Content Management: When do we need it?

We all use content management to some degree. When we start out our companies we use what I like to call the "unknown folder system". This folder hierarchical system is set up by one person and as the company grows the location of content within the folders is passed on via written procedures or more likely through word-of-mouth.

It is cheap and easy to use when the amount of content is small. As the company starts taking on more projects, developing more products, and hiring more employees the amount of content increases and so does the amount of people needing access to that information.

Posted to an RFP by the District of Saanich, BC Canada (which closes March 18 if you are interested in tendering a bid District of Saanich: Bid Opportunity)

"Information is an important strategic asset for the Municipality of Saanich and like other corporate assets it must be managed in order to meet strategic goals and to deliver programs and services. Increasingly, local governments are fully recognizing the value of their information assets and looking at how standards and procedures can be developed to support decision-making, minimize costs, and maximize the value of information."

Here is a municipality that understands the value of the information they have and the costs involved in writing and maintaining it. But unlike most of us they have 100's of thousands if not millions of tax dollars to take on a large project like this.

So the real question is at what point does implementing a content management system become viable. Well, like I said, you probably already have one. What needs to be implemented is a document system that can be used throughout the evolution of the change in your information as the organization grows. Yes good practices and a core understanding of the purpose of your company and its direction will make that leap easier and cheaper when the time comes.

Questions like "how can we justify the costs of implementing a CMS application", will transform to "how can we not justify the cost of implementing a CMS", which will make the time to act more clear.

In an upcoming webinar hosted by Just Systems called "Transforming Manufacturing Processes through Dynamic Documents" the speakers will be describing how "The static nature [of documents] can result in design, development and maintenance delays, mistakes, rework costs and compliance issues that can rapidly erode profit margins, customer loyalty and time-to-market advantages."

I think this goes to the thought that your documents are not static pieces of paper but living, growing, and changing pieces of information that get used and reused whether or not a process to take care of your documents has been defined. By ensuring a document process is put in place and all people in your company know where to find information, how to request changes, update, and distribute new content, and who has the permission to manage the content you will be well on your way to having a viable content management system. Adding the software to automatically manage the content will only come when core principles of the organization require it.

Be the Elephant - Steve Kaplan

This book is a fabulous follow-up to Bag the Elephant, also by Steve Kaplan. In this elephant book Kaplan talks about becoming the elephant we were targeting. He discusses, "why growth is not only desirable, but necessary." We started a good business and we need to map its growth, in which Kaplan points out the three essential factors for sustainable, successful growth. When you answer the question "Think you're ready to grow?" you are in for some real work. This is not a sit-down book, this is a "do-something book" and like running a business, there are rewards for doing it right. After all, as Kaplan notes, "To last, you have to grow" and we all know that to grow you have to be willing to put in some effort.

I got to page 23 "The Guts of the Model" and had to stop to identify some core functions of my company before I read on. The information required is detailed and getting it is not a small task. Yet, I kept thinking to myself, "this is a book I can go back to later. I know this, but I will estimate that." It still took quite a bit of time and I got through it but I know I could have been more specific with my answers.

I had 6 pages of notes and details about my company when I finished. Next I moved on to the risk analysis. In the chapter "What's the downside?" I reviewed and reveled the risks of running my business. Again this required some time to complete but I had a reward at the end because directly after this chapter is the assessment of the health of your company in the form of the Business Success Quotient (BSQ).

So, one-and-a-half months later I am finally doing my BSQ. Often I just shrug off this type of assessment as being too superficial, like the surveys in Cosmo, but I am still driven to see the results. In this case the assessment is clearly based on data and other key elements (like assumptions, risk, values, my personality, passion, and experience) that made the outcome a much truer, revealing look at my core business. Just so you know I am fairly competitive and I like to do well on these assessments, which may mean that the outcome is as expected or better than expected.

Well, I got a rude awakening to the idea that I am running a healthy, sustainable business. I did not fall a little below the bottom level, I fell a lot below. In fact the exact working in Kaplan's book is "This is a very high-risk business and is not likely to work. You should seriously consider moving on to a different opportunity." All is not lost because it is possible change your scores by going back and putting in the 100% effort to complete the information as well as evaluating where the weaknesses are and shifting the business to make it stronger.

This was quite disheartening news and I will have to spend some time determining whether to evaluate and reassess or to move on. I have always been aware that something is not working right in my business and I have been struggling to find a way to identify it. This assessment just gave me the tools to see it more clearly. The very next day I am in the office of Mario Perek of Industry Canada. He has been in the medical device and biotech sector for well over two decades, which is the industry my company targets. In his own words he feels that "companies [in Canada] have to export. They cannot survive selling in Canada." It was definitely a different perspective than the rosy outlook painted by the industry. Although I do know that it is a difficult industry to flourish in I do believe there is a very healthy market for growth. So, should I spend time looking for that market or should I "move on" as Kaplan would say.

