Content management systems (CMS), once the province of mega-corporations, now have the smarts and the price tag to make them an off the shelf option for local businesses needing to tame out-of-control information. Although most companies churn out copious quantities of content, to date many have lacked the discipline (or the budget) to install management systems to make sense of it all.

And as they move beyond brochure-ware to dynamic content for their web sites, the pressure is on to ensure data is accessible, accurate and easy to get at. Turning information into a valuable competitive commodity to enhance the user experience at intranets, extranets and web sites remains a major challenge, and inaccurate or inconsistent information can undermine customer confidence.

Content defined

So what exactly is content? The short answer is it embraces anything from product catalogues to internal manuals, workflow information, brochures, news, discussion groups, white papers, newsletters, customer information including web pages, text, spreadsheets, and audio and video files. A good web site presents a virtual view of a business, allowing customers to instantly know who they’re dealing with. It should include goods and services offered, business partners, and contact details. If your business regularly needs to change the information it presents to clients, your content is referred to as ‘dynamic’. Dynamic sites need regular updates - reflecting altered pricing, other offers and relevant information.

Why manage it?

A cursory look over how a business manages its content may leave many managers asking questions of a ‘why bother’ nature.

After all, we all shuffle a bit of paper in our working lives, so what’s the big deal? What most managers don’t realise however, is exactly how much working time is spent on the process. Studies reveal that the average corporate employee spends 25 to 35% of their time searching for information to do their job. “Our ability to create information has substantially outpaced our ability to retrieve relevant information,” claims a 2002 Delphi Group report.

The arrival of the internet - allowing multiple media types to coexist on a single medium - has only served to heighten concerns.

Errors can be costly. Consider the case of a US PC retailer recently, that printed an incorrect price online and was forced to honour the wrong price – losing thousands in the process.

CMS evolution

So what type of content management solutions are these companies adopting? A little history first. Early CMS offerings like Vignette and Interwoven sold for up to $500,000 - which kept them out of reach for most New Zealand businesses. The next wave of CMS products enabled companies to manage more of their own content in-house - but still left many businesses highly dependent on vendors - as after implementing one of these $100-$200,000 packages, the cost of installation, integration, customising, hardware and networking was prohibitive for most.

In the past 18 months however, new developments in CMS has seen the launch of a number of smarter, faster, easier to use and more affordable off-theshelf content management systems – well suited for small to medium sized businesses.

Dealing with existing data

If you’re one of these small to medium businesses, you probably already have a great deal of existing information. And while it would be ideal to start with a clean slate, the reality is most organisations have historical content from a variety of sources stored in disparate repositories like databases or older web sites.

At Straker Interactive, CEO Merryn Goble says businesses need a base organisational structure for their internet, intranet or extranet site that also allows them to pull information out of legacy systems. Straker is the purveyor of Shado, a locally developed CMS written in ColdFusion MX, geared to create and manage rich media and integrate legacy applications, site performance reporting and a style sheet-controlled editor. It is XHTML compliant, which means it can also deliver content for PDAs and WAP.

An object oriented programming application, Shado is used by over 60 organisations in NZ, the UK and Australia. It comes with a number of pre-build modules and can open up the whole communications process as a series of web services by default. The code generated for building one application can be used many times making life much easier for the web master. “Shado can act as a form builder for a web master at the lowest level,” says Goble. “Or at a more complex level it can create any level of application you want, retrieve data out of a legacy system or communicate with XM.”

At Microsoft, application platform manager Tom Crozier says even with open standards and protocols including XML, converting documents to a new system can still be complex - and content management systems have been tough to integrate with office productivity tools. He says customers demanding closer integration will be impressed with project Jupiter, however (beginning later this year), which will bring together Biztalk Server, Content Management Server, Commerce Server and Host Integration Server.

Scoping your CMS solution

First thing to remember is ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’. So don’t be hung up on how you think it should be, instead, allow vendors free range to come up with ideas – as the solution may be far simpler than you think. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a plan however, as without a well-defined content plan, evaluating a CMS could prove disastrous.

Before you decide what vendor solution to opt for, you need to ask yourself – what is the business reason for this content? Rather than developing more content, the process towards a CMS should actually help you trim the amount of content your organisation generates. Be prepared to spend considerable time scoping your solution, and when discussing your needs with vendors, steer clear of jargon, as CMS is still a developing field with terminology not necessarily common amongst all vendors. Ask vendors for written proposals, references and demonstrations that are applicable to your business.

A business case based on a detailed inventory of data is a prerequisite. Conduct a survey of the information you’ll publish using the CMS. The nature of this content will influence the functionality required. Figure out what you’ve got, where it is, and what you want to do with it.

September 2003

By Keith Newman

Every business is different so there isn’t a single CMS checklist that’s right for everybody. However, when considering the type of solution to opt for, three phases of the content management workflow process should be considered;

1) Content creation
In the past, responsibility for content has typically belonged to a web master - usually a technical specialist. A good content management system bypasses the need for expensive technicians, however, as many off-the-shelf systems allow content to be written, submitted and updated by any number of authors – without technical programming skills. But while the cost of having technical staff publishing web content has gone down, correspondingly an increase in the number of contributors presents the risk of an incorrect, inconsistent, or untimely release of information. A guide here is to look to the publishing industry, where magazines and newspapers have editors responsible for what is ultimately printed. It would be wise to mirror this ‘editor’ model in your content management solution. workflow, version and time controls, analysis and reporting.

2) Content management
This is the heart of the matter - a central information store, with the tools for managing the content At the most complex end you may require a content management architecture or data-modeling framework, detailing how data should be entered, presented and managed. Before you make your purchase outline the type and number of users, how quickly you want documents published and in what format, whether you will need multimedia capabilities and what level of integration is needed to get everything talking. Like any publishing effort you must also clearly identify who your audience is. Content management should facilitate easy creation, storage, management and online publishing for an organisation delivering lots of information to staff, partners or customers.

Options for CMS include customised departmental or enterprise-wide solutions or off-the-shelf software that converts and integrates using a common format such as XML. Some web-based packages are effectively ‘rented’ through an application service provider (ASP) to keep costs down and avoid loading software onto each desktop system. A CMS should be web-based, user friendly and decentralised so authors in multiple locations can be responsible for publishing and maintaining content based on template and design standards.

Recommended functionality: Secure access, dynamic page control, document conversion, content approval and workflow, version and time controls, analysis and reporting.

3) Publishing
How will your content reach its intended audience - hard copy, web sites, electronic news letters, or email? The publishing engine takes the stored content and generates the final pages. This is the most important part of the entire content management process – as while you’re fully aware of all the work that’s gone into the ‘bank-end’, from your customers point of view, what’s ultimately published is all they ever see. Again, the print publishing business is a good benchmark. Style sheets detail how content is written. For example, Time magazine reads differently to New Idea, which reads differently to the Reader’s Digest. Publications tend to have an over riding tone. You will need to be sure of your company’s tone. And also, like magazines, your content should be presented in a consistent design style using web page templates.