Intranet Journal
The online resource for intranet professionals

Centralized or Decentralized Authoring?

When implementing a new enterprise-wide content management system (CMS), most businesses assume a decentralized model of authoring.

This devolves the responsibility for creating content back to individual staff members within the business units.

While this is seen as an effective way of reducing costs and increasing involvement, it is not without its challenges and risks.

In practice, neither centralized or decentralized authoring is the single answer to all requirements.

To gain the best business outcomes, it is necessary to use both models where appropriate, with a full understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.

Decentralized authoring

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Content for the intranet or corporate website is 'owned' by a number of different business groups within the organisation. It therefore makes sense to give them the direct responsibility for updating their information.

In this decentralized approach, the authors are scattered throughout different departments, all feeding information into the content management system.

Advantages

• Harnesses the efforts of many authors.
• Content creation costs and resources are spread more evenly throughout the organisation.
• Makes the content owners responsible for their own information.
• Reduces the need for a large centralized authoring team.
• Integrates content creation into the daily activities of the business.
• May provide more up-to-date content.

There is no one correct answer: both centralized and decentralized authoring have a role to play in an organisation

Disadvantages

• Extensive workflow is a pre-requisite.
• Large number of users to be trained.
• Challenges in motivating staff.
• Considerable change management effort required.
• Authors must juggle using the CMS with their other responsibilities.
• Overall co-ordination is more difficult.
• Many workstations to be configured with the CMS software.
• Higher licensing costs for CMS software.

Workflow

Comprehensive workflow is critical to the success of the decentralized authoring approach. Using workflow, order can be brought to the writing and publishing process, despite the scattered group of authors.

The most important step of the workflow is the final review and approval. This must be setup so that all published content is vetted against corporate standards.

This is particularly important for content to be published on the corporate website. Incorrect or inappropriate content exposes the business to substantial risks and liability.

Do not underestimate the effort required to setup workflow rules in an enterprise-wide CMS.

Training and change management

If decentralized authoring is to deliver promised benefits, it must be both used and supported by staff.

This is no small challenge when potentially hundreds of users across the business will be creating content.

Considerable resources must therefore be devoted to the establishment of workable processes, and providing sufficient end-user training.

Change management activities will also be necessary to eliminate the natural resistance to change within an organisation. This includes clear communication of the goals of the project, and ongoing updates on progress and issues.

Finally, trust and respect must be established between the owners of the content management system and the authors. Without this, staff will be reluctant to embrace the added responsibility and workload that decentralized authoring required.

Staff will not make time to write content, unless you give them a reason to do so

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