Well since this is a book report I will say that this is the end of Part 1. I am 65 pages into the book and I will read no further until I can make the first 64 pages valuable to my company, what ever that may be.

I do recommend reading this book and going through the exercises. I think it will help you determine where your strengths and weaknesses are and possibly change the direction of your business. By knowing this information you will give your company a strong base in which to support your elephant.

Steve Kaplan - The Difference Maker

Corporate Growth - What Happens? - Part I

Growing a company is painful. Even if you have done it before there are many hurdles that must be overcome. Hopefully if you have done it before you have a system that helps you meet the goals you have set for your company. If you have not done it before then talk to as many business owners that you can, read books, listen to seminars, take courses to benefit from the mistakes and successes others have made.
This article is going to cover some of the painful transitioning points I have been witness to in my own business and in my experience with other businesses. This is not a road map but more like a legend.

Giving up control
One of the first things you will feel when you get to the point that you can no longer do all the work required to keep the business providing great products and service is a loss of control. The depth of this loss will be determined by the length of time you spent doing everything yourself. If you have put your systems into place and you have structured you business so it can be operated by others then you will get over this feeling of loss very quickly. The freedom to continue to grow your business while it operates on its own is liberating.

Hiring the right person(s)
Have you ever hired someone and found that they cannot do the job as well as you do? There are several reasons this may happen, one of them being our intrinsic need to control our business. If we look at the abilities of the employee we may find that we hired them for the wrong reasons. It may be as simple as we hired the right person for the wrong position or that we hired the wrong person for compassionate reasons. There are many books out there that describe how to see the worth of the potential employee as well as assessments and companies that can help you make the right choice.
Jim Collins wrote in his book Good to Great, "Get the right people on the bus". This means your company will be much more successful if all the people involved in running your business are the "Right People". It also means that your corporate growth will be less painful if you have competent people able to do the work required.

Strained communications
Running a company should never be like the kids game "telephone", where one person tells the next and the message surges through the company hoping that the last person receives the same message that was sent. This is often how we handle our internal communications. We expect our upper management to inform the managers and they inform their team leads and they, in turn, inform their project team members. I believe that a successful corporation supports an environment that allows everyone in the system to know the status of the company, where it is going and growing, and how it plans to get there.
We don't see great football teams standing around the field hoping they will know what to do if the ball comes to them. We see them huddled together, getting their directives and planning their moves. When they break everyone knows what they are going to do this 'down' that is going to get them closer to the goal and ultimately the win.
It is the same in business, the larger the organization the more distorted the communications can become. Take time to make sure everyone on your team knows where you are going. Even if you are just one person with a team of contractors, they will get you to your goal if they know what is expected of them and where they are needed.
Also, make this a bilateral communication. Make sure that the information, feedback, innovations, problems, and successes can get back to you. Like any relationship, the more open the communications are the healthier it will be. A healthy corporate environment leads to happy associates and sustainable growth.

Documenting systems
One of the toughest things you will need to do almost from the first day you start you business is to document the process in which you do your business. Obviously if it is just you at the helm, you can choose where to go and when. You probably will not sail your company far by yourself but alone you can do what you want.
When we grow our businesses we need others to do most or sometimes all the jobs we had to initially fill ourselves. We can pass on our knowledge through training but it will be difficult as time passes to remember what parts of what we did was successful and what was not. Our predecessors will make changes based on their experience, some good, some not good and again we will have no way to compare the changes to the original process.
By documenting all the processes within the company we set a standard of operation that must be met by all associates. If someone has a better idea it can be implemented into the process and adopted by all associates in the company. This ensures a consistent business operation that will provide a consistent level of product or service.
Think about some of your favourite businesses to patronize. Do you go there because every once in a while you enjoy your experience or do you go there because you always enjoy your experience. I am personally not a fan of McDonald's food but I know if I arrive with my kids for a treat they will be thanking me for days. They will totally enjoy the experience, every time we go, without fail and hence I will enjoy the experience. This is the consistency we all need to give our customers.
The E-Myth series by Micheal Gerber is great reading. It helped me determine what systems I had in my company and what processes had to be documented. After I had been in business for a couple of years I could see what was working as well as what was not working. These will be living documents that will grow with your business.

Next - Part II
In part II of this article we will cover the increasing cost of growth, training, and information management.

CMS or Version Control - which one for documentation?

Version control has been and is being used by 1000's of companies to manage their software design. Software programmers check out files from a server to their local client. They can then, make changes and update or check the files back into the server at any time, as long as the connection between the client and the server is available. The version control software keeps the change history. Version control is often used by the documentation department of small companies to track the changes in documents. So why would anyone need a Content Management System (CMS) to look after their documentation? I believe now that CMS tools are becoming more available and cost effective this questions is being seriously asked but the habits of the past are making it hard for us to justify the cost of the change.

