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Technology
Content Management
Without the right technology aggregating massive amounts of information within an organization is maddening.
Marketing bulldog John Doe, a vice president of Company X, is in pain. Rhonda from IT just called. "Our servers are full; there's not enough room to store the multimedia demos." Product managers are clamoring to get copy and images for new products up on the Web—today. Sales wants to know, "Why aren't we personalizing our promotions like our competitors are?" Europe's latest complaint: they don't have the latest datasheets to translate. And here's Doe—in the middle of budget planning—wondering how to meet all these demands.
The agony Doe feels centers around his inability to get his arms around the company's content—text, images, and media. Not its data, the typical stuff that IT deals with in a few waves of their magic wand. Its unstructured, unruly, sometimes staggering in size, and constantly changing content. And this content just happens to be critical to delivering his marketing message and achieving the company's strategic goals.
Doe's dilemma is not unique. He often commiserates with his cohorts in training, documentation, technical support, and human resources. They share war stories of how information overload is bogging them down. "Who can ever find anything on those ser-vers? It's like a giant rat's nest," sighs Sara from HR.
Doe is spurred to action. He knows content problems are costing the company money. Having heard about systems that address these problems, Doe brings the idea of a content management system (CMS) to the executive team.
CEO Richard Sellen is initially hesitant, but the evidence is clear: content is key to the company's business objectives.
Sellen anoints Doe as content management champion—not an easy job since hundreds of content management technology solutions have appeared over the past five years.
The systems have names that are an alphabet soup of acronyms—WCM, DM, DAM, and ECM.
Web content management (WCM) systems are designed for creating, storing, and publishing content for Web sites (including public sites, intranets, and extranets). Document management (DM), which has been around longer, helps companies organize and categorize documents—making them easy to find. Digital asset management (DAM) systems specialize in handling images and media. The latest term in the soup bowl is ECM, "enterprise content management," an umbrella term for all of the above with the capacity to scale across an entire enterprise.
Hardware and software makers like StorageTek, based in Louisville, Colo., quickly uncovered the costs and risks associated with storing and managing enterprise content. Far too few companies devote adequate attention to storage before it is too late. According to Pat Martin, StorageTek chairman, president and CEO, "It's a matter of strategy. Simply responding and reacting to storage needs on a tactical basis compounds a storage problem that is already at crisis levels. It is essential to take a strategic approach."
StorageTek sees that content storage needs are reaching a mass and complexity that exceed the bounds of human intervention. Content volumes are growing faster than storage management productivity is improving. Storage managers are expensive and scarce, while storage budgets are flat or shrinking.
Rather than simply adding more and more capacity, StorageTek takes a different approach. Their solution is to improve fundamental cost structures, improve manageability, provide an appropriate level of data protection, and ensure investment protection. Martin goes on to say, "All digital content is not created equal. It follows a life cycle." Content contributes most to revenue generation early in its life cycle. As content ages, its value is reduced.
At every point in the content life cycle, there are opportunities to reduce cost. Effective life cycle management is one of the ways businesses can realize exceptional savings in their IT departments while creating the optimum performance for their content—by putting it in the right place at the right time for the right cost.
One of the forefathers of content management software is Arbortext. Since 1982 this Michigan-based company has provided software solutions to help authors create content in ways that make it most accessible to the systems and people who depend on it. They do so by taking advantage of a format called XML, kind of a second cousin to HTML, the language used to create Web pages.
XML eases the process of sharing content both inside and outside the enterprise. Not only does XML put structure around content—making it easier to find and publish—it enables business systems to actually see and use content that resides within documents.
Long-time Arbortext customer Greg Johnson leads a content management project at Medtronic, the world's leading producer of medical devices. "We've been using Arbortext's editing and publishing tools for years," says Johnson. With content management Medtronic has higher document quality, faster time-to-market, and reduced translation costs. "Being able to get our products out to global audiences quickly has been a key strategic advantage."
The upsides of content management are undeniable, but it carries its share of costs and risks. Some technologies are expensive and only partially proven. The market is littered with vendors and implementers that have gone astray. This makes choosing a vendor tricky.
As Andrew Warzecha, senior vice president of META Group, a leading information technology research and consulting firm, explains: "Players in the content management space will continue to consolidate through 2003. Companies should aggressively evaluate a vendor's long-term viability and strategy before deciding on a system."
Despite the challenges, the rewards of implementing a content manage-ment strategy are enticing. When done right, content management eases content pain. Even more compelling—well-managed content is a key competitive differentiator that can lead companies like Doe's to the head of the pack.
Rita Warren, President of ZiaContent, Inc., is an independent content management consultant based in Seattle, Washington.
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