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Content Management Value-Proposition

On the evolution of the role of content in organizations and the positioning of specialized content teams to deliver end-to-end content services

 

Prasanna Lal Das

February 20, 2005

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1      Executive Summary. 3

1.1       Key aspects of the content management value-proposition. 3

1.2       A note on Knowledge Management 5

1.3       A note about this paper, metrics, and next steps. 6

2      The strategic position of content management 7

3      Business drivers for content management 9

3.1       Content and SOX.. 9

3.2       Content and Six Sigma. 10

3.3       In the self-serve world. 11

3.4       Content management and BCP. 11

4      Industry trends in content management 13

5      Checklist of generic content management benefits. 14

6      Specialized content team’s competitive advantage. 16

6.1       Content management as a specialized skill 16

6.2       Value-additions during content processes. 17

6.3       Support from larger knowledge support infrastructure. 19

6.4       Cost 20

7      List of potential content management services. 21

7.1       Business knowledge mapping. 21

7.2       Content design. 22

7.3       Documentation needs analysis. 22

7.4       Documentation/technical writing. 22

7.5       Testing. 23

7.6       Editing. 23

7.7       Publication. 24

7.8       Maintenance. 24

7.9       Content migration. 24

8      A final note on content governance. 26

9      References. 28

1         Executive Summary

Content development, or documentation, as it is popularly and perhaps imprecisely described, is a key aspect of knowledge sharing, in both private and not-for-profit organizations, and one that is widely practiced in many organizations. It is however often viewed as an unglamorous, tertiary role, with organizations content to assign content development to ad hoc teams, or to subject mater experts, whose core competence isn’t necessarily content development.

The following paper sets out the value-proposition that specialized content teams can deliver to organizations, both in the private and the non-profit sectors. For far too long, content development has been seen as a support function with little strategic value; this paper argues that content development teams must now step up to play the role of partners in organizational success.

The key objectives of this paper are to –

• Describe the evolving nature of content requirements in today’s rapidly changing business environment (most of which are applicable to development and private sectors alike), and the corresponding expansion in the range of content services available to organizations
  
• Present content development as a specialized role and highlight the advantages that specialized teams offer over ‘drive-through’ content teams
  
• Present a list of services that organizations must ask their content teams to deliver (this is especially important as organizations often have a very limited understanding of what content teams can deliver; the understanding is mostly limited to humdrum catchwords like documentation or editing, or dazzling conceits like information infrastructure, without any real concern about the quality of content, and the big picture)

Please note that content management in this paper refers to the creation and publication process of content (or the front-end, or the ‘human’ aspects, of content management), rather than application development (or the back-end aspect of content management – this is another sense in which the term is commonly used in the industry, though not in this paper).

1.1      Key aspects of the content management value-proposition

Some key aspects of the value-proposition described in the paper are –

1. Content services have become more critical than ever due to the changed business landscape –
1. The ability to manage content is a crucial component of Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) compliance, and expertise in building content can be a competitive advantage in the SOX scenario. Gartner estimates that companies with poor content management are likely to spend at least 3 times as much on compliance per year as those with good records management
2. Effective content management is one of the key success factors in the long-term success of quality initiatives like Six Sigma
3. Content management is also a key constituent of organizational initiatives like Business Continuity Planning that have assumed greater significance lately
4. Organizations are rapidly moving towards a self-serve paradigm while deploying enterprise wide applications; intelligent content must inevitably be built into such applications. Self-service can save organizations as much as 35%, according to Gartner
   
   
2. Organizations are paying greater attention to content management than ever before due to emerging trends like –
1. The rise of content-centric business applications
2. The need to move towards second generation websites (as evidenced by the move towards database driven ‘knowledge bases’ in most organizations)
3. The emphasis on usability, minus which organizations are unable to derive full benefit from their application deployment
   
   
3. The impact of strong content management is felt in several areas in an organization, some of which may not be directly linked with the content produced. Some areas affected by content are –
1. Service desks, as call volumes decline
2. Training, as formal training becomes less necessary
3. Expertise management, especially significant as workforces become less stable
4. Collaboration, to help knowledge and innovation mingle better
5. Logistics, as many costs are cut out of the knowledge chain
   
