Big Data and Content Management

There has been a lot of talk lately about big data. What is big data?

Big data is is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand commonly used software tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges include capture, governance, storage, search, sharing, transfer, analysis, and visualization.

What is considered "big data" varies depending on the capabilities of the organization managing the data set, and on the capabilities of the applications that are traditionally used to process and analyze the data set in its domain.

Big data sizes are a constantly moving target. As of 2012 ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set. With this difficulty, new platforms of "big data" tools are being developed to handle various aspects of large quantities of data.

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. How does it apply to us and what we do in content management?

The sheer numbers, covered in most enterprise content management (ECM) analyst reports, also extend to all aspects of the information technology sector, prompting developers to create a new generation of software and technology or distributed computing frameworks in an effort to cope with this scalability phenomenon.

Content growth is everywhere. From traditional data warehouses to new consolidated big data stores, IT infrastructure must be ready for this continuing scale; it impacts the entire IT industry, especially ECM.

Content is getting bigger. Applications are growing more complex, challenging IT as never before. How will these changes impact content management technologies? It's difficult to predict exactly, but there are insights to be found and used to plan for the future.

ECM technology is evolving toward a platform-based approach, enabling organizations to make their own content-centric and content-driven applications smarter. Analysts, vendors and users all agree: The time for "out-of-the-box" CMS applications has passed. Now each project can meet specific needs and individual requirements.

Content and data, more often than not, come with embedded intelligence whether through adding custom metadata and in-text information or by leveraging attached media and binary files and it can be utilized, whether structured or unstructured.

This can be observed on many different levels across various domains. For instance, the arrival of what some have started to call "Web 3.0": the semantic Web and the related technology that promotes intelligence out of raw content through advancements like semantic text analysis, automated relations and categorization, sentimental analysis, etc. -- effectively, giving meaning to data.

More traditional ECM components, such as workflows, content lifecycle management and flexibility, demonstrate much of the same. Smart content architecture along with intelligent, adaptive workflow and processed or deep integration with the core applications within information systems are all making enterprise content-centric applications smarter and are refining the way intelligence is brought to content.

In short, content is getting smarter on the inside as much as on the outside.

In fact, such disruptive phenomena as Big Data or the new semantic technology on the scene are huge opportunities for enterprise content management solutions. They are bringing new solutions and possibilities in business intelligence, semantic text analysis, data warehousing and caching that require integration into existing content-centric applications, all without rewriting them.

As a result, Big Data and smart content will push more of enterprise content management toward technical features such as software interoperability, extensibility and integration capabilities.

These developments will also demand a clean and adaptive architecture that is flexible enough to evolve as new standards arise to bridge CMS and semantic technologies, as well as connectors, to a back-end storage system or connectors with text-analysis solutions.

This underscores the advancements made in the development of modular and extensible platforms for content-centric applications. Taking the traditional approach of employing large enterprise content management suites that rely on older software architecture will make it harder to leverage these new and nimble opportunities.

In order to get the most value out of smart content and refine methods of dealing with Big Data, enterprise content management architects must incorporate a modern and well designed content management platform upon which to build, one that not only looks at end-user features but stays true to the development side. Enterprise content management will not be reinvented; Big Data and smart content are evolutions, not revolutions, in the industry.

I will continue on this subject in my future posts.

Current Trends in Content and Knowledge Management

Current KM trends changed the way we work in KM environment. Let’s look at these current trends and how they affect KM.

Big Data

According to Cisco study, global IP traffic will reach 1.3 zettabyes annually by 2016 which is fourfold increase from 2011. By 2016 there will be 19 billion global network connections, the equivalent of two-and-a-half connections for every person on earth. Huge amount of data needs to be moved, collected, stored, and analyzed to create value out of it.

With social networking and global depression and exponential rate of information growth, the question becomes: how are you going to store, manage, and utilize this information in a way that meets your organization objectives. You need to be able to derive value from your information.

Social Computing

During last decade, social computing has widely spread in the work place. It has emerged as integral part of enterprise productivity. Social tools changed ways people work together. The proliferation of social software in the enterprise demonstrates that users find value in this new generation of tools.

In just a few years, social media has gone from cutting-edge phenomenon to a main-stream channel that companies use to engage clients, partners, and vendors.

Gartner predicts that by 2014 social networking services will replace email for interpersonal business communication for 20% business users.

Some statistics:

• 65% of world’s top companies have an active Twitter profile.
• 23% of Fortune 500 companies have a public-facing corporate blog.
• 58% of Fortune 500 companies have an active corporate Facebook account.
• Facebook has 901 million monthly active users.
• Twitter now has more than 140 million active users, sending 340 million tweets every day.
• Enterprise social software solutions are being used in 67% of organizations surveyed in 2013, up from 43% in 2011.

This highlights the fact that social software is becoming part of business processes in the work place. Employees want to engage socially with the people they work with and build stronger relationships within their companies. Traditional content management and collaboration solutions are incorporating new features to satisfy the social and information sharing demands of the enterprise.

Enterprises are using these emerging social computing technologies to improve collaboration among employees, clients, and vendors around the globe.

Tools such as blogs, instant messaging, wikis, social tagging and bookmarking, discussion boards with comment fields. Individuals comment on case studies, exchange ideas, and contribute their own material. Employees can follow up with people, search for subject matter experts, get updates on projects, participate in conversations that are going on.

The use of social software for collaboration in a business environment is most successful when there is a business purpose. The social capabilities of enterprise applications will continue to be extended because of the value that collaboration brings to a wide variety of business activities. Meanwhile, enterprise social software products, which have matured considerably over the past 5 years, are achieving increasing acceptance by corporations.

Challenges

Emergence of social networking has been a two-edged sword for organization. On one blade rests knowledge sharing. On the other is a ton of useless information and you need to dig thought it to get to what you need. In other words, they have added to the noise, volume and diversity of information.

When it comes to social networks, the question used to be: how much you want to connect vs how much you want to collect? The new version is: how much do you want to curate vs not curate?

