Curated for content, computing, data, information, and digital experience professionals

Category: Content management & strategy (Page 141 of 479)

This category includes editorial and news blog posts related to content management and content strategy. For older, long form reports, papers, and research on these topics see our Resources page.

Content management is a broad topic that refers to the management of unstructured or semi-structured content as a standalone system or a component of another system. Varieties of content management systems (CMS) include: web content management (WCM), enterprise content management (ECM), component content management (CCM), and digital asset management (DAM) systems. Content management systems are also now widely marketed as Digital Experience Management (DEM or DXM, DXP), and Customer Experience Management (CEM or CXM) systems or platforms, and may include additional marketing technology functions.

Content strategy topics include information architecture, content and information models, content globalization, and localization.

For some historical perspective see:

https://gilbane.com/gilbane-report-vol-8-num-8-what-is-content-management/

Kentico CMS for ASP.NET Gets New Enterprise Search Capabilities

Kentico Software released a new version 4.1 of Kentico CMS for ASP.NET. The new version comes with a enterprise-class search engine as well as user productivity enhancements. The search engine enables web content to be searchable to assist  visitors in finding information. The search engine provides search results with ranking, previews, thumbnail images and customizable filters. The site owners can dictate which parts of the site, which content types and which content fields are searchable. The search engine uses the Lucene search framework. The new version also enhances productivity by changing the way images are inserted into text. The uploaded images can be part of the page life cycle. When the page is removed from the site, the related images and attachments are also removed which helps organizations avoid invalid or expired content on their server. Other improvements were made to the management of multi-lingual web sites. Kentico CMS for ASP.NET now supports workflow configuration based on the content language and it allows administrators to grant editors with permissions to chosen language versions. Content editors can see which documents are not translated or their translation is not up-to-date. http://www.kentico.com/

Multilingual Product Content Research: One Analyst’s Perspective

We’ll soon hit the road to talk about the findings revealed in our new research study on Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices Into Global Content Value ChainsWhile working on presentations and abstracts, I found myself needing to be conscious of the distinction between objective and subjective perspectives on the state of content globalization.

As analysts, we try to be rigorously objective when reporting and analyzing research results, using subjective perspective sparingly, with solid justification and disclaimer. We focus on the data we gather and on what it tells us about the state of practice. When we wrapped up the multilingual product content study earlier this summer, Leonor, Karl, and I gave ourselves the luxury of concluding the report with a few paragraphs expressing our own personal opinions on the state of content globalization practices. Before we put on our analyst game face and speak from that objective perspective, we thought it would be useful to share our personal perspectives as context for readers who might attend a Gilbane presentation or webinar this fall.

Here are my thoughts on market readiness, as published in the conclusion of Multilingual Product Content:

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The Nexus of Defined Business Process and Ad Hoc Collaboration

My friend Sameer Patel wrote and published a very good blog post last week that examined the relationship of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and enterprise social software. His analysis was astute (as usual) and noted that there was a role for both types of software, because they offer different value propositions. ECM enables controlled, repeatable content publication processes, whereas social software empowers rapid, collaborative creation and sharing of content. There is a place for both in large enterprises. Sameer’s suggestion was that social software be used for authoring, sharing, and collecting feedback on draft documents or content chunks before they are formally published and widely distributed. ECM systems may then be used to publish the final, vetted content and manage it throughout the content lifecycle.

The relationship between ECM and enterprise social software is just one example of an important, higher level interconnection — the nexus of defined business processes and ad hoc collaboration. This is the sweet spot at which organizations will balance employees’ requirements for speed and flexibility with the corporation’s need for control. The following (hypothetical, but typical) scenario in a large company demonstrates this intersection.

A customer account manager receives a phone call from a client asking why an issue with their service has not been resolved and when it will be. The account manager can query a workflow-supported issue management system and learn that the issue has been assigned to a specific employee and that it has been assigned an "in-progress" status. However, that system does not tell the account manager what she really needs to know! She must turn to a communication system to ask the other employee what is the hold up and the current estimate of time to issue resolution. She emails, IM’s, phones, or maybe even tweets the employee to whom the issue has been assigned to get an answer she can give the customer.