   
4. Content is a specialized role and organizations must not fall into the trap of creating ad-hoc or ‘drive-through’ content teams to meet seemingly short-term content needs
1. Specialized content teams not only deliver better quality content at a faster pace, but are also necessary for the long-term maintenance of content
2. Decentralization of documentation production leads to overlaps, redundancies, inconsistencies, overload, and user confusion
3. Drive-through content teams reduce the ability of organizations to benefit from their subject matter experts who are forced to spend time in ad hoc content initiatives rather than in their core expertise areas
   
   
5. While acknowledging that content has graduated from being a support function to being a partner is the success of compliant, efficient organizations, organizations must follow rigorous content governance principles to maximize the value of their content investments
1. Improper content management can lead to content clutter as new tools and applications, rather than processes, proliferate in organizations.
2. Content governance can pay for itself. A technology infrastructure manufacturer was able to eliminate 2000 intranet sites within one year of the launch of its governance initiative. The company was also able to decommission 24 applications that led to an estimated saving of $8 million
   
   
6. In-house content teams can deliver their content services in an extremely competitive fashion and their services may compare favorably when benchmarked against the industry. Some benchmarking metrics to consider include –
1. The value of the existing business knowledge versus the investment required were external providers to supply similar services
2. Processes created and solidified while delivering extensive projects within the organization, and the corresponding ability to add value at each stage of a document’s lifecycle
3. Collaboration with other knowledge support teams within the organization to create a complete cycle of support
4. Cost – an obvious, though sometimes uncritical advantage
   
   
7. Content teams must deliver a complete range of content services to an organization (and not just documentation/editing support or brochures/manuals). These services include –
1. Business knowledge mapping
2. Content design
3. Documentation needs analysis
4. Authoring/technical writing
5. Testing
6. Editing
7. Publication
8. Maintenance
9. Content migration

1.2      A note on Knowledge Management

While the current paper focuses almost exclusively on the content management aspect of KM, it is also important to consider some of the standard benefits of knowledge management, which have not necessarily been explicitly covered in this paper. Some standard benefits include –

1. Organizations compete increasingly on the base of knowledge (the only sustainable competitive advantage, according to some); KM is vital to take the right knowledge to the right person at the right time
   
   
2. Most of our work is information based (and often immersed in a computing environment); KM systems are often critical to help users deal with information overload and make sense of the mass of data around them
   
   
3. Our products, services, and environment are more complex than ever before; without the right KM support, organizational support overheads go up tremendously
   
   
4. Workforces are increasingly unstable leading to escalating demands for knowledge replacement/acquisition. Organizations without the right KM frameworks run risks like –
1. Knowledge loss when staff moves
2. Knowledge stagnation if new practices are not shared/updated
3. Knowledge centralization in individuals, with attendant impact on productivity

1.3      A note about this paper, metrics, and next steps

This is the first part of a two-part paper to quantify the value-proposition that specialized content teams can deliver. The focus of this paper, as outlined above, is exclusively on content management services, and there too the emphasis is on the strategic and informational aspects of KM rather than on a more direct cost/benefit analysis of the impact of KM projects. The second part of the paper will however focus on metrics like –

1. Quantifiable impact on user base – possibly through a survey to measure the impact of a few KM/Content Management projects
   
   
2. Transactional cost measurements like –
1. Is the transactional cost of performing documented operations lower than that of undocumented, or poorly documented ones
2. Does poor documentation lead to increase in ‘indirect costs’ like waste of expert resources through improper use of their time performing unplanned support activities within their groups; what is the cost of such wastage
3. Do communication costs (and timelines) go up in the absence of properly maintained documentation
   
   
3. Less tangible measurements like –
1. How does content design impact usability and user satisfaction
   
   
4. Business questions like the potential redefinition of roles of specialized content teams (as they gear up to play a more strategic role)

These questions will be examined in a subsequent paper.

2         The strategic position of content management

Let us start by describing the strategic position of content management services, as illustrated in the diagram below.

Content management, which refers to a span of services right from document conception to post-publication maintenance/archival, lies right in the middle of a range of business needs –

1. Business drivers like SOX, Six Sigma, BCP, and self-service all require content management as a crucial success factor
   
2. Emerging trends in the industry like the rapid growth of self-service applications, the demand for second generation websites, and the growing attention being paid to usability in applications, call for organizations to develop specialized content teams (or ‘content competency centers’, as Forrester puts it)
   
3. Content management delivers a slew of traditionally understood standard benefits in training, collaboration, expertise management, logistics, and on service desks

Specialized content teams must deliver all of the above in an extremely competitive fashion with organizational benefits like –

• Cost – the team should deliver its services more economically than comparable organizations
• Process – the team must define a process that creates significant value during each stage of a document’s lifecycle
• Collaboration – the team must pull from other knowledge support operations within the organization like the service desk, communications, and training to create the complete cycle of knowledge support

• End-to-end services – the team should deliver the complete range of content services, rather than merely documentation, which is how many content team describe their ambit

• Governance – the team should implement governance as a key aspect of content management strategy

Each of the facets above is examined in greater detail later in the paper.