Non-curated content is typical unmanaged social network content. The question is: how much of it do you want to have control over?

Companies must understand how social media use may impact the company’s ability to manage risk. It is important to understand how business and employees engage in social media, develop and deploy policies and solutions necessary to stay compliant, to meet business requirements and be flexible at the same time.

Companies need to increase information control and visibility.

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing gained significant adoption as a way for companies to shift from capital-intensive model of buying and running infrastructure and software to renting usage of shared infrastructure and applications.

With the power of cloud computing, small businesses can have the same level of IT infrastructure as Fortune 500 companies with vastly limited overhead.In addition to hosted servers, small businesses can purchase software as a service (SaaS) that is hosted online and completely scalable. Forrester predicts growth in SaaS applications.

While some companies are replacing licensed software with SaaS applications, most are using SaaS for new product categories that complement their existing on-premise software.

Benefits

With software purchased as a service, a small business no longer needs IT personnel on site to install and maintain software and hardware. SaaS allows businesses to purchase software without multi-year contracts and without painful software installation.

Rapid Deployment - with no hardware or software to install and no servers to buy, cloud content management virtually has no setup time. So, it can be deployed very quickly.

Access Anywhere - A cloud content management solution offers an application available anytime and from any internet browser. Information is always accessible and data can be shared instantly. The cloud gives the company centralized control of info while allowing users to access it from any computer or device.

Easy Collaboration - Since it can be accessed anywhere, cloud content management systems allow any authorized personnel to access and collaborate on content. Sharing lets you get information to those who need it instantly, and from anywhere in the world.

Low Cost - Cloud ECM solutions offer a highly-affordable alternative to on-premise solutions.

Speed - Cloud ECM implementations typically take 24% of the time of similar on-premise projects. That rapid time-to benefit translates directly into the higher ROI that business managers want.

Flexibility - Cloud ECM implementation gives the business this flexibility, both in terms of right-sizing capacity and in terms of aligning ECM capabilities with changing business needs.

Reduced Risk - Cloud ECM projects don’t require large outlays for uncertain results. And a variety of protections can be written into vendor contracts. For these and other reasons, the cloud fits well into today’s corporate risk mitigation strategies.

For activities that involve collaboration, SasS browser access to an application is far more superior to running it behind a firewall.

It enables IT to respond quicker to business requirements. Cloud vendor often provides an effective mobile client which otherwise you would have to undertake yourself if you were to customize your on-premise platform.

Challenges

Cloud is no panacea. Even the largest cloud vendors can experience outages.

Multiple File Formats - The documents that you might like to upload into your cloud content management system may be in many different formats. The device that is being used to display the content often may not have the correct software needed to display the document or image.

A common solution is to convert the files on the server to a generic format that can be viewed by many devices. For example, most browsers and devices today can display JPEG or PNG formats for images, Microsoft Office or PDF format for documents, CAD for drawings, etc.

Document Size - It is very important to consider the size of the document, either the number of pages or the physical size of the file. Downloading the entire document can take a long time depending on available bandwidth. This is especially an issue on mobile devices with slow or crowded data connections.

A system that provides a preview of the document can help the user to determine if they want to download the document would help.

Browser compatibility - Another challenge is that there are various browsers that are used to access the Internet and not all of them work the same way. Each browser has differences in how they operate and how the code works under the covers.

Mobile viewing - With today’s on-demand business world, it is imperative to be able to support viewing documents on mobile devices. But not all the devices behave the same way, and different operating systems are used on the various devices. Without a consistent mobile viewing platform, separate viewing applications may need to be installed on each device and results will vary. Using a single technology that supports many document types is very important in a mobile environment.

HTML5-based viewers can help resolve some of the challenges associated with browsers and mobile devices. Older versions of the browsers that are used in many government, education and businesses do not support HTML5.

Understanding that these common challenges are a possibility and preparing for them before you encounter them is important. Providing a single platform with multiple viewing technologies, including HTML5, Flash and image-based presentation, can help to ensure that all users can view documents, regardless of their specific device, browser or operating system.

Responsibility for your information in the cloud still falls on you: data ownership continuity, security, compliance. Take the same test-based approach to selecting cloud solutions as you would on-premise solutions. Focus on user experience.

Mobile Computing

The workspace is becoming increasingly mobile. Mobile computing enables access from anywhere. Forrester predicts that by 2016, smart phones and tablets will be used by a billion of global customers. Looking ahead, employees and customers will expect and demand that all business applications support mobility. Need to be able to deliver mobile experience - Ability to access content from mobile devices.

Content and systems must be optimized for mobile devices. Employees working in the field must be able to access content from their mobile devices. Employees use mobile devices to collaborate on docs, take meeting notes, create presentations, and collect data in the field. Decide what content and services make the most sense for your organization mobile devices.

"Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD)

It is becoming a reality of office life these days. It is a natural consequence in a world where people bring iPads, iPhones, Androids, and Blackberrys to work. This trend is relatively new and it continues to grow. As a result, organizations have been compelled to open up their networks to a wider variety of these devices that their employees want to use.

For corporations, trying to save IT $, it is good news – employees are now paying to acquire and maintain phones, tablets, and laptops that were once funded by IT. These organizations realized that encouraging employees to bring in their own devices can be a win-win situation for them as well as for their employees.

On the downside, the ever growing variety of BYOD devices and the fact that they are owned/controlled by employees poses serious security, workflow, and IT management issues for employers.

Employees are using their own smart phones and tablets to conduct business. While the actual device belongs to an employee, business info does not. This creates new twist in info governance initiatives.

If employees upload corporate data into a consumer-based public cloud, the cloud operator has de-facto ownership of this data.

Also, there are hackers accessing corporate data through relatively insecure consumer devices, challenge of integrating BYOD platforms with enterprise-wide corporate software, and extra IT funds being required to support a myriad of BYOD platforms.

A company can’t dictate which devices are used, in which security parameters and under what conditions.

