What seems to get lost with the focus on technology is the content. Not just any content, but useful content.
We've all heard of the age-old phrase 'garbage in, garbage out'. Never more than before, this applies to many
content management solutions.
Installing a CMS
Most large organisations are now installing a content management system (CMS).
This is driven by the growing recognition that businesses generate huge volumes of information, and this must be
made available to staff, when and where they need it.
A content management system also underpins most large corporate websites, which have grown into huge storehouses of
information.
Requirements?
Few organisations ask themselves the question: what do we want to achieve by installing a CMS?
The fundamental challenge being addressed is: how to get the right information to the right people, at the right time.
This leads to two specific questions:
- What information does the business need?
- What technology should be used to manage this information?
Most CMS projects only look at the second question, and completely overlook the first.
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Why spend millions on managing content that no-one understands or needs?
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Garbage in, garbage out
Large organisations are awash with printed manuals sitting on dusty shelves, and hastily written word documents.
Typically, a CMS is seen as a way of more efficiently publishing this onto the intranet or website.
What does this gain? If the printed manuals were serving their purpose, there would be no need for a CMS. Likewise,
most documents written are unreadable, or of little interest.
Simply pouring this material into the 'in tray' of a CMS decreases organisational efficiency, instead of improving
it.
What about the content creators?
Without content creators, there would be no need for a CMS. Yet surprisingly, this user group is often the worst
served by a new content management system.
Most large content management systems provide extensive support for versioning, workflow, job tracking and
publishing. Unfortunately, the tools provided for authors are limited and weak.
This is a critical problem. After all, if creating content isn't easy and efficient, it simply won't happen.
The problems with inadequate authoring support grow exponentially as content is added.
Solutions
Identify business needs
What is the system actually for? Implementing a content management system is not a business goal in itself, merely
a means to an end.
Don't take a single step in the project until you have identified what business problems the CMS is meant to solve,
and what strategic benefits it will help to achieve.
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Some simple, practical steps will ensure that you get the best business benefits out of your new CMS
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Talk to your users
This is the simplest and quickest way to find out what your staff need: ask them!
Once you prove that you are willing to act on their feedback, you will find them an invaluable source of
information on the real information needs of your organisation.
Rewrite content
Plan to rewrite all of your existing paper manuals. This is a large job (potentially several man-years of work). It
is also the biggest source of productivity and process improvements.
Professional writers
Use professional technical writers and editors.
This cannot be overstated: writing well is hard. You would not enlist end users to create code; why should you
expect them to write polished, effective content?
Quality not quantity
In many organisations, users are so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available, they are unable to
find the single fact they are looking for.
There is a simple solution: give the users less, but better, information. Most of the information on large
corporate intranets is junk. Delete or archive it.
Distil and summarise the useful information, and present this in a succinct form: a hundred pages can replace a
thousand.
Structure and navigation
How will your users find the piece of information they need? A thousand pages of content are worthless if there is
no structure or navigation.
While a search engine provides a partial solution, users require consistency and extensive cross-linking.
Use an information architect and professional indexer to construct a workable structure for your content.
Workflow and review
There must also be a sufficiently rigorous workflow and review process to ensure quality. This is vital when there
is legal exposure in every page published.
This can be simply achieved if there is a single dedicated authoring team. There are many other benefits in setting
up such a structure.
If a 'decentralised' authoring process is implemented, the challenges of ensuring quality and consistency grow
markedly.
Ensure workflow and review processes are in place before your CMS goes live. Once errors creep into the information
repository, it is very hard to identify and eliminate them.
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Author
James Robertson is the managing director of Step Two Designs, an online development company based in Sydney, Australia. James specialises in XML development, information management and systems design.
If you have any comments on this article, please send them to:
jamesr@steptwo.com.au.
Copyright 2001, Step Two Designs Pty Ltd. All rights reserved.