3         Business drivers for content management

Professional content management has acquired greater significance in light of business changes sweeping through industry today. It is now more important than ever to produce structured and compliant content as both a competitive advantage (and business sustenance practice) and as a legal requirement. The following business drivers have been examined in the section below –

1. SOX, and the need for compliance
2. Six Sigma, as a long-term initiative in an enterprise-wide context
3. BCP planning and the role of content
4. The emphasis on self-serve in businesses

3.1      Content and SOX

Gartner predicted at the start of 2004 that ‘compliance requirements will account for 50 percent of spending on content and business process management systems beginning in 2004’. The prediction was inspired by the compliance consciousness sweeping corporate America in the wake of the Enron collapse, which led to the formulation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), designed to reduce fraud and conflict of interest and increase financial transparency. The first step in SOX requires the auditing of internal processes for financial statements. The next step mandates rapid disclosure of financial information.

Content management plays a vital role in both steps and becomes a crucial aspect in SOX implementation from at least two perspectives –

1. The ability to control content is a key measure to reduce risk – recent stock market scandals have shown that unstructured, and poorly managed record keeping systems like emails can pose significant legal risks, leave misleading audit trails, and hamper automation quality. The risk is equally true for both private and non-profit organizations, though the latter may have been comparatively slow in responding to it. Gartner estimates that companies with poor content management are likely to spend at least 3 times as much on compliance per year as those with good records management. It is thus incumbent upon organizations to subject all content, structured or unstructured, to the same management and quality principles as standard business content.

2. The expertise in building content can be a competitive advantage – Gartner reckons that institutional investors have begun to realize that SOX compliant companies, with well-documented processes, are better financial risks than ones with poorly documented processes. Organizations thus need to develop superior expertise and competence in building and deploying content

Organizations, including not-for-profit bodies, have thus begun to strengthen their content management operations and developing content skills. It is vital however that they build specialized content teams, with a complete understanding of content management principles, rather than trust temporary teams whose core responsibilities and skills lie elsewhere. The benefits of building a specialized team rather than an ad-hoc one are explained in detail later in the paper.

3.2      Content and Six Sigma

APQC reports that many organizations that have seen incredible improvements from Six Sigma/Lean programs quickly begin to experience classic KM problems like imperfect knowledge retention and dissemination and often need to deploy Black Belts to solve problems that were previously resolved in other, often several, locations. Organizations like Raytheon, Dupont, and Compaq have however shown that it is possible, indeed immensely preferable, to incorporate KM into all Six Sigma initiatives to maximize results from quality improvement/benchmarking initiatives and transform them from being mere defect reduction projects to ones that help companies better meet their business goals.

Throughout Six Sigma, KM can address three issues – the competitive environment, leveraging existing knowledge, and reduction in the duplication of effort. Among the steps that APQC recommends are –

1. Make knowledge sharing a requirement of the Define phase of Six Sigma and reuse existing tools and approaches before building new ones. Project teams must make it a point to search for analogous projects, lessons learned, and best practices that might apply to a new project. Getting the best project definition is vital because a badly defined project leads to bad/redundant project results. All Six Sigma teams should be able to answer the question – have you searched for projects related to your processes whose components can be reused in your project

2. Build knowledge capture into the methodology by making it a requirement at the Control phase. Projects should proactively identify nuggets and opportunities for process replication. Six Sigma teams must be able to answer in affirmative to the question – have your project, solutions, and lessons learned been shared (or better, documented) to encourage sharing and reuse by others

3. Leverage existing communities and networks for knowledge capture and transfer; these networks must ideally not be bound by organizational boundaries and have the freedom to seek knowledge from and distribute it across the entire organization regardless of internal barriers. All Six Sigma teams should become like the one at Compaq that didn’t stop at saving $18 million but created a community of practice that was able to take the project to the entire enterprise rather than leave it limited to one function

