Content: The Lifeblood of an Organization

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Content The Lifeblood of an Organization
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Introduction

• Organizations create tremendous volumes of
  content to support their products, services, and
  business processes
• How to get content out to the right people at the
  right time and in the right format
• How to publish content in a number of different
  formats and for many different media (such as
  paper, the Web, PDA, and cell phones)
• This chapter introduces
• Concept of unifying content within an
  organization
• Causes and effects of the Content Silo Trap
• Components of a unified content strategy

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Content Where does it all come from?
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Sources of Content

• Marketing and public affairs departments
• Targeted to (potential) customers, general
  public, and the press
• Create newsletters, brochures, press releases
• Published in paper, Internet site, intranet site
• HR departments
• Create employee training materials, corporate
  policies, job opening
• Technical publications departments
• User guides, online help, reference documents,
  development guides
• Specification and reference materials for
  frontline support staffs
• Product/service development departments, customer
  service departments, training publications and
  staff

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Multiple Sources of Content May Lead to

• Examples illustrate many possible variations and
  iterations of content, churned into various
  information products, into a number of different
  media, for a number of different people
• Lead to repetition and inconsistency
• A unified content strategy brings together all
  content, so it is managed through a definitive
  source
• Whoever needs information can find and access it
  from the definitive source
• Wherever information is repeated, it is
  consistent
• A challenge in implementing a unified content
  strategy is identifying and breaking the silos

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Understanding the Content Silo Trap
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Content Silo Trap

• Content is created by authors working in
  isolation
• Walls are erected among (even within) content
  areas
• Content is created, and re-created, and
  recreated, often with changes or differences at
  each iteration

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Content Silo Trap
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Content Silo Trap Example

• A company develops a new product
• A design document is created that explains the
  functionality and positioning of the product
• Marketing rewrites that content for product
  launch materials, brochures, press releases, and
  the Web site
• Training group works from the design document and
  works with the product development team to create
  an overview and functionality
• Does not draw on marketing because developed
  simultaneously
• Customer supports work from the design document
  and with the product development team to create
  an overview and functionality

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Content Silo Trap Example (Cont.)

• Three groups have essentially created the same
  content, often multiple times to accommodate
  paper and web requirements
• Every instance of the content is different
  because it has been created by different people
  with different requirements
• Reviewers have to review the content all multiple
  times
• Cost of translation is high
• This organization spent a lot of time, money, and
  resources essentially creating, re-creating, and
  re-creating the same content ? victims of the
  content silo trap

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What Causes Content Silos

• Lack of awareness of other initiatives, shortage
  of time, and inconsistent amount of information
• Authors lack awareness of what others are doing
  elsewhere
• Struggling to get things done
• Information overloading, little or no information
  is actually consumed
• Authors take great pride in the materials they
  create
• Authors lack the tools or time to search out
  existing content, perceiving that it is faster to
  start from scratch
• Unless groups identify the commonality of their
  content, content creating and processes remain
  isolated, making it difficult for content to be
  identified and reused across an organization

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The Effect of Silos

• Poor communication
• Proposal authors may not have time to check with
  product development or engineering to find out
  whether something has changed each time they
  write a proposal
• Lack of sharing
• Can result in inconsistencies, mixed messages to
  the customer, and increased costs of development
  (reinvents the wheel)
• Example. Technical communicators and instruction
  design team may meet with the engineers to create
  their documentation
• Do almost the same task, but documented them
  differently, resulting in confusion for customers
• They have consumed twice as much of the
  engineerss time

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The Effect of Silos (Cont.)

• Reduced awareness of other initiatives
• Within an organization, problems and resolutions
  are rarely restricted to just one area
• Multiple groups may experience the same problem
  and solve them independently
• Duplicating another groups efforts
• An initiative that one group is working on may
  benefit or harm another group
• May result in incompatible technology solutions,
  disparate process changes, and increased costs
• Example. Two groups choose different CM tools,
  but only one can be purchased

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The Effect of Silos (Cont.)