Therefore, define and control what levels of access BYOD equipment has to a company networks, applications, and corporate data.  It is vital to establish a comprehensive governance policy.

Companies need to keep their employees happy and productive while protecting and leveraging the info they create and consume.

10 Signs Your Search Engine is Stalling

An integral part of your content management strategy is enterprise search. Your users need to be able to find information and documents they are looking for. However, enterprise search does not always work properly. Users have to get more creative to compensate for the lack of good search but is this what you really want?

Creative ways which users use to find information is a sign that your search engine is stalling. If you recognize any of these symptoms below in your content management system, take it as a call to action: your search engine needs a tune-up!

1. Querying With Magic Cookies: If your users are memorizing document IDs or using some other "magic" unrelated to natural search queries to find content, your search has a problem.

2. Off-Roading to Google: If your users are proudly (or surreptitiously) resorting to Google to get answers, take a hard look at your search tools. Google is good. But if your search engine can't outperform a generic Web search engine, given it has a much tighter domain of content and context and can be tuned to your goals -you can do better.

3. Gaming Learning: Today's search engines are "smart". No doubt-click-stream feedback is a powerful tool for improving search relevance. But, if users are expending time repeatedly running the same search and clicking on the "right" document to force it to the top of the results list, your search engine isn't learning, it has a learning disability. Search engines should not have to be gamed.

4. Using Cliff Notes: If users use everything from note cards to the back of their hands to scribble titles and key phrases for frequently utilized content, if your users have taken to cliff-noting content to prime their searches, the search engine is not working.

5. Paper Chasing: Are your users printing out content, littering their cubes with hard copies? That is just another form of cliff-noting. Using functioning search is easier than a paper chase, not to mention more reliable.

6. Doing the Link Tango: Badly tuned search engines tend to "fixate" on certain content, especially content with lots of links to other content. Smart users often take advantage of this tendency to click through on anchor articles and then ricochet through the link structure to find the actual content they need. If your users are doing the "link tango" for information, you know that your users are great, but your search does not work.

7. Lots of "Game Over" Search Sessions: When search strings bring back large amount of content that is not earning click-through (document views), your users are having the "game over" experience. Unable to identify what is relevant in this sea of material, they are forced to cheat to stay in the game. Smart search engines provide navigation, faceted guidance or clarifying questions to prevent "game over" interactions.

8. Dumbing it Down: Your users are verbally adept, and they would love to ask questions "naturally". If your analytics are telling you that most users' searches have disintegrated into 1-2 word queries, take it as a direct reflection of your search engine's lack of intelligence. A search engine competent in natural language typically receives 20% of queries in seven words or more and about half in three, with fewer than 20% as 1-2 word queries.

9. Easter Eggs: If your users tell you they often find interesting new content by stumbling upon it, your search engine is delivering "Easter Eggs." Finding good content by accident, especially good content, signals a poorly tuned search engine. New content is usually highly relevant content and ought to be preferred by smart retrieval algorithms.

10. Taxi Driver Syndrome: Taxi drivers will tell you that they don't want a map, that they don't need a map because they memorized the map. Unlike a city topography, a knowledge base changes frequently. So, if your users are saying they don't want or need search, it's not because they have memorized all your content. What they are realy saying is: we don't need search that doesn't work.

If your users have to get more and more creative to get the job done, thank them. And then reward them and your business by tuning or upgrading your search engine. It will pay off in efficiency, customer satisfaction, and employees and customers retention.

Viewing Documents in the Cloud Repository

More and more organizations are moving to solutions where documents are stored in cloud-based systems. Implementing a solution in which documents are stored in a cloud-based system, such as a content management system, engineering drawing repository or a technical publication library, can present some challenges. You need to consider these challenges carefully so that you could provide the optimal experience for your users.

These are most important challenges to consider when implementing a cloud-based documents repository: working with multiple file formats; variations in document size; browser-compatibility with HTML5; and viewing documents on mobile devices.

Multiple File Formats

The documents that you might like to upload into your cloud content management system may be in many different formats. They may be PDF, TIFF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, CAD or many others. The device that is being used to display the content often may not have the correct software needed to display the document or image.

This issue is further complicated by the varying number of devices that the content will be viewed on. A common solution is to convert the files on the server to a generic format that can be viewed by many devices. For example, most browsers and devices today can display JPEG or PNG formats for images, Microsoft Office or PDF format for documents, CAD for drawings, etc.

Document Size

It is very important to consider the size of the document, either the number of pages or the physical size of the file. Downloading the entire document can take a long time depending on available bandwidth. This is especially an issue on mobile devices with slow or crowded data connections.

A system that provides a preview of the document can help the user to determine if they want to download the document. The system can also provide quick initial view of the first few pages of the document allows a user to begin reading content while the rest of the document downloads. This increases worker productivity and can even reduce traffic if the user quickly determines that they do not wish to continue reading the document.

Browser compatibility

Another challenge is that there are various browsers that are used to access the Internet and not all of them work the same way. The four major browsers are Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Each browser has differences in how they operate and how the code works under the covers.

Document viewing technology is dependent on some level of support within the browser. For example some browsers support Flash and some do not. HTML5 is only supported on recently updated versions of some browsers, so older browsers can create problems. Even where HTML5 is supported, different browsers have different levels of support. Sometimes the differences are subtle and only cosmetic, while others, like complex formatting, can cause significant display issues.

Mobile viewing

With today’s on-demand business world, it is imperative to be able to support viewing documents on mobile devices. But not all the devices behave the same way, and different operating systems are used on the various devices. Without a consistent mobile viewing platform, separate viewing applications may need to be installed on each device and results will vary. Using a single technology that supports many document types is very important in a mobile environment.

Is HTML5 the Answer?

HTML5-based viewers can help resolve some of the challenges associated with browsers and mobile devices. However, there is a misconception that the adoption of HTML5 is the answer to all problems. It is not. The four major browsers have been implementing HTML5 over time and how much of the standard that is supported varies greatly with the version of the browser. Older versions of the browsers that are used in many government, education and businesses do not support HTML5.