Specialized content teams, with their content management expertise, can contribute various tools to improve the efficacy of each of these steps. These include –

1. Searchable knowledge bases – an essential building block that helps teams make informed and actionable decisions because the right knowledge is available to the right people at the right time. This is easier said than done and the design of the knowledge base is as critical to its success as the quality of the content that resides in it
   
2. Documentation of workflow and processes – using industry standard tools, processes, and quality standards that promote the development of structured content and avoid the ‘garbage in garbage out’ pitfalls that bedevil most ad hoc content projects
   
3. Lessons learned/after action reviews – that are conducted in structured fashion and results made available to the wider community in a format that is easy to find, understand, share, and reuse
   
4. Networks and Communities of Practice – that the team can reach through the interactive knowledge base it maintains

3.3      In the self-serve world

Gartner suggests that properly implemented self-service solutions can save enterprises up to 35 percent, and usable documentation plays a key role in implementing any self-service solution in a business. It is now the norm to build more and more intelligence into applications and make users progressively more self-sufficient – intelligent, usable content is an ineluctable part of this strategy.

The traditional paradigm to encourage self-service among users was to create a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document and post it online but users have now begun to demand ‘dynamic browse and search capabilities that are able to match questions to answers in an orderly fashion’. And the best way to do it is to create well-structured knowledge banks. A well-structured knowledge base reduces call volumes to service desks and allows users to become more efficient by enabling them to solve their own problems.

Technology plays a part in the creation of knowledge banks but the greatest challenge is to design the content in such a way that it is intuitive to users of a knowledge base and promotes trust and confidence. Which is where specialized content teams come in, as discussed later in the paper.

3.4      Content management and BCP

Business continuity planning is a significant concern for organizations these days and the not-for-profit sector is no exception. The most visible aspect of most BCP initiatives is the redundant physical infrastructure that organizations build, but BCP planning must also take into account systems and process replication at short notice. Documentation has thus been rightly identified as a key part of all BCP initiatives and most organizations have begun documentation of desk and other work procedures in right earnest.

To ensure the quality of this documentation and its long-term suitability, managers responsible for such projects must be able to answer the following questions in the affirmative –

1. Do standards exist to monitor quality
2. Is the SME review process stringent enough
3. Do documents go through a standard workflow
4. Are adequate storage and retrieval systems, and associated policies, in place from the long-term perspective
5. Does a maintenance policy exist, and does anybody have defined responsibility to maintain the content
6. Is the team using the right tools
7. Can people find the content when they need it
8. Do people view documentation as part of a process, rather than as stand alone projects

Formal content management can play a significant role in ensuring all of the above, and we believe it should be an integral part of all BCP (and other risk management) projects.

4         Industry trends in content management

Apart from changes in the business environment noted above, it is also important to consider changes within the content management industry itself, which have begun to reshape the role of content teams in organizations. Here is a look at some of them –

1. Content-centric applications are gaining ground – Forrester points out that in 2005, a new class of applications that combine data and content in support of business processes will rapidly gain ground. Organizations must thus view content management as an integral part of all business processes

2. Second-generation websites are becoming the norm – another trend that Forrester notes is the migration of simple websites to WCM (web content management) based platforms with the process likely to accelerate in the next 12-18 months. Content team’s content migration skills become crucial in this regard

3. Usability is the biggest need of users – users have now begun to demand greater usability from existing content (often created and stored as afterthought by many organizations) and applications (often designed without adequate user input). In a Forrester survey, as many as 54% of respondents cited usability as the number one item on their technology implementation wish list. Forrester predicts that ‘high rollers will create content competency centers’ and bring user-centered design expertise in-house. Companies like Boeing and State Farm already set benchmarks for application performance and routinely monitor system usability and specialized content teams are generally in just the right position to play such a role in several organizations

5         Checklist of generic content management benefits

According to a recent study done by APQC, enterprises that do KM well spend, on an average, $152 per knowledge worker per year and get back $337 in return. High quality documentation and content management is the basic building block of almost all types of KM initiatives, and here is a look at standard benefits that organizations can reap through high quality documentation.