• Lack of standardization and consistency
• When content is created in multiple areas by
  multiple authors, it invariably differs,
  resulting in mixed, or even incorrect messages
• May cause confusion, danger, lawsuit
• Example. Inconsistent or incorrect product
  warning messages
• Higher cost of content creation, management, and
  delivery
• Content users suffer
• When the same, similar, or related information
  exists in multiple places, it often differs in
  content and message. Users cannot tell which one
  is correct

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A Unified Content Strategy
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Overview

• A unified content strategy is a repeatable method
  of
• Identifying all content requirement up front
• Creating consistently structured content for
  reuse
• Managing that content in a definitive source
• Assembling content on demand to meet your
  customers needs
• Start by analyzing audiences, information, needs,
  processes, and technology
• Who needs and uses what information (what content
  needs to be created, for whom and by whom)
• How the information currently supports the users
• How the information is produced

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From the Perspectives of Authors

• Departments and authors need to work together as
  a team to create objects (components) that can be
  assembled in a number of different information
  products, for a number of different delivery
  methods
• Authors create elements (rather than entire
  documents) that are compiled into an information
  product
• Core elements reused across information
  products
• Non-core elements unique to a particular
  information product
• Authors must work on different aspects of the
  core and work together to ensure that all
  information is integrated

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Standards

• Standards have to be defined for content creation
  and display to ensure that when elements are
  compiled into one information product, they are
  written and structured consistently
• The sometimes tedious process of content creation
  is facilitated by standardization and the
  creative process is unleashed to write really
  good content, or to customize it for specific
  customer needs

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Technology

• Technology must be based on business needs
• Support authoring process
• create standard content, store it, automatically
  reuse existing content
• Support customization
• Support automatic routing content through the
  review and publication cycle
• Eliminate the burden on authors
• Automatically provide authors with the reusable
  piece
• A definitive source for content ensures that
  authors are reusing the most current, applicable
  piece of approved content

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Unified Content Benefits

• All benefits come from reusable, consistent,
  coherent,and accurate content
• Faster time to market
• Better use of resources
• Reduced costs
• Improved quality and usability of content
• Increased opportunity to innovate
• Improved workplace satisfaction
• Increased customer satisfaction

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Components of a Unified Content Strategy

• A content management system to manage your
  content in a definitive source
• Reusable content objects that enable you to write
  content once and use it many times
• Unified processes that encourage people to work
  collaboratively, which results in processes that
  are repeatable and transparent, regardless of
  department or author

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Content Management System

• Manage content in a definitive source
• CMS is about the nature of your business and
  content, people, processes, and tools
• Functionality
• Secure access to content (check-in/check-out),
  revision control, reporting, powerful search and
  retrieval mechanism, and metadata
• CMS users
• Authors find and distribute content, ensure that
  the content they are distributing is accurate and
  appropriate
• Organizations support the business needs,
  product or service, and corporate processes
• Customers ensure that they get the right
  content, at the right time, at the right level of
  detail, and in the right format

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Content Management System (Cont.)

• To have a CMS solution, you must
• Analyze your needs (customer, authoring,
  processes, cultural, technological)
• Define your strategy
• Define information models, metadata, templates,
  and stylesheets
• Define workflow (automated processes that support
  your content processes)
• Define content delivery (dynamic content and
  multiple media delivery)

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Reusable Content

• Content reuse write content once and reuse it
  may times
• Reusable content is written as objects or
  elements
• Reusable content is broken down into the smallest
  reusable object
• Documents are made up of content objects that can
  be mixed and matched to meet specific information
  needs
• No copy and paste
• Elements are stored in the database or CM system
  and are referenced (pointed to) for inclusion in
  a virtual document
• Elements can appear in multiple places, but
  reside in only one

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Unified Processes

• A unified content strategy involves people and
  unified (collaborative) processes
• The unified processes must break down the silo
  walls to create a collaborative environment in
  which authors share in the development of content
  to create a single definitive source of
  information
• Ensure that all departments are aware of what
  content exists, all authors can reuse existing
  content automatically, and all processes are
  repeatable and transparent, regardless of which
  department and which authors are following them

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Where does a unified content strategy fit?

• A unified content strategy fits everywhere
  content is used, created, stored, and managed
  throughout an organization
• Customer data
• Web site and e-commerce portal
• Product support and training materials
• Policies and procedures
• Proposals
• Regulatory reports