The employee to whom the issue was assigned most likely cannot use the issue management system to actually resolve the problem either. He uses a collaboration system to find documented information and individuals possessing knowledge that can help him deal with the issue. Once the problem is solved, the employee submits the solution to the issue management system, which feeds it to a someone who can make the necessary changes for the customer and inform the customer account manager that the issue is resolved. Case closed.

The above scenario illustrates the need for both process and people-centric systems. Without the cludgy, structured issue management system, the customer account manager would not have known to whom the issue had been assigned and, thus, been unable to contact a specific individual to get better information about its status. Furthermore, middle managers would not have been able to assign the case in a systematic way or see the big picture of all cases being worked on for customers without the workflow and reporting capabilities of the issue management system. On the other hand, ad hoc communication and collaboration systems were the tools that drove actual results. The account manager and the employee to whom the issue was assigned would not have been able to do their work if the issue management system was their only support tool. They needed less structured tools that allowed them to communicate and collaborate quickly to actually resolve the issue.

We should not expect that organizations striving to become more people-centric will abandon their ECM, ERP, or other systems that guide or enforce key business processes. There is a need for both legacy management and Enterprise 2.0 philosophies and systems in large enterprises operating in matrixed organizational structures. Each approach can provide value; one quantifiable in hard currency and the other in terms of softer, but important, business metrics (more on this in a future post.) The enterprises that identify, and operate at, the intersection of structured process and ad hoc communication/collaboration will gain short-term competitive advantage.

Gilbane Group Releases New Study on Multilingual Product Content

For Immediate Release

Pioneering Research Describes Transformation of Technical Communications Practices to Align More Closely With Global Business Objectives

Cambridge, MA, July 28 — Gilbane Group, Inc., the analyst and consulting firm focused on content technologies and their application to high-value business solutions, today announced the publication of its latest research, Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices Into Global Content Value Chains.

The report is backed by in-depth qualitative research on how global businesses are creating, managing, and publishing multilingual product content. The study extends Gilbane’s 2008 research on multilingual business communications with a close look at the strategies, practices, and infrastructures specific to product content.

The research clearly shows a pervasive enterprise requirement for product content initiatives to tangibly improve global customer experience. Respondents from a mix of technical documentation, customer support, localization/translation, and training departments indicate that “global-ready technology architectures” are the second most often cited ROI factor to meet the directive. All respondents view single-sourcing strategies and self-help customer support applications as the two most important initiatives to align product content with global business objectives.

“Successful business cases for product content globalization address top-line issues relevant to corporate business goals while tackling bottom-line process improvements that will deliver cost savings,” commented Leonor Ciarlone, Senior Analyst, Gilbane Group, and program lead for Multilingual Product Content. “Our research shows that while multilingual content technologies are clearly ROI enablers, other factors influence sustainable results. Cross-departmental collaboration and overarching business processes, cited as essential improvements by 70% and 82% of respondents respectively, are critical to transforming traditional practices.”

 Multilingual Product Content is the first substantive report on the state of end-to-end product content globalization practices from multiple perspectives. “Gilbane’s latest research continues to show both language and content professionals how the well-managed intersection of their domains is becoming best practice,” said Donna Parrish, Editor, MultiLingual magazine. “With practical insights and real experiences in the profiles, this study will serve as a valuable guide for organizations delivering technical documentation, training, and customer support in international markets.”

The report covers business and operational issues, including the evolving role of service providers as strategic partners; trends in authoring for quality at the source, content management and translation management integration, machine translation, and terminology management; and progress towards developing metrics for measuring the business impact of multilingual content. Profiles of leading practioners in high tech, manufacturing, automotive, and public sector/education are featured in the study.

Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices Into Global Content Value Chains is available as a free download from the Gilbane Group website at https://gilbane.com. The report is also available from study sponsors Acrolinx, Jonckers, Lasselle-Ramsay, LinguaLinx, STAR Group, Systran, and Vasont Systems.

About Gilbane Group

Gilbane Group, Inc., is an analyst and consulting firm that has been writing and consulting about the strategic use of information technologies since 1987. We have helped organizations of all sizes from a wide variety of industries and governments. We work with the entire community of stakeholders including investors, enterprise buyers of IT, technology suppliers, and other analyst firms. We have organized over 70 educational conferences in North America and Europe. Our next event  if Gilbane Boston, 1-3 December 2009, http://gilbaneboston.com. Information about our newsletter, reports, white papers, case studies, and blogs is available at https://gilbane.com. Follow Gilbane Group on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gilbane.

Contact:
Gilbane Group, Inc.
Ralph Marto, +1.617.497.0443 xt 117
ralph@gilbane.com

 

New Content Globalization Case Study: Philips

All businesses are facing serious disruptions from shifting global economies, technical advancements, and the need for strong, consistently branded online multinational presence. Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands has found a way to respond to these challenges without jeopardizing its ongoing business.

A world leader in the consumer lifestyle, healthcare, and lighting industries, Philips integrates technologies and design into people-centric solutions, based on fundamental customer insights and the brand promise of “sense and simplicity.” With 50,000 products, 1,800 logos, a website present in 57 countries and translated in 35+ target languages, and 500 consumer marketing managers in the Consumer Lifestyle sector, Philips’ global brand management strategy requires an adaptive system of people, process, and technology to provide a unifying influence.

This case study tells the story of how Philips has met and is keeping pace with changing and often disruptive business environments by evolving operations and communications touchpoints in a just-in-time approach that maximizes global opportunity based on consumer need.

Download the Philips story here:

Borderless Brand Management: The Philips Strategy for Global Expansion

Random House: Creating a 21st Century Publishing Framework

As part of our new report, Digital Platforms and Technologies for Publishers: Implementations Beyond “eBook,” we researched and wrote a number of case studies about how major publishing companies are moving to digital publishing. The following is case study of Random House and its use of Digital Asset Management (DAM) technology from OpenText to create a much more dynamic and agile publishing process.

Background

Random House, Inc. is the world’s largest English-language general trade book publisher. It is a division of Bertelsmann AG, one of the foremost media companies in the world.

Random House, Inc. assumed its current form with its acquisition by Bertelsmann in 1998, which brought together the imprints of the former Random House, Inc. with those of the former Bantam Doubleday Dell. Random House, Inc.’s publishing groups include the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, the Crown Publishing Group, the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, the Knopf Publishing Group, the Random House Audio Publishing Group, the Random House Publishing Group, and Random House Ventures.

Together, these groups and their imprints publish fiction and nonfiction, both original and reprints, by some of the foremost and most popular writers of our time. They appear in a full range of formats—including hardcover, trade paperback, mass market paperback, audio, electronic, and digital, for the widest possible readership from adults to young adults and children.

The reach of Random House, Inc. is global, with subsidiaries and affiliated companies in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Through Random House International, the books published by the imprints of Random House, Inc. are sold in virtually every country in the world.

Random House has long been committed to publishing the best literature by writers both in the United States and abroad. In addition to the company’s commercial success, books published by Random House, Inc. have won more major awards than those published by any other company—including the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer founded the company in 1925, after purchasing The Modern Library—reprints of classic works of literature—from publisher Horace Liveright. Two years later, in 1927, they decided to broaden the company’s publishing activities, and the Random House colophon made its debut.

Random House first made international news by successfully defending in court the U.S. publication of James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses, setting a major legal precedent for freedom of speech. Beginning in the 1930s, the company moved into publishing for children, and over the years has become a leader in the field. Random House entered reference publishing in 1947 with the highly successful American College Dictionary, which was followed in 1966 by the equally successful unabridged Random House Dictionary of the English Language. It continues to publish numerous reference works, including the Random House Webster’s College Dictionary.