The benefit areas include the following –

1. Service desk
2. Training
3. Expertise management
4. Collaboration
5. Logistics

Application Area	Checklist of benefits
Service desk	Tangible benefits Shift to self-serve Reduction in intermediaries (experts/service desk), and associated costs Reduction in service desk volumes Reduction in processing time Intangible benefits Increased productivity of resources Better credibility Consistent response to customers Industry statistics Calls to service desks may dwindle substantially as users find relevant answers in the knowledge bases available to them Microsoft once estimated the total cost of a single call answered by a help desk technician to be more than $20 per call — regardless of whether the technician could provide an answer
Training	Tangible benefits Reduction in training time Reduction in training need Improved access to training collateral Reduction in infrastructure cost (no geographic limitations) Intangible benefits Trainees feel greater control over training material and learning environment Supports self-driven career development
Expertise management	Tangible benefits Reduction in duplication (no constant reinvention of the wheel) Reuse of proven practices Reduction in cost of employee turnover Intangible benefits Sense of community and increased peer reference
Collaboration	Tangible benefits Direct feedback loop between content owners and users Enhancements of knowledge bases based on expert feedback Intangible benefits Stronger relationships between content owners and users Stronger faith in the quality of publicly available material More consistent application of processes
Logistics	Tangible benefits Shortened roll-out or implementation times Reduction in peripherals (forms, network traffic, mails, others) Industry statistics The European Court of Human Rights estimated savings of one million Euros in terms of document production and dispatch within the first 6 months of operation of its document management system

6         Specialized content team’s competitive advantage

Specialized content teams are often well positioned to meet all the business challenges listed above, and can do so more effectively than alternate methods. Some factors that drive specialized content team’s competitive advantage are –

1. Content management as a specialized skill
2. Value-additions during content processes
3. Positioning as part of a larger knowledge support infrastructure
4. Cost

6.1      Content management as a specialized skill

As noted earlier in the paper, it is imperative, both from the cost and quality perspective, to build specialized content teams rather than entrust content responsibilities to ‘drive-through’ teams whose core expertise lies elsewhere. Here is a look at the benefits of building specialized teams versus ‘drive-through’ content teams –

Specialized

Drive-through

1.      Adaptable, tested processes 2.      Clear workflow definition and understanding of roles/responsibilities at each stage 3.      All aspects of content management lifecycle (design, research, analysis, authoring, testing, editing, publication, maintenance) covered 4.      Content designed to make maintenance easier 5.      Established templates/best practices 6.      Familiarity with standard tools/technologies 7.      Low ramp-up time 8.      Long-term commitment to the quality of output 9.      Experience and leadership 10.  Core competence a.       ‘Cutting edge’, regularly updated skills b.      Cost to the organization based on core competence c.       Work plans based on core competence

1.      No defined processed 2.      Ad hoc workflow/task planning 3.      Primarily authoring focused 4.      No templates 5.      Intensive content training required 6.      No long-term commitment to the quality of output 7.      Content non-core competence a.       Second-hand skills b.      Cost to organization based on core competence, not content skills (often higher, in case of subject matter experts) c.       Work plans based on core competence; content work viewed as unwelcome distraction

Gartner puts is succinctly when it says ‘activities such as building and maintaining taxonomies, training virtual teams and community leaders, and maintaining best practices knowledge bases all require dedicated professionals’.

6.2      Value-additions during content processes

Specialized content teams generally follow a comprehensive documentation process that serves the following needs –

1.      A consistent set of processes and tools for the entire documentation team – a standard style guide, quality guidelines, defined roles and responsibilities at each stage of a document’s lifecycle, and accountability

2.      Analytical approach to documentation – that pays particular attention to user needs; standard guidelines for estimation, prioritization, and scope management

3.      Alignment with institution wide content management tools – so that all work fits the requirements of institutional systems

4.      Clear workflow adaptable to all types of documentation needs – all documents go through pre-defined cycles of testing and editing with checklists at each stage

5.      Standard reporting and management practices – that allow teams to capture and report level of effort and age metrics accurately

Here is a quick look at a sample documentation process (a version of this process is used by the author’s team; please contact Prasanna Lal Das at prasannalaldas@yahoo.com for more information/supporting documentation about the process) –

The sample workflow follows these guidelines –

• Lists clear needs identification sources
• Describes a standard workflow/escalation mechanism
• Identifies all tools used in the process
• Identifies role/responsibilities at each stage in a document’s lifecycle

6.3      Support from larger knowledge support infrastructure

Content teams are often part of a larger knowledge support infrastructure that also includes the following other services –

1. Service desk to respond to client queries and phone calls
2. Training that organizes classroom training and also creates online learning material
3. Communications that provides the community with news and updates
4. Quality Assurance (not represented in the graphic below) that provides analytics support to business sponsors (business owners)

The graphic below shows the mutually reinforcing relationship that content teams may share with the other knowledge support teams.

