I have been developing unified content strategies for about 15 years and working with content management systems for about the same period of time. The unified content strategy came about as I realized that there was no clear strategy for creating multiple documents or learning materials for products and services for a company. They were often created by different individuals and inconsistent. Often I was asked to create multiple documents on a very tight budget and short timeframe. The only way to do this time and cost effectively was to develop a unified content strategy then develop the materials to support the strategy.

My experience with content management began when clients had more and more information to manage (ranging from 10,000 pages to more than 100,000 pages) and as I began to develop materials in SGML. SGML databases enabled me to manage elements of content, not just documents. It was a perfect fit to use content management to support the unified content strategy.Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy came about as a result of our work with our clients. The book answers the questions that each client asked as they started to work with us. Now when we start to work with a new client the client already understands the basic concepts and process so we can “hit the ground running”. The Rockley Group works on each project as a team, drawing on different skill sets at different times to most effectively address the client’s requirements. It was a logical step to draw on two of our senior consultants to develop the content of the book. The book also answers the many questions we get from participants in our conference presentations, webinars and workshops. The book provides a solid foundation for anyone hoping to improve the way they create, manage, and deliver content.  Many companies tend to leave the content strategy to the IT developers, and many IT developers tend to shy away from serious discussions about content.

In your opinion, how can companies ensure that a unified content strategy will be developed?

A business case for a unified content strategy should always be presented from the business perspective. That is, issues surrounding content are not merely technology problems. Rather, they are complex business challenges that affect a company’s bottom line, and should be addressed as such. The IT and the business side should be partners in a unified content project, with both sides responsible and accountable for process and quality improvements, reduced costs and ultimately, greater customer satisfaction.

In your book, you talk about separating form and content. It’s one thing doing that for structured content, but is there any risk in doing that with unstructured content?

The goal of a unified content strategy is to define structure for previously unstructured content. So, once you’ve analyzed and modeled your materials, the content is no longer unstructured. With content that is left unstructured, for example documents that are not broken down further than a title, subheadings and document body, you can still separate the form from the content.

The content is in fact structured, just to a very high level of granularity. If your authors create content using stylesheets or templates, the style tags can still be “mapped” to different formats for different media. However, if authors do not use styles or adhere to a template, you cannot easily separate format from content.

As you’ve written, creating metadata can be difficult and time-consuming. How can organizations learn to consistently create metadata across the enterprise for retrieval, tracking and assembling for re-use? Should there be a set of Internet standards for creating controlled vocabularies, etc?

Internet standards for creating controlled vocabularies would be helpful, but individual organizations don’t need to wait for these types of standards to go ahead and create their own guidelines and controlled vocabularies internally. Many sectors and industries already have terminology standards that can be adapted and used to create metadata guidelines.

To be successful, a unified content strategy should be considered as an enterprise-level endeavor right from the start, even if not all areas in an organization are participating right away. Participating departments should define their own metadata with the entire organization in mind. They should solicit information from, and share it with, other departments to make sure that the metadata can be universally applied when the time comes.

Can you tell us about some of the content-related issues and challenges you’ve seen many organizations face, either on the development or the management side of things?

The most common content-related issue, and often the indicator that drives organizations to seek help in defining a unified content strategy, is the inability of either internal users of the content, or customers, to find the information they need. This manifests in many ways, including redundant content creation, increased costs due to inefficient content creation processes, and lost revenue due to customer dissatisfaction or content inconsistencies.

Organizations sometimes have a hard time getting buy-in from management, which is why they need to present a business case that demonstrates how these issues are affecting the company’s bottom line. IT and business need to work together to build a strong business case for a unified content strategy, and to select and implement the proper tools to support the solution. Too often, organizations have already committed to a particular tool or technology, without properly analyzing content-related business requirements ahead of time. It’s like going out and having a suit made without first taking your measurements.

In the near future, what kind of technology solutions do you see as having a powerful impact on content management in large organizations?

The move to adopt XML by many vendors has been the most significant breakthrough to date affecting content management, and will continue to benefit the content management industry moving forward, as new ways to apply its versatility to content-related issues are developed. In future, better native integration between authoring tools, content management systems and delivery systems are likely to emerge, as content management vendors gain a greater understanding of the issues and requirements of authors and publishers. Industry-specific content management solutions for areas such as health sciences and other regulated industries are being developed now.

Another area that vendors are beginning to address is the translation of content, and the integration of authoring, translation memory, content management and globalization management tools.

How do you see the Internet changing? Do you think it’s becoming a more proprietary and less open-source environment in terms of information, culture, commerce?

The Internet has been moving towards more proprietary and less open-source for years as vendors have created tools to assist people in creating and managing content on the web. As these tools have gained acceptance their proprietary focus has been overlaid on the Internet. I don’t see this changing though there will always be a role for open-source.

The Internet moved very rapidly from a tool for the academic and scientific community to the primary marketing and sales vehicle for many companies. This has dramatically changed the orientation of the Internet. However, it has continued to grow and support knowledge in more effective ways than traditional libraries and this will continue. Education, learning, knowledge, and knowledge sharing have changed for the good and it can only continue to grow.

Finally, do you have any other interesting books in progress or other projects you’d like to tell us about?

The Rockley Group is currently focusing on content/information modeling and metadata design for content reuse and management. Little or no literature exists on this topic and it is critical to the effective design of a unified content strategy. We are developing methodologies, techniques, and strategies in this area to optimize reuse, content structure and optimize the support for the models in authoring, content management, and delivery tools. We have recently developed workshops for our clients and the public on this topic. At some point in the future this may become a book.