Centralized or Decentralized Authoring? - Page 3

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Case studies

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This section outlines typical business situations, and appropriate authoring solutions. These are only generalisations, however: draw your own conclusions based on your specific business requirements.

Intranet

By definition, intranet content will only be read by internal staff. It is therefore more important that the information is comprehensive and up-to-date, rather than being perfectly written or structured.

For this reason, much of the intranet content can be created using a decentralized model. This supports rapid turnaround, and allows each section of the intranet to be directly managed by the business owner.

There is still, however, a requirement for a central 'intranet team', who is responsible for the overall management of the intranet.

This team should consist of:

• technical writers or editors
• professional indexer or librarian
• information architect
• web designer
• technical staff and developers
• graphic artist
• They are responsible for tasks such as:
• creating the intranet style guide
• managing indexing and searching
• ensuring consistency across all sections of the intranet
• editing key content for clarity
• developing page layouts and designs
• overall information architecture
• managing linking between topics
• ongoing intranet development and improvement
• systems administration tasks

Your corporate website brings as many risks as it does rewards

Internet

The corporate website is one of the most visible faces of the organisation. Any information published to it exposes the business to a certain level of risk, whether it be an incorrect price, or legal liability for misleading information.

With the growth of e-commerce, the need for quality control processes has become even greater.

While a decentralized authoring model may be used to create the first-draft content, all material must pass through rigorous editing, review and sign-off.

With some pages drawing information from many different business units, there is value in using a centralized team for the more complex authoring tasks.

Either way, a centralized team must mange the website as a whole. Their responsibilities include those listed for the intranet team, plus:

• Ensuring corporate branding is maintained.
• Meeting marketing and advertising goals.
• Ensuring a universally high standard of writing across the site.
• Ensuring the website is usable.
• Managing site structure, architecture and linking.

While a content management system can do much to streamline the maintenance of a corporate website, it will only succeed if due attention is given to quality control issues.

Business documents

The many thousands of business documents created every year within an organisation present a clear case for decentralized authoring.

These documents include reports, plans, technical notes, and the like. They are produced using desktop applications (such as Word, Excel, etc), and must be easily published to the intranet.

By establishing a simple import process, staff can self-publish their material into the CMS. In some cases, the workflow may be as simple as obtaining appropriate sign-off from the staff person's team leader or manager.

The only danger is that intranet users will become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available.

To avoid this, ensure that all content is appropriately indexed, and that a comprehensive site structure allows effective browsing and searching.

The easier it is to publish content to the intranet, the harder it is for users to find it

Complex manuals

There normally exists within a large organisation several very large documents, such as policy and procedures manuals.

These capture the core of the business' knowledge, and are complex and highly structured.

With business decisions and advice to customers being made based on these documents, it is critical that they are both accurate and comprehensive.

Updating the documents is no easy task, and issues of information architecture and usability must be addressed.

For these reasons, such manuals should be managed by a central team of professional writers. Working closely with subject matter experts, this team can ensure that documentation challenges are met and overcome.

Conclusion

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Centralized and decentralized authoring both have their strengths and weaknesses. The first step to building a successful CMS solution is understanding these issues, and how they impact on your business requirements.

Only then can an efficient, cost-effective and viable solution be designed. Within a large organisation, this will consist of a hybrid of both centralized and decentralized authoring.

In this way, the quality control of a centralized team can be supported by the wide-spread resources of decentralized authors.

About the author

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If you have any comments on this article, please send them to:
jamesr@steptwo.com.au

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