Understanding that these common challenges are a possibility and preparing for them before you encounter them is important. Providing a single platform with multiple viewing technologies, including HTML5, Flash and image-based presentation, can help to ensure that all users can view documents, regardless of their specific device, browser or operating system. With that knowledge you can successfully promote a good experience for your users and overcome the major pitfalls faced by so many organizations today.

Benefits of Cloud Content Management

ECM has provided an essential service to enterprises, helping them to better capture, organize and track massive quantities of content within their organizations.

Today’s more strategic IT departments are driving businesses to rethink how they approach content management and collaboration in the enterprise. A variety of factors including persistently tight IT budgets, lower headcount, business uncertainty, and unrelenting pressure to grow through innovation have made the advantages of cloud based ECM even more compelling.

Current ECM systems can be delivered in a cloud. Delivered over the web, these new solutions offer the usability of consumer tools and recognize the need for external sharing, all at a cost amenable to today’s IT budgets.

Cloud content management (CCM) is an emerging category that combines many of the core elements and content focus of ECM with the usability and ease of sharing so prominent in collaboration software. As its name implies, CCM brings the benefits of the cloud - low maintenance, elastic and scalable, with access to content anytime, anywhere, across devices.

CCM can fulfill the content management and collaboration needs of small to medium-sized businesses, in many cases bringing content management to companies previously unable to afford it and also provide a layer of value on top of ECM solutions already deployed by large enterprises.

The best CCM solutions have open platforms that allow for easy integration across the systems a company has already deployed, as well as connections into other cloud services such as Salesforce.com and Google Apps. This is particularly useful for those businesses that are considering a full move into cloud-based software. Small businesses are leading the way toward operating fully in the cloud, and even larger enterprises are beginning to see their security concerns addressed by large cloud vendors.

CCM solutions are using the advantages of web delivery to offer additional functionality above and beyond what ECM solutions provide. For example, CCM can make it easy to view any type of content in a Web browser without even owning the software application that it was created in. Gone are the days of being unable to view content you have received because you don’t have the latest version of Microsoft Office, or haven’t invested in Adobe Illustrator. Furthermore, open platforms make it possible to also edit much of this content.

This is still an emerging category in ECM, but there are immediate opportunities to improve how businesses engage with content, and a number of CCM companies are aspiring to address them.

Whether or not businesses are ready to fully embrace cloud solutions or maintain a hybrid approach with existing infrastructure, providing dynamic, flexible collaboration tools with CCM will enhance productivity and ultimately give IT departments more insight into their organizations.

There are several reasons that the cloud’s value proposition for ECM is particularly attractive:

Consume what you need

ECM implementations in a cloud are typically a series of projects over time, each requiring different capabilities on a different scale. On-premise ECM implementation requires to implement all capabilities at the same time. The cloud model, on the other hand, gives you the flexibility to just purchase the capabilities you need at the scale you need today and to then adjust your engagement over time as necessary.

Eliminating technical complexity

On- premise ECM implementations could be complex, requiring IT organizations to assemble software components, install and configure them, apply patches, write integration code, maintain operating system updates, continuously tune system parameters, maintain hardware and manage performance. The cloud model relieves the service consumer of the burdens associated with this complexity. As Gartner noted, cloud ECM "brings with it fewer costs for infrastructure hardware, software and management and less complexity in the applications layer."

Getting Approval

Cloud ECM projects are much easier to get an approval from the company management since with on-premise ECM, upper management has to commit lots of money and human resources to a project up front whereas cloud ECM implementation does not require these resources.

Speed

Cloud ECM implementations typically take 24% of the time of similar on-premise projects. That rapid time-to benefit translates directly into the higher ROI that business managers want.

Cost

With budgets tight, the comparatively low cost of cloud-based ECM is extremely appealing to the business. Plus, CFOs have better visibility into and control over costs when they are explicitly itemized on a vendor contract.

Reduced Risk

Cloud ECM projects don’t require large outlays for uncertain results. And a variety of protections can be written into vendor contracts. For these and other reasons, the cloud fits well into today’s corporate risk mitigation strategies.

Flexibility

Cloud ECM implementation gives the business this flexibility, both in terms of right-sizing capacity and in terms of aligning ECM capabilities with changing business needs.

Cloud offers an undeniable business advantages. And the uptake that we are seeing in the marketplace proves that ECM buyers agree.

Why Any CMS is Better Than Network Drives and Email Attachments?

This might be a trivial question, however, many organizations still use network drives for storing documents and their employees collaborate on these documents by sending them to each other as email attachments.

What is wrong with this picture?

The volume and variety of electronic information is exploding. Organizations are required to analyze new information faster and make timely decisions for achieving business goals within budget. They therefore are becoming increasingly dependent upon efficient access to information. In order to effectively use information, it must be readily available for analysis and synthesis with other information. The value of information depends on two things: finding it, and being able to use it.

Why can't this be done in network drives? Here are just few reasons:

• documents in network drives cannot be searched;
• there is no version control in network drives;
• there is no trail who changed documents and what has been changed;
• there are multiple versions of the same document;
• there are no workflows and so there can be no automatic documents movement between participants;
• few people could be editing the same document at the same time and so there is no control of made changes;
• there is no possibility for the reuse of content;
• permissions cannot be set up.

Further on, your organization would not meet regulatory and legal requirements if it stores its documents in network drives. If you are in a regulated environment, such as ISO 9001 or GxP/GMP, you must have a document control in place. Documents have to be accounted for, there can be no multiple versions of the same document in one place, there has to be a complete control on which documents are used, etc. This cannot be done in network drives. In addition, e-discovery is going to be very difficult and its cost very high.

Sending documents as email attachments is inefficient and time consuming. Sometimes it is even impossible, for example when these documents are too big for the email to handle. It is much easier to upload documents in a central location and for employees go there and update them as necessary. If it is a CMS, you can keep control on who changed what and when.