In the 60's and earlier technical writing was a very narrow field, comprised mostly of defense and aerospace documentation content writers. It wasn't until the age of the personal digital computer and the explosion of software applications that the technical writer became an invaluable person in the design, distribution, and marketing of these new products. Before this age documents were paper based, stored in boxes. Design history was a function of process and procedure, tracked by a paper-driven system. Even as late as eleven years ago I can remember clearly the physical effort involved in updating a procedure or manual. It required:

• many trips to the active and archived document filing system
• the walking around of drafts for sign-off
• walking around beta for testing
• filing drafts
• archiving current documents to a physically different filing cabinet located in a different room
• holding a release meeting to have the traveler signed off by all officials
• filling the final released document to the active document location.

The process itself is not unlike what is used today, but we did not even have internal email so every question, response, check, and issue had to be physically walked from person to person.

As computer memory increased and word processing applications became more accessible the ability to store documents electronically became more feasible, but the systems that were available to the average company where for tracking the history of code changes. Using version control to track document changes was really a stop-gap solution with no alternative.

I don't know the exact history of CMS applications but I do remember witnessing the increase in hype amongst the technical writing community with respect to XML and CMS about 9 years ago. With the responsibility of a technical writer changing quickly, the hype was more of a plea for a solution to be able to organize, share, and search the increasingly growing size of paperless content. Content writers where now often responsible for coding (HTML, XHTML, XML, JavaScript, CSS, XSL), designing (print, web, help, training, blogs, FAQ's, knowledge base), doc management, graphics, web marketing, regulatory, usability, user validation, applications expertise and evaluation (Word, FrameMaker, WebWorks, RoboHelp, Flare, CMS software, bug reporting, version, screen capture, publishing, e-mail) and finally publishing.

And again I ask, "what is the value of a CMS to a company?"

Content is not code. Software code is written for a specific function, used in a specific location, in response to a specific action or inaction of the hardware, user interface, or the software itself. Content is the description of a concept or procedure that can be used in multiple ways to define a product or company. The design of software code cannot be changed without a consequence to the quality of the product. The content can be written in multiple ways to mean the same thing or sometimes written exactly the same to mean something completely different. The consequence of changing content may or may not affect the quality of a product. At best it is merely inconsistent.

Kevin Ballard of L-3 Communications says, "CMS allows authors to maintain unique names" as well as "maintain the [relationship of] links" between document files. I believe he is right and here is why. As the volume of the content increases, the location of specific wording becomes impossible to track and remember. Content reuse is only possible if the relationship between the new document and the current content is known.

File Relationships
In a version control system files are checked in to a files system designed to store code. The file is checked out to any location on a clients computer. In a CMS system the relationship of file system is maintained when files are checked out. This means that when ditamaps are created for XML files or images used in marketing are imported into a user manual, the relationship is the same on the authors computer as it is when it is checked in. The knowledge of where a file is stored is related to the file it is linked to, not the absolute file location.

Unique Names
Files saved to a version control system use specialized naming structures to meet coding standards. This nomenclature often makes it difficult to determine the actual content or purpose of the document.

Metadata
Another very important functions of a CMS is the ability to search for and find information using metadate. The term "information mining" is become very prevalent in this age of information. The more products and models, the more content that is created and the harder it becomes to find pertinent information. Text files and some word processing files can be easily searched but binary files like jpg, cdr, and quark files cannot.

In a CMS environment files can be categorized using metadate so that the information can be quickly grouped and located. For example, lets say we are a moderate sized medical device company that has 80 products on the market. Within those 80 products there are three target markets (hospitals, government, and personal use). How would you search for all products that can be sold to both the hospital and government market? Well if it was a Word document and you happen to put the target market in the document content then you will find those with a simple search using Windows Explorer, but what about marketing documents designed in Quark or Indesign, or jpg images, FAQ responses in XML, and HTML help topics?

Result
As the amount of content in a company grows over the years, the ability to find specific information becomes more difficult. Without a way to search content across an enterprise, information is lost and then re-written causing similar products in current release to have different wording. If technical documentation is explained differently in different documents there is a potential for misinterpretation, incorrect product use, product failure, product damage or worse, injury. If updated in one document but not in all locations this content resides the problem can continue to haunt the company. The location of all content must be known to ensure consistent, reliable documentation and guaranty the reliability and trustworthiness of a company. Companies are built on brand, brand is built on trust and trust is not implied or expected, it is earned.

The CMS system is a tool required for this information age. Without this type of tool there is little hope of finding our way through the mountains of information we create every day.