The content team receives documentation cues from the training and service desk teams, who have direct relationships with clients, and record and store all documentation feedback from them. These teams, in turn, draw from the knowledge base to meet their own content requirements. Clients and sponsors too have the option of approaching the content team directly, or through the other teams.

This symbiotic schema is extremely useful from the quality perspective as it –

1. Allows the content team to gather direct feedback about the quality of content based on response from both internal and external user communities (does the content help people do their jobs better, what are people telling the service desk or instructors)
   
2. Becomes another avenue for content maintenance as users constantly review the knowledge base and escalate issues (has anybody pointed out obsolete content, is all the functionality working, are search results helpful to real users)
   
3. Serves as a key source to determine the need for new content, or expand the scope of the existing material (are people looking for new content, are they asking for new features)
   
4. Indicates the ‘stickiness’ of the content and initiatives the content team must take (do people refer to the site before they call, are they able to find what they need, do they think it’s worth the trouble)

It is definitely possible for content teams to work as discrete entities, but a content team working within a comprehensive knowledge support environment enjoys additional advantages that an isolated content team may struggle to replicate.

6.4      Cost

It is our contention that specialized content teams have the potential to deliver superior quality content support at extremely competitive cost. Consider billing rates as the starting point. This is however debatable, but if a content team clocks at under $75 an hour in North America, or under $30 an hour in an offshore environment, chances are external consulting agencies will find it difficult to compete, given the inherent advantages described above that many in-house specialized content teams possess.

7         List of potential content management services

The range of content offering includes –

1. Business knowledge mapping
2. Content design
3. Documentation needs analysis
4. Authoring/Technical Writing
5. Testing
6. Editing
7. Publication
8. Maintenance
9. Content migration

It is worth repeating that content management in this paper refers to the creation and publication process of content (or the front-end, or ‘human’ aspects of content management), rather than application development (or the back-end aspect of content management – this is another sense in which the term is commonly used in the industry, though not in this paper).

Specialized content teams provide these services as a composite whole, or as individual components, depending on organizational or project requirements. The end-to-end skill base in content management is a key differentiator of specialized content teams (unlike hastily cobbled, often impermanent documentation teams) and this skill-base is backed by a comprehensive documentation process and quality standards at multiple points in a document’s lifecycle.

Here is a look at each aspect of content service, and the key deliverables involved.

7.1      Business knowledge mapping

Business knowledge mapping refers to –

• The ability to quickly acquire and demonstrate process knowledge from clients
• The representation of knowledge

Skill	Deliverables	Tools
Content teams must have strong workshop and project management techniques to effectively transfer business knowledge from clients.	·        Process flows ·        Process documentation ·        Content audits	·        Process flows ·        Checklist questionnaires ·        Audit processes

7.2       Content design

Content design refers to –

• Navigation design in online environments
• Metadata design to support online publication
• Voice and tone guidelines for documentation
• Template design to support different content types
• Style standards

Skill	Deliverables	Tools
Content teams must include staff with skill/experience in information architecture and content strategy.	·        Knowledge base or website navigation ·        Taxonomy frameworks ·        Metadata design ·        Content style and template standards	·        Documentation templates ·        Navigation/functional specifications documents

7.3      Documentation needs analysis

Analysis refers to –

• Validation of documentation requests
• Prioritization of documentation requests
• Scope and LOE (level of effort) estimation of documentation requests
• Trend analysis of documentation requests/needs

Skill	Deliverables	Tools
The team must have the ability to analyze all content requests consistently and apply consistent scoping and estimation parameters.	·        LOE estimates ·        Time estimates ·        Terms of reference for staffing	·        LOE guidelines ·        Business knowledge

7.4      Documentation/technical writing

Documentation/technical writing refers to –

• Development of usable content
• Documentation of policies/procedures and work instructions
• Development of reference material, handbooks, or other communication pieces

Skill	Deliverables	Tools
Content teams should include technical writers who can create/follow a documentation process, and who should ideally be familiar with standard content development and publishing tools.	·        Reports, manuals, online content ·        Process documentation	·        Documentation process ·        Style guide