Content re-use is very difficult or even impossible, because every time a document needs to be changed, a user would have to change the entire document instead of just changing one paragraph and then being able to have the same content output as a brochure, marketing collateral, white paper, etc.

And if you need to translate documents in multiple languages, documents change is going to include tremendous cost because rather than translating just one paragraph that was changed, you would have to translate the entire document.

There are numerous advantages of having a content management system (CMS) in place. Here are just a few advantages. CMSs provide the facility to control how content is published, when it is published, and who publishes it. CMSs allow to set up workflow management thus allowing documents to automatically move between participants (reviewers, approvers, etc). There is version control, audit trail, collaboration features. You can set up appropriate permissions for your documents. Your documents would be searchable and readily accessible in one central location.

The best option is ECM suite. To be considered an ECM suite, the system has to include the following components:

• document imaging – the ability to process and store high volume images of documents like insurance claims;
• document management – the ability to provide library services and version control;
• records management – the ability to declare and manage corporate records;
• collaboration – the ability to share content with team members;
• web content management – the ability to publish and update web sites;
• digital asset management – the ability to manage digital assets like powerpoint slides and movies.

Some content management systems are free, such as Drupal, TYPO3, Joomla, and WordPress. Others may be affordable based on size subscriptions. Although subscriptions can be expensive, overall the cost of not having to hire full-time developers can lower the total costs. In addition, for many CMSs software can be bought based on need. In addition, many CMS can be deployed in a cloud thus further decreasing costs.

CMSs are designed with non-technical people in mind. Simplicity in design of the administrator UI allows content managers and other users to update content without much training in coding or technical aspects of system maintenance.

Many CMS tools use a drag and drop AJAX system for their design modes. It makes it easy for beginner users to create custom front-ends.

Once you have deployed a CMS, your employees are going to be more efficient and productive and you will save cost in the end.

How to choose a CMS? See my blog post on this subject.

Content Management Initiative Implementation

The usual problem in content management arena is that employees spend a lot of time searching for information, re-creating information and while they are doing it, they are not being efficient and productive, and so the company looses money. Employees also use obsolete documents in their work and so the integrity of work and compliance is at risk.

How is this problem solved? By implementing a content management initiative. You have decided to implement a content management initiative. Where to start? This is the subject of my today's post.

In order for your content management project to be successful, I recommend that you follow these steps in this specific order.

Business Analysis

This is the first step in this initiative. It involves requirements gathering and development process. During this process you identify the specific needs of the business and then develop and implement the solutions to meet them. This could be for example a new content management system deployment, modification of a current content management system, integrating few content management systems, designing a search solution, etc.

You start with the user study. User study includes users’ requirements gathering and user side testing when necessary. Identify main stakeholders in you organization and include them in your user study. Involve as many stakeholders as you possibly can. All of them might be users of your system. During this process, specific needs of users as they pertain to the content management need to be identified and documented. Current content processes as they would apply to a new content management environment should be discussed with users. Your solution should be based on these requirements.

Based on the user study, the project requirements document (PRD) should be created. This document should include all user requirements and identify the scope of the project. This document would serve as the foundation of your project and will determine your specific actions.

User-centered design is paramount to the project success. When system is deployed based on users’ requirements, they are going to use it. Users will have the sense of ownership of the system which provides excellent starting point in the user adoption process. They know that the system being deployed will be what they need. This process will also greatly help change management processes that would be associated with this system deployment.

User study will help to avoid friction in the content management environment. Users will experience discomfort and stress if they find the system difficult to use or will not find features they need. You want to make sure that their experience is easy and to facilitate an engaging environment, so that there is no disconnects between the system and users. This will also ensure that everyone responsible for content creation and management is on the same page, even if they are not on the same team or in the same department.

Without the user study, the user adoption of the system and change management processes would be very difficult.

Content Strategy

Content strategy refers to the planning, development, and management of content. Content strategy evaluates business and users’ needs and provides strategic direction on how content and content processes can help to achieve specific objectives. Content management initiative is much more likely to succeed with a solid strategy supporting it. It can also help to save cost.

Content strategy starts with the big picture and then drills down to a granular level that can be implemented and measured. It encompasses everything that impacts content, including workflow and information governance. It looks across organizational silos and integrates the different business needs, goals, and tactics. It makes sure that the end product promotes consistent, effective and efficient user experiences and business processes.

This user adoption also will be much easier with clearly defined goals, content processes, and the tactics that have been identified by the content strategy. Content strategy will also ensure that everyone responsible for content creation is on the same page, even if they are not on the same team or in the same department. The development of a strategy and plan will not only help things run smoothly, but also actually ensure the business impact that your organization is looking to achieve.

The content strategy should outline the following:

• content types in scope of this project, content types outside of scope of this project and where they are going to be stored and managed;
• unstructured vs structured content management environment
• content creation processes;
• content flow including collaboration, review, approval of content as well as localization and translation processes;
• lifecycle of content from its creation to its archiving and destruction;
• content archiving processes;
• technology to be used or modified depending on your situation;
• vendor selection if you are going to acquire a new system;
• relationship between the existing systems where content currently resides;
• permissions to the system and type of these permissions;
• administrative support to the system;
• users training and support;
• migration of legacy content;
• identify content owners for each content type;
• content output formats and publishing processes;
• post-publication processes;
• information governance processes.

The content strategy is paramount to the project success. The content strategy could be outlined for short term and long term and what this project will mean in terms of business objectives. It should determine project goals, resourcing, workflow, and success metrics, which can save GPL from the high cost of ineffective content management initiative.

Technology

At this point in time, if you did not yet acquire a content management system, you would do a vendor selection and acquire a content management system based on your user requiremens. You would then work with your IT department and if necessary consultants to deploy the system. If you are modifying the system, you would work with your IT department to coordinate the system modification effort. You will have to write functional specification document which will outline the system functions - new and/or modified system.

