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John, Volker
, Operations Manager , Sörman Information GmbH, Hamburg Germany
Email: volker.john@sorman.com
Web site:http://www.sorman.com
Volker John works as Operations Manager at Sörman, a leading provider of XML/SGML-related content management solutions.
Prior to his current position, Mr. John was Product Manager at POET Software in Germany. With a background in business administration and software engineering, Mr. John frequently lectures on the topic of XML and its benefits in today’s business applications.
His primary responsibility at Sörman is guiding the future direction of the Content Management Suite, a product specifically addressing the needs of the digital economy.
In this paper, the implications of activities related to Content Management are presented. As a general rule, Content Management is characterized as a process for handling information objects – supported by software tools. Along with the presentation of methods related to the structured capturing of information, the relevance of Content Management is explored. This contribution explains strategic, tactical, and operational aspects of Content Management projects as well as their relationships.
From time to time, people ask about the large variety of systems available for Content Management. Typically, they lack a clear understanding about what applications are around that are connected to this term.
When it comes to web content management (WCM), people usually seek tools to manage large web sites and their contents. Support for multiple authors (teamwork), link management, workflow and ease-of use are important for WCM. Older systems mostly support HTML and template based authoring, with an increasing emphasis on XML.
Document Management (DM) focuses on the management of large volumes of documents. Those documents (typically "standard" office documents or scanned material) are automatically routed, forwarded, and archived by document management systems. Thus, the inclusion of workflow support is a constituent feature of those systems.
If the term "document" is not considered in a very narrow manner, Media Asset Management (MAM), also known as Digital Asset Management (DAM), is a special branch of Document Management. However, MAM deals with media in a broader sense (audio clips, video streams, images). As a consequence, Media Asset Management has a close connection to Digital Rights Management. Metadata is a very important aspect for MAM. Easy access to information is possible by associating metadata with each information object handled by a MAM installation.
When it comes to the management of "product knowledge", Content Management (CM) is usually not far off. The automated assembly of product related information (such as user manuals) or the creation of new information products (for example, new STM books) based on existing information fragments require the use of XML (and SGML). Common workflows such as translation of information and/or peer review prior to publication are usually supported by workflow management systems.
In contrast to the categories above, Knowledge Management (KM) deals with the management of corporate knowledge and tries to avoid the extreme specialisation of indiviuals. A large variety of data sources (including WCM, DM and CM systems) can be part of a KM project.
When an enterprise produces information a high cost is associated with this information production. Thus, seeking out possibilities to limit or control the use of this information by a 3rd party is only natural. This is where Digital Rights Management (DRM) comes in. The functions DRM systems provide try to impose restrictions on information usage. These restrictions can take several dimensions:
All measures serve the purpose of controlling intellectual property rights in digital media and form a close relationship with all activities in eBusiness. Looking at the interface between the information source and demand, DRM is usually implemented as a layer on top of other activities mentioned here.
Today, the information-related behavior of businesses is subject to changes. Historically, information aimed at the consumption in an enterprise was much more important than information that was targeted at an outside audience. There is a rather simple reason for that: in the old days, information was primarily interpreted as a production factor that served the purpose of helping to make decisions. As a consequence, documents created in and received by a corporation were put into archives (based on Document Management systems) to form the foundation for "educated" decisions. However, with growing demand for information by the general public and faster availability of information over the Internet, businesses must pay more attention to their outbound communication - most often in the form of the introduction of some Web Content Management system. Clearly, their importance is close or equal to classic document management by now. There are other reasons for this change in focus. For example, new legal regulations force enterprises to put more efforts into technical documentationNote.
Note:
E.g., when technical documentation is defined as an aspect of product liability.
In addition, improvements in customer relationship management force businesses to take in even more information and to act accordingly. Thus, it becomes more and more important to make use of information (content) regardless of its original context and intended target audience / media.In the following, Content Management is characterized as a process that leads towards a certain goal by managing information objectsNote
Note:
In the following, information objects are understood as "chunks of information" that are context free and self-contained.
of different origin and character. Although this is very well possible with information not based on XML, we will focus on information using XML format.The most important prerequisite of a successful Content Management project is a clear and common goal. If you cannot explain to the people in your organization what purpose all the activity serves, you will never be able to generate any enthusiasm for your approach. And getting the buy-in of the people is key to success. Furthermore, the goal determines the method(s) and technologies that you can use during your project.
Any goal for CM activities has to be derived from the strategic field of corporate Information Management. In this area, long-lasting plans are executed that have a direct influence on the corporate objective. One of the major tasks of corporate information management is to preserve the ability of the enterprise to withstand changes in the economic, technological, cultural or political environment. Therefore it is imperative for the competitiveness of a company to realize an information architecture that supports this aim. Content Management is only a part of this architecture.