7.5      Testing

Testing refers to –

• Recreation of documented procedures to reproduce anticipated results 
• Validation to confirm that all alternate paths have been covered
• ‘Monkey testing’ to check if an application can withstand unpredictable (or mischievous) user actions

Skill	Deliverables	Tools
Testing is a key component of any documentation process and every document must go through this stage before it can be published.	·        Test reports	·        Testing checklist

7.6      Editing

Editing refers to –

• Review of documents for style and editorial consistency
• Review of documents for flow, and voice and tone
• Review of documents for usability, appropriateness, and relevance

Skill	Deliverables	Tools
Content staff should ideally be experienced online and offline publishing.	·        Edited content	·        Style guide ·        Editorial checklist

7.7      Publication

Publication refers to –

• Testing documents for formatting and style consistency
• Testing documents to ensure all document features (hyperlinks or bookmarks, for example) work
• The final publication of the document to make it available to its intended audience

Skill	Deliverables	Tools
Content teams should be supported by publishing staff with experience in using content management systems, and standard online tools like HTML, DHTML, CSS, and others.	·        Published content	·        Publications checklist ·        CMS

7.8      Maintenance

Maintenance refers to –

• Content audits at periodic intervals to validate the quality of content and weed out obsolete material
• Response to user feedback to improve the quality of content
• Periodic content design review to validate the efficacy of existing features (search design, for example), and propose new ones

Skill	Deliverables	Tools
Content teams should ideally be supported by business staff with the expertise to validate the quality of content at periodic intervals. Content teams should be able to guide such staff in setting review standards, processes, and follow-up techniques.	·        Review reports ·        Action plan	·        Audit checklist ·        Business knowledge

7.9      Content migration

Content migration refers to the migration of content from one platform (generally, static, HTML based) to another (generally database driven, often though a content management system). This entails –

• Development of a content inventory and associated standards
• Development of migration standards
• The actual migration of content
• Review
• Publication

Skill	Deliverables	Tools
Content teams must prepare increasingly to handle the migration of large sites into dynamic publishing environments.	·        Content inventory ·        New site on a different platform	·        CMS ·        Migration guidelines/templates ·        HTML

8         A final note on content governance

A note of caution and a nod towards a best practice to conclude this paper. While asserting that emerging business trends have meant that the role of content has graduated from being a support function to being a partner in the running of compliant and efficient businesses, it is important to establish principles of strong content governance, even when entrusting content management to specialized content teams.

The risk is in trying to do too much without enough direction or the right content strategy/governance. As Gartner puts it, ‘most organizations are undisciplined in how they manage content. The overwhelming value of content that organizations want to consolidate is often redundant, irrelevant and poorly managed. Integrating and migrating poorly managed content can lead to a bigger problem – like sweeping together small piles of trash to create a bigger pile. To get effective results and value from content integration efforts, organizations must first establish good information governance around unstructured content – that is, content governance.’

 To cite the benefits inherent in content governance, Gartner cites the example of a technology infrastructure manufacturer that was able to eliminate 2000 intranet sites within one year of the launch of its governance initiative. The company was also able to decommission 24 applications that led to an estimated saving of $8 million in licensing and maintenance cost; it saved an additional $1.7 million in the CIO’s budget by shutting down at least 4 dozen organization servers. There were other continued savings through server retirements, changes in services and hardware support, reduction in maintenance contracts, reduction in time and material repairs, depreciations, trade-ins, redeployment, and resale.

The standard rules for content governance are –

1. Define the big picture – make sure content and business teams understand the purpose and value of content management. The big picture will help teams make decisions about content that is important or higher priority and help in eliminating potentially irrelevant or lower priority projects

2. Establish clear rules, policies, and processes – make sure that all content needs go through a standardized lifecycle of validation, prioritization, development, publication, maintenance, and archival. Through this process, it is also important that the organization use standard style guidelines, editorial principles, and also enforce uniform metadata/taxonomy guidelines (these are often neglected as they aren’t directly visible to end-users)

3. Establish accountability – use the concept of ‘content ownership’ to avoid turf battles and inconsistency if different departments use/generate the same content. Quite often, when content owners aren’t clearly identified, different departments organize, store, and share the same content differently and there is little guarantee that any given source is the most up-to-date, accurate, or usable. Thus, in the absence of authoritative content sources, companies run the risk that employees and decision-makers may be using bad data. Content ownership, a potentially difficult process to initiate, is however the only way to ensure that content is trustworthy and comes with a ‘seal of guarantee’  