Content Audit and Structure

Before any content is uploaded into a system, it is important to know what that content is and what type of content will be uploaded into the system in future. Proliferation of content without its analysis and structure will create the situation where it will be very difficult to find, reuse, and manage it. If you are looking into having a structured content management environment, this task becomes even more important. Chunks of content should be consistent and categorized. Inconsistent content cannot be efficiently reused and/or published. Taxonomy and metadata framework and archiving processes are based on the content structure.

Content structure development should be preceded by a detailed audit and analysis of existing content and projection of content types that might be uploaded into the system in future. Product and content types should be identified and detailed content audit conducted.

If you are in a structured content management environment and using DITA, after the audit, random samples of each content type should be analyzed for the similarity and list of DITA topics and their types should be created. Topics should be consistent as well as each topic’s beginning and end.

Content structure should also include definitions of how different types of content (e.g. notes, warnings, precautions) would be handled: using a topic, conditional reuse, filtered reuse, conrefs, images, tables, and what content is going to be handled through style sheets, etc.

Taxonomy

Every information system should include two access points to information: search function and browse function. Users use search function when they know exactly what they are looking for. Users use browse function when they do not know what they are looking for. Taxonomy needs to be created to accommodate the browse function in the system.

Users do not always know what they are looking for. In fact, in most cases, users do not know what they are looking for or they know it but are not able to find it using search. Users are going to look for ways to find content. It is easy to find uncategorized content when there are just few content items in the system. When there are many content items in the system, it is going to be very difficult to find them.

In the structured content management environment, where the number of content items is bigger than in the unstructured content management environment, this problem is much more serious. If you are going to use DITA, with the component oriented DITA use, the difficulty of finding content items is increased by two or three times, because users are looking for smaller needles in bigger haystacks. In the environment where localization and translation processes into multiple languages are involved, there are going to be thousands of content items in the system. The presence of the taxonomy in such environment is absolutely critical.

Having uncategorized content is the system will cause content proliferation. Proliferated content will be very difficult to find and reuse. Duplicate content will be unavoidably created.

Metadata, Naming Conventions, Controlled Vocabulary

Metadata

Metadata values for content items need to be defined to accommodate the search function of content items in the system. Each content type should have metadata assigned to it. Metadata values would be the criteria that users need to use to search for content items.

The general system search will accommodate the full text search of content. This search would be sufficient when there are just few content items in the system. When there are many content items in the system, the general system search will retrieve a long list of irrelevant items. Users are not going to browse through long lists of items. To make the search precise, the presence of metadata is necessary. If metadata is present, the search can be performed using metadata rather than full text search.

Metadata should be based on the content structure. Metadata should be validated in the user study and user side testing when necessary and adjusted as needed.

Naming Conventions

The role of naming conventions is very important in order for users to identify content items in the list without opening each one of them. Naming conventions should be created for each content type and should be based on the content structure. Naming conventions should be validated in the user study and user side testing when necessary and adjusted as needed.

Controlled Vocabulary

Controlled vocabulary is the list of controlled terms that should be used for some of the metadata fields. These controlled terms should be standard terms used in standard publications, documents, majority of users, etc. Controlled vocabulary would help to ensure that metadata values are consistent. Consistent metadata will ensure high precision search.

QA and System Set Up

After all the above items have been completed and the system has been deployed or modified, perform thorough QA testing of the system at this time, fix bugs if there are any and then perform regression testing.

Then set up your content management system based on the above criteria and per users requirements. After the system has been set up, demo content can be uploaded in preparation for user acceptance testing.

User Acceptance Testing

Prepare the system and the script for user acceptance testing. Invite all user groups to test the system. User acceptance testing would help to validate that the system meets user requirements and to encourage users to start using the system. When they participate in this process, this gives them the feeling of ownership of the system. This process will also help to uncover problems and/or bugs in the system and to see what suggestions users might have. User acceptance testing is paramount to user adoption and change management processes.

Pilot project

If user acceptance testing has been successful, upload content for a pilot project into the system. Start with a simple project that does not have many content items. The reason for the pilot project is that if there are problems in the system or in the process, it is easier to fix them with having just few content items in the system. Invite all user groups to test the system. If the pilot project goes well, continue with the next project which could include more content items. Upload few projects into the system. Then create a plan for the migration of legacy content.

Cloud Content Management

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network, typically the internet. With the power of cloud computing, small businesses can enjoy the same level of IT infrastructure as Fortune 500 companies with vastly limited overhead.

End users access cloud based applications through a web browser or a light weight desktop or mobile application while the business software and data are stored on servers at a remote location. Cloud application providers strive to give the same or better service and performance than if the software programs were installed locally on end-user computers.

In the past, all of a business computing would have to be done by its own servers. Now that we can compute over the web, servers do not have to be located within business offices, and with cloud computing, they do not even have to be owned by the business!

In addition to hosted servers, small businesses can now purchase software as a service (SaaS) that is hosted online and completely scalable. With software purchased as a service, a small business no longer needs IT personnel on site to install and maintain software and hardware. SaaS allows businesses to purchase software without multi-year contracts and without painful software installation.

An added benefit of cloud computing is its document storage capabilities. The cloud revolutionizes the way you store and access data. A great way for businesses to harness the power of the cloud is by utilizing cloud content management systems that store and organize documents online. By doing this, a business can securely leverage all the benefits of cloud computing for its content. Accessibility, scalability, sharing and collaboration are only a few of the benefits cloud content management can offer.

Because on-premise enterprise content management (ECM) software requires significant commitment of time and money, only big organizations have been able to take advantage of the efficiency, productivity, and cost savings of automated document management and workflow. These organizations can afford highly-customized on-premise systems that help them gain competitive advantage over smaller rivals.

Cloud enterprise content management solutions level the playing field for organizations of any size. Now, the smallest company or any budget-pinched department within a larger organization can have all the computing power, and the efficiency and productivity gains of the biggest companies.