In this context, it is mandatory for the design of CM projects to pay attention to the two aspects of profitability and effectiveness. Using this assumption as a starting point, CM projects have two attributes: they can both shape and streamline existing information processes. The corporate process is shaped when the enterprise itself is the subject matter, e.g., when instruments are introduced to support decision processes that usually would not allow routine decisions. Rationalization surfaces when structures and processes are re-arranged to achieve better efficiency. For example, when information re-use is introduced to reduce the efforts of information sourcing.
It is hard to formulate concrete tasks in strategic CM. However, CM must be understood as part of the information architecture of an enterprise to become effective. Otherwise, all you get is another isolated application.
Apart from describing the overall goal that forms the foundation of a CM project, it is important to convince employees that the result of the comparison efforts vs. benefits will be positive. This is a tough call because the successful implementation of Content Management requires an up-front investment. Although the goals of a CM project usually include the streamlining of processes, such a project always necessitates organizational learning and additional efforts while creating information objects.
There are a variety of examples concerning what can go wrong when it comes to working with information objects and the implementation of Content Management Systems.
One of the most prominent problems stems from the fact that once a company tries to start with Content Management people are no longer working in the context of a document. Instead, since the information objects are assembled at a later stage to form meaningful documents, they must be enhanced with metadata describing their contents. However, the more descriptive the metadata shall be and the more granular the information objects are, the more single data items are required. In turn, people need to maintain this information on top of the information itself, often leading to arguments such as "this causes more work on categorization than on the actual content". Projects are almost sure to fail, if this complaint has been brought up and is not addressed.
Information Mapping® 
is a popular method to support the creation of information objects. The method itself has some principles that focus around hierarchy, labels, and chunking. The method requires all pieces of information to be described using labels which identify different portions of text. These labels are the same throughout a class of documents and always follow a fixed hierarchy. Correct structuring of the information is enabled by an up-front analysis of the information organization. By default, the method supports the principle of subject matter and media independent information.
Application of the method has the goal of providing information that can be tailored to target audiences. Information created by following the method's rules is supposed to be scanned much quicker for relevant pieces of information than usual. The result of using IM are consistent information modules.
There are several advantages connected to using Information Mapping, some of which are:
Unfortunately, the method is only a semantic standard. In fact, nothing guarantees that authors will stick to the structures defined by the method. Among other open questions are
However, methods like Information Management and similar ones provide the framework to make people think in structures, which is a prerequisite to have people accept XML as a way to work in structures.
It is important to understand that the goal of your project determines the technology you choose and not vice-versa. In fact, many projects have run into difficulties because some "geeks" chose a technology they deemed fitting without looking at the consequences. Providers of CM solutions usually give the impression that successful Content Management always requires structured documents. This is not correct. Using structured documents only makes sense when those structures are utilized at a later stage. Creating an environment that allows using XML documents is costly. Investments in these environments have to be justified by a sufficient ROI. Furthermore, since they are easily transferred back and forth between their representation in a database and XML, the question of using XML for record-based information does not need to be asked at all.
Common experience indicates that XML documents are beneficial if one or more of the issues below needs to be addressed:
the state of a certain piece of information needs to be reconstructable at any given point in time
information objects are used in different contexts and / or media
information has more than one dimension, for example, different languages
Criteria such as the above provide a solid foundation for a decision. This decision is not limited to "XML or not XML" but includes the choice of a particular Content Management system. Remember: information is much more persistent than the formats and systems it is contained in.
There is a number of areas where Content Management has become quite popular. Among the most important are the reduction of translation cost as well as the easy generation of new information products by means of information re-use.
The granular storage of information objects in CM systems allows easy identification of those objects that have been changed since the last translation. In combination with Translation Memory systems, the process of re-translating information is easily automated with the exception of the translation itself. Users have reported cost savings of more than 30% by exploiting structural properties of XML documents for the translation process.
Using Content Management to reduce translation cost is closely connected with information re-use handled in a subsequent section. The relationship is comparatively easy: the more contents are re-used, the less translation is necessary. Yet there is one drawback: the context in which a re-used information object is planted might very well influence the correct translation.
Information re-use is probably one of the most powerful approaches to leverage investments in information generation. The modular setup of devices has a long lasting history in the area of technical construction. The same principle can be applied to the area of technical documentation and other highly structured documents, for example in STM publishing. Those structures can easily be expressed in XML. Content Management systems help to make use of the structural information and the re-use of information objects.
However, there is a drawback connected to re-use: once "infected" with the idea of information re-use based on XML structures, most users tend to believe that the level of re-use granularity can be extended into infinity. However, this is not true. Since re-use is possible only with context free information, the possible contexts of a certain information object must be described using metadata. The smaller the information objects that are intended for re-use, the more metadata needs to be created. Typically, this needs to be done by the author thus invalidating part of the cost savings generated by information re-use. It is important to make economical judgements on the level of applicable re-use granularity in the form of optimizations. Typically, one would compare the savings by re-using information instead of regenerating it with the cost of identifying feasible objects for re-use. The latter is a combination of cost associated with searching appropriate information objects and verifying their potential re-use in a secondary context.
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