4. Provide operational support – As people become accountable for content, it is important to provide them with the right tools and resources to do their jobs effectively. Build the right skill-sets (information architects, content strategists, and others), provide training, procure effective tools, and establish organizational policies that promote the effective generation and deployment of content 

5. Enforce content management – content clutter is a constant peril that organizations must deal with as content product and publication tools proliferate within organizations and employee access to them increases. Organizations must thus make sure that content is not only created properly but is also archived, reviewed, or even deleted regularly – well-planned and organized content management can automate many such processes and ensure that content investment stays valuable, rather than drown under the weight of its own success

As the role of content evolves and becomes more central to an organization’s success, content teams must embrace rigorous governance principles to retain their credibility or go the way of earlier hype cycles.

9         References

Gartner

1. Predicts 2004: Knowledge Support – Rita E. Knox, French Caldwell, Mark R. Gilbert, Maurene Caplan Grey, Kathy Harris, James Lundy, Debra Logan
2. Sarbanes-Oxley Will Boost Content and Process Management – D. Logan, K. Shegda, H. El-Gabri, T.Bell
3. KM ROI and Personal Knowledge Networks Both Get Real – F. Caldwell
4. Hype Cycle for Content Management, 2004 – K. Shegda, T. Bell, L. Latham, J. Lundy, R. Knox, R. Wagner, N. Drakos, D. Logan, A. Linden, W. Andrews, R. Valdes, G. Phifer, W. Arevolo, F. Caldwell, L. Orans
5. The Value Proposition of KM in CRM – B. Eisenfeld, K. Harris, E. Kolsky
6. Document and Knowledge Management Saves Millions – D. Logan
7. Apply Governance Principles to Improve Content Management – F. Caldwell

APQC

1. Making the KM and Six Sigma Connection – Wesley Vestal
2. Knowledge Management and Six Sigma: Exploring the Potential of Two Powerful Disciplines – Paige Leavit
3. Integrating Balanced Scorecard, Six Sigma and Knowledge management to Drive Value at Crown Castle – Bob Paladino, CPA
4. Mission Possible – Taking the Mystery Out of Benchmarking – Bill Baker, Debra LaLonde, Jerry Gass, Genie Dillion
5. Getting Results from Knowledge Management (KM) – Carla O’Dell
6. Knowledge Management Operations and Metrics – APQC Partner Report
7. XML: The future of content management – APQC Perspectives
8. Increasing functionality for self –services – APQC Perspectives
9. Managing Knowledge-Intensive processes – Tom Davenport and Babson College
10. Knowledge Management Metrics – Mark Graham Brown

Forrester

1. Organic Information. Abstraction – Laurie M. Orloy and Laura Ramos
2. Enterprise Content Management Delusions – John P. Dalton with Harley Manning and Moira Dorsey
3. Trends 2005: Enterprise Content Management – Connie Moore with Laurie M. Orloy, Colin Teubner
4. Records Management Architecture’s Dramatic Shift –Robert Markham with Laurie M. Orloy, Colin Teubner
5. Keep Track of Content Through the System of Record – Connie Moore and Robert Markham
6. Will the Real Enterprise Content Management Please Stand Up? – Connie Moore and Robert Markham
7. IT Trends 2004: Records Management – Robert Markham
8. Portals Poor Alternative for Records management – Robert Markham and Laura Ramos Don’t Bother Looking for a Knowledge Management Market – Daniel W. Rasmus
9. Records Management Requirements Drive Changes in Enterprise Content Management and Storage Strategies – Anders Lofgren, Robert Markham and Erica Rugullies
10. Don’t Bother Looking for a Knowledge Management Market – Daniel W. Rasmus

General

1. Sharing the Excitement of Exploration: Connecting the Public to Mars – Jeanne Holm
2. A New Metrics System for IT – Ted Smalley Bowen (CIO magazine)
3. The Top 10 Measurement Mistakes – Angela Sinickas
4. Converting From a Training Department to Profit Center – Bob Zeinstra (www.clomedia.com)
5. Content Strategy, draft framework – Prasanna Lal Das
6. www.sapdesignguidl.com
7. www.techscribe.co.uk
8. www.searchSAP.com
9. www.prasanna.org – Prasanna Lal Das