The cloud enterprise content management (ECM) offers tremendous advantages over traditional on-premise content management software implementations. Solving a typical content management business problem requires the integration of multiple technologies like document management, workflow, scanning, capture, email management, etc.

For many organizations this involves a lengthy implementation process from initial business specifications to hardware and technology planning to cross-departmental functional groups to actual software installation and customization. It may be many months from the initial business need for a content management solution to the actual workable solution.

A cloud ECM solution, however, comes as a pre-loaded and immediately usable business solution. A cloud enterprise content management platform is accessible via an internet connection. There is no need to add additional modules or pay for expensive and time consuming integration services. A business unit can be up and running in days with an enterprise content management and workflow solution, while the on-premise ECM software implementation project remains stuck in its planning phase.

In content management, these advantages play an even larger role in project success. This is why analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester predict cloud providers to grow much faster than on-premise ECM software vendors in the coming years.

Benefits of Cloud Content Management

Rapid Deployment

With no hardware or software to install and no servers to buy, cloud content management virtually has no setup time. So, it can be deployed very quickly.

Access Anywhere

For a typical enterprise content management (ECM) solution to work, it requires that all of its components be available when they are needed. An implementation that includes multiple technologies like document management software, automated workflow, scanning equipment, document capture, email management, etc.. means that each will have a service lifecycle, and a service level, that will need to be monitored and tracked to keep the entire solution in working order.

A cloud content management solution, however, offers an application available anytime and from any internet browser. With cloud content management, you have all of your data right at your fingertips. By managing your documents online, information is always accessible and data can be shared instantly.

Easy Collaboration

Since it can be accessed anywhere, cloud content management systems allow any authorized personnel to access and collaborate on content. Sharing lets you get information to those who need it instantly, and from anywhere in the world. With cloud content management, you can bring important documents to everyone in your business.

Integration

Solving a typical enterprise content management (ECM) business problem requires the integration of multiple technologies like document management, workflow, scanning, document capture, email management, etc. In the installed content management software world, this often means a great deal of time and dollars dedicated to making multiple technologies work together.

By contrast, content management technologies can be integrated in a cloud, including capture, document management, workflow, e-signature, eForms and much more.

Low Cost

When it comes to enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, on-premise software carries a large price tag. Add up the software license, implementation services, additional hardware and networking costs, and annual maintenance fees and on-premise content management software can be out of reach of many organizations. Cloud ECM solutions, however, offer a highly-affordable alternative to automate document-intensive processes.

Not only are initial costs much lower, but the cloud content management model also brings you reduced costs over the long-term. There are no servers or software to administer and no annual maintenance fees. This is one of the major reasons why organizations that start with one cloud application, such as content management and workflow, tend to seek cloud solutions for subsequent applications.

Secure Content

ECM Cloud platform offers the highest level of security. There are additional security controls within the cloud solution where typical on-premise content management products do not have them.

Enhanced Business Agility

In a cloud, content management solutions can be quickly and easily tailored to meet your changing document management and workflow needs. In addition, there is an ability to take advantage of new features and enhancements as they become available.

Structured Content Management

Organizations of all sizes are beginning to realize how content and its reuse across the enterprise can improve productivity. The need for change is driven by the desire to better manage information assets (documents, creative ideas, illustrations, charts, graphics, multimedia, etc.) and eliminate costly processes that fail to facilitate the effective and consistent re-use of content.

Content reuse can take a variety of forms. The most common reuse scenario is dynamically updating multiple web pages when content is added or removed from a site. There are also content reuse opportunities across multiple web sites, as in the case of co-branding and syndication. Content reuse is critical and often complex when supporting print and web publishing. Perhaps the biggest impact content reuse is in efficient multilingual publishing.

To reuse content it must be structured. Structured content simply means that the information is stored in a format that defines and describes the content. Extensible Mark-Up Language (XML) is a simple and effective format for creating and managing information. Using XML you can describe the content that you are managing, so a headline will actually be defined as a headline, and likewise for a price, a product description, a caption, etc.

Although structuring takes some planning, the benefit is enormous. You can easily re-use text and media for a variety of purposes. You can create publications quickly because images and text are easy to find and put together. Updating your publications is easier because you only need to make changes in one place, and it updates everywhere the content is used. Managing structured content happens in an XML-based content management system (CMS).

There are often great benefits to content structure. Benefits include:

• making content more retrievable and re-usable;
• reducing costs and complexity of translation;
• enforcing authoring, style, and branding guidelines;
• improving information interchange.

XML is the industry standard format for structuring content. It is very easy to work with and is easy to migrate to other formats. Graphics, video, Word documents, PDF's and other files are wrapped in XML to provide structure and metadata that makes the files easy to find and manage. XML was explicitly designed to represent the very hierarchical models of content.

There are four basic parts critical to structuring information:

• defining content types;
• identifying rules of content hierarchy;
• creating modular content units;
• applying standards consistently.

Defining Content Types

When you begin to analyze your existing documentation and future requirements, think about your content according to its informational type rather than its format. Procedures, topics, facts, terms, definitions, prices, product numbers, and product descriptions are common information types.

As you continue to analyze the content you create, you will likely discover that many content types are reusable. For instance, you may discover that there is no reason that your product description should be any different regardless of where it is published.

Identifying Rules of Content Hierarchy

The most significant way that structured documents differ from unstructured ones is that structured documents include rules. These rules formalize the order in which text, graphics, and tables may be entered into a document by an author. For example, in an unstructured document, a paragraph has specific formatting - font, size, and spacing. In a structured document, this same paragraph also has an exterior wrapper that governs the elements that are allowed to appear before and after it. The elements' rules are defined in a document type definition (DTD) or schema.

Structured content management implies moving away from formatting cues to signal such relationships within a document and instead working with information rules. This is where the power of the information model comes from, but also the difficulties in change management, in ways authors are used to working with CMS.

Creating Modular Content Units

Structured content management requires that you begin to look at the content you create as separate, identifiable chunks of information that can be reassembled differently depending on audience, purpose, or delivery method. This represents an intentions based analysis, and not an academic exercise. How, where, and when you intend to re-use that content should drive your modularity.

