and applied sciences activities for discovery, review, and security-related offerings.

  • Conquest Automate for Discovery (Forensics and Analytics)
  • Conquest Automate for Review
  • Conquest Automate for Security

This sub-brand is organizationally supported by research and development and information technology teams. 

Conquest Integrate

The promise of Conquest Integrate is that legal and information professionals can have a complete and configurable set of managed services that enable them to entirely focus on data and legal discovery without being fettered by the delivery and management of technology and teams.

Conquest Integrate consists of the packaging and support of all offering capabilities into managed services and managed infrastructure.

  • Conquest Integrate for Discovery (Managed Services for Discovery)
  • Conquest Integrate for Review (Managed Services for Review)
  • Conquest Integrate for Infrastructure (Managed Services for Infrastructure)
  • Conquest Integrate for Security (Managed Services for Security)

This sub-brand is organizationally supported by all provider functional areas, including consulting, sales, business development, marketing, customer service, operations, project management, information security, and information technology teams. 


Table: Example Concept Brand and Sub-brand Roll Up

Example Concept Branding – Conquest for Discovery

Given the potential for overlapping offering areas between sub-brands, it isn’t easy to harmonize all elements of all offerings across all sub-brands perfectly. However, the approach represented in Conquest for Discovery sub-brands depicts one method for addressing the difficult challenge of offering normalization across the breadth and depth of a comprehensive eDiscovery-centric brand. 

Conquest for Discovery: A Concept Brand Reprise

Conquest for Discovery is a data and legal discovery system that provides insight and intelligence from digital data to support audits, investigations, and investigations.

The concept brand and sub-branding for Conquest for Discovery may provide a complete framework to package and present the current and future capabilities and offerings of a full-service eDiscovery provider.

Applications, enablers, and programs currently offered by a provider should be able to be reasonably be rolled up as offering components that support the delivery of sub-brand offerings.

The concept brand and sub-branding approach example represented in Conquest for Discovery should allow for the alignment of brand, sub-brands, and organizational functional areas to support a highly synchronized approach to driving awareness and revenue.

The concept brand approach provides the framework and structure for a vision that can help drive the internal organization and external understanding of a provider’s offerings to create both real and perceived value for the provider and its offerings in data and legal discovery professionals’ eyes.

Additional Reading

Source: ComplexDiscovery

 

Generative Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Model Use

ComplexDiscovery OÜ recognizes the value of GAI and LLM tools in streamlining content creation processes and enhancing the overall quality of its research, writing, and editing efforts. To this end, ComplexDiscovery OÜ regularly employs GAI tools, including ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney, and DALL-E, to assist, augment, and accelerate the development and publication of both new and revised content in posts and pages published (initiated in late 2022).

ComplexDiscovery also provides a ChatGPT-powered AI article assistant for its users. This feature leverages LLM capabilities to generate relevant and valuable insights related to specific page and post content published on ComplexDiscovery.com. By offering this AI-driven service, ComplexDiscovery OÜ aims to create a more interactive and engaging experience for its users, while highlighting the importance of responsible and ethical use of GAI and LLM technologies.

 

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