SmartSuite for the Communications Director

Campaign Planning & Management holds the editorial calendar, content plans and messaging workflows with an owner and a date on every item, so the week's announcements and their status are visible without a stand-up.

Functions submit communication requests through a structured intake form that prioritizes them, so the HR Operations Manager's policy announcement and a product launch queue in the same place.

Content & Asset Management keeps drafts, approved versions and brand assets with the piece they belong to, so the Marketing Operations Manager and you work from the same approved materials.

Statements route to the General Counsel, brand and compliance reviewers in a defined order with version history, so the version that goes out is the one every reviewer actually approved.

During a crisis, holding statements and stakeholder updates are logged in the Crisis Management incident record alongside the Crisis Management Lead's actions, so communications and response share one timeline.

Crisis communication playbooks, escalation paths and response workflows are maintained centrally and reviewed on a cycle, so the first hour of an incident runs on an approved plan rather than improvisation.

Completion of communication plans and campaign performance are tracked on dashboards, so your report to the Chief Executive Officer shows what landed rather than what was scheduled.

Versions, approvals, comments and timings are retained for every statement, so when a disclosure deadline or a regulator's question requires proof of who approved what and when, it is already recorded.

Role-based permissions keep embargoed announcements and incident statements visible only to the writers, reviewers and executives involved, which matters when a statement moves markets or concerns patients.

Chief Executive Officer

The Communications Director leads corporate and internal communications: the communications strategy and messaging, press, public relations and executive communications, internal communications and announcements, crisis and incident communications with the crisis lead, the legal, brand and compliance reviews of statements, and the measurement of reach and sentiment. In SmartSuite that work is planned in Campaign Planning & Management, its content kept in Content & Asset Management and its crisis side run in Crisis Management.

SmartSuite plans communications with calendars, owners and approval workflows in Campaign Planning & Management, so the director can see what is going out, when, who owns it and whether it has been approved. Internal announcements and external campaigns sit on the same calendar, which prevents a press statement colliding with an internal announcement that says something different, and the Marketing Operations Manager and HR Operations Manager plan their communications in the same place.

Statements are routed through legal, brand and compliance review with version history, so the director can show which version the General Counsel approved and what changed afterwards. Content & Asset Management holds the drafts, approved copy and assets, and reviewers see the statement they are asked to clear rather than a chain of email attachments. For listed and regulated organizations that record is what disclosure rules expect to exist.

During an incident the director's crisis communications and stakeholder updates are logged in the incident record in Crisis Management, so the Crisis Management Lead and the response team see what has been said to whom and when. Each statement goes through the same review route as normal communications, under time pressure, and the record is what the organization relies on afterwards when regulators or the board ask what was communicated and when.

SmartSuite reports the completion of communication plans and campaign performance, and reach and sentiment figures from your monitoring and analytics tools can be recorded against each campaign, so the director reports to the Chief Executive Officer on what was planned, what went out and how it landed from one record. Plans that slipped or statements that were held in review are visible alongside the results, which is the picture needed to decide where communications capacity should go next and to work with the Social Impact Manager on the programs that need visibility.

New customers can start with SmartSuite Onboarding, a guided four-week program around one or two priority workflows. For communications the first workflow is the calendar and approval route: load the communications calendar for the period, the approval route for statements and the stakeholders the crisis plan must reach. Existing content and brand assets go into Content & Asset Management as they are used. Because legal, marketing and HR review and plan in the same system, the approvals that keep statements accurate stop depending on who was copied on an email.