These chunks of information, once identified and tagged, can be reassembled (reused/repurposed) in other information products. They can even be reused in a different order. Modular content from a source document could be reused in a marketing brochure, user manual, and customer-facing web site.

Using Standards Consistently

At a subconscious level, you may understand the importance of following internal standards, branding guidelines, and formalized structure. But, it is human nature to continue to find reasons to override templates or alter the format "just this one time."

Breaking the rules is not allowed when it comes to structured authoring. Reuse is only possible when your information is consistently structured. Imagine how useless a phone directory would be if the data entry clerks at the phone company were allowed to enter information in any order they choose. Some clerks use the first field for first name, others for last name. And instead of last name, first name, ordered alphabetically, what if some of the listings were first name, last name?

Of course, most enterprise content is not as highly structured as a phone book. But if your goal is to reuse content, it must be be structured consistently. If adhering to a particular document standard seems painful, re-examine whether the content is really as structured as you think, or change your expectations about how much information can be re-used and easily shared. Document models can be made easier and more flexible, but with a cost in downstream utility of the information.

XML Building Blocks

You have identified your content types, chunked them into modular components intended for re-use, established the relationships among those chunks, and decided that you can live with them in a componentized fashion to the extent that your team will follow that structure consistently.

These concepts are important in structured XML content management:

• Elements
• Attributes
• DTDs and Schemas

Elements

The basic unit of information is called an element. Elements can be text, graphics, tables, or even containers for other elements. In short, everything is an element.

When you create an information model, you define a document hierarchy. A hierarchy specifies the order in which elements are allowed to be used in a particular information product.

For example, for a set of user documentation, a ChapterTitle always begins a chapter, followed by a synopsis and a bulleted list of topics in the chapter. Elements are powerful tools that allow you to create structured content appropriate for reuse.

Attributes

XML elements can be extended to contain more information than just a label. Elements have attributes which is additional information about each element. For example, a chapter element can have an optional attribute of author and the author's university affiliation. These attributes allow to find all instances of a specific author or university.

Because you can classify information based on attributes, you can create new information products from your source content that you would otherwise have to cobble together manually.

Documentation authors have long benefited from adding attributes to the elements of content they create, allowing readers to use "help" applications and user guides more intelligently. Attributes can help indicate in which information products an element should appear, and in which languages. For example, some elements should be present on a web site, but may not be appropriate for a printed guide; others should appear in the Spanish version of a document, but not in the Portuguese.

Attributes make content smart enough to know where to go. For example, elements and attributes can be harnessed to create dynamic content for web-based information products, based on the personal preferences of your users.

DTDs and Schemas

You define the structure of an information product in a document type definition (DTD) or a schema. A schema, unlike a DTD, is an actual XML document, but both are used to define information models. Both provide considerable modeling power and can help facilitate content reuse and multi-channel publishing.

Case Study - Wind River - Twiki Information Architecture

In the "Case Studies" series of my posts, I describe the projects that I worked on and lessons learned from them. In this post, I am going to describe the project of re-structuring content and information architecture of a content management system based on Twiki in Wind River.

Wind River is a software engineering company that used Twiki as their content management system. TWiki is a Perl-based structured wiki application, typically used to run a collaboration platform, content management system, a knowledge base, or a team portal.

Content organization and information architecture in Twiki were such that users had difficulty in finding information they were looking for. This situation made it difficult to find, re-use, and update content.

This also discouraged further adding of the new content and thus created areas where no documentation existed and the knowledge instead of being shared was being stored in personal computers. Storing the content in personal computers presented a risk of it being lost because it was not backed-up.

There was a lot of obsolete content because no content owners have been formally identified and no retention schedule has been set up. Collaborative work on the documents and projects was accomplished by users sending links to Twiki pages. Without these links it was very difficult to find information. There was no information governance in place and so content management processes were very sporadic.

The task was to re-organize the content organization and information architecture of the system and to set up information governance to solve these problems.

I strongly believe in user-centered design, so I performed the users study. I identified stakeholders within each Wind River team and created the questionnaire for collecting users' requirements for the system re-organization and the usability issues.

Based on these requirements, I re-organized the content structure and information architecture of the system. The major key to this re-organization was that the structure is very simple and intuitive. I made navigation very simple, created very intuitive labels, made sure that there is not too much information on one page and a user does not have to scroll down a very long page, that each page has a correct breadcrumb, and created taxonomy of webs (the building blocks of Twiki). Based on this taxonomy, I re-organized the location of documents. I also enhanced the system search.

For each content type, document owners were identified and retention schedule was set up with the function to flag the content that would reach an expiration date according to the retention schedule. This flag function would send an email notification to the content administrator that a certain document reached an expiration date. This alert allowed the content administrator to contact the document owner for the decision on what should be done with this document: review and update, move to an archive, or delete.

User acceptance testing of the system was performed. Users were satisfied with the system's new information architecture and indicated that it became much easier to find information.

The system with new content structure and information architecture was deployed.

Information governance was set up. Group and individual training was conducted on ongoing basis.

The project was a success. Company management and users were very cooperative in helping to make this project a success. It helped to increase efficiency and productivity and thus saved Wind River cost because employees did not waste any time on searching for documents or recreating documents that already exist.

Lessons learned

1. User-centered design is paramount to the project success. When you design and build the system based on users’ requirements, they are going to use it. Users have the sense of ownership of the system which provides excellent starting point. They know that the system you are building will be what they need.

2. Top-down support is critical for the project success. Management support is a huge factor in employees' encouragement to use the system and in setting up and enforcing procedures for information governance.

3. Assurance of users from the very beginning that they will not be left alone with the system provided their cooperation.

4. User acceptance testing helped to encourage employees to start using the system. When they participate in this process, this gives them the feeling of ownership of the system.

5. Ongoing training after the system deployment with the new content structure and information architecture made user adoption smooth.