In 1960, Random House acquired the distinguished American publishing house of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and, a year later, Pantheon Books, which had been established in New York by European editors to publish works from abroad. Both were assured complete editorial independence—a policy which continues in all parts of the company to this day.

The Open Text Digital Media Group, formerly Artesia, is a leader in enterprise and hosted digital asset management (DAM) solutions, bringing a depth of experience around rich media workflows and capabilities. Open Text media management is the choice of leading companies such as Time, General Motors, Discovery Communications, Paramount, HBO and many more.

When clients work with the Open Text Digital Media Group, they tap into a wealth of experience and the immeasurable value of:

  • A decade of designing, delivering, and implementing award-winning rich media solutions
  • A global client base of marquee customer installations
  • An experienced professional services staff with hundreds of successful implementations
  • A proven DAM implementation methodology
  • Endorsements by leading technology and implementation partners
  • Domain expertise and knowledge across a variety of industries and sectors
  • The global presence and financial strength of Open Text, a leading provider of Enterprise Content Management solutions with a track record of financial growth and stability

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Busy Week in XML Content Management Market

Holiday weeks can be sleepy weeks in enterprise software news, but this week has seen one significant press release each day in the XML content management market, or component content management (CCM) market if you prefer.

  • On Monday, SDL announced the acquisition of XyEnterprise, and the creation of a new business unit based on XyEnterprise and Trisoft called SDL-XySoft.
  • On Tuesday, Really Strategies, the makers of the Marklogic-Server-based system RSuite, announced the acquisition of SaaS CCM provider DocZone.
  • Today, Quark and EMC announced an integration of Quark XML Author with Documentum.

First, the necessary disclosures and caveats. Of the six companies mentioned, we’ve worked with all of them, I believe, and I actually worked for XyEnterprise back in the 1980s and early 1990s. That said, each of these announcements is significant.

SDL, through both organic growth and acquistion, has grown into a substantial business that spans globalization technology, globalization services, CCM technology, and WCM technology. My colleagues Mary Laplante and Leonor Ciarlone know them much better as a company, but I believe it is safe to say that SDL is in a unique position spanning essentially four markets, but four markets that make a great deal of sense under a single umbrella. The product support content managed in a CCM technology is the best point of integration for globalization/translation tools. A CCM technology is also an excellent underpinning for a global company’s web presence or web precenses (the latter more likely, especially when one considers the need for localized web sites). And services are an essential piece of this puzzle. It’s the rare company that staffs heavily for localization, and even when they do, very few would staff full time to cover all of their language needs. Is SDL in a position to represent one-stop shopping for large companies with complex product content that needs to be localized into many languages? Again, my colleagues could answer that question more precisely, but it’s not a crazy question to ask.

Mary has more on SDL XySoft over in the globalization blog.

The acquisition also breathes new life into XyEnterprise, a company with highly functional, mature technology and excellent executive leadership. We take it as a very positive sign that XyEnterprise CEO Kevin Duffy will become the CEO of the newly combined business unit, reporting to Mark Lancaster, Chairman and CEO of SDL.

The Really Strategies acquistion of DocZone is on a smaller scale of course, but it is is significant in that these two companies represent two leading trends in the CCM marketplace–management of component content in native XML repositories (MarkLogic Server for RSuite and Documentum Content Store for one version of DocZone) and Software as a Service (SaaS). Count me among those who have been skeptical at times about SaaS for CCM, but DocZone, under Dan Dube’s leadership, has made it work. Really Strategies, in the mean time, has developed an impressive CCM offering on top of Mark Logic Server, and they have quietly built up a strong customer list.  We think the combined companies complement each other, and the new management team is excellent, with Barry Bealer as CEO, co-founder Lisa Bos as CTO, Ann Michael in charge of services, and Dan Dube as VP Sales and Marketing.

Which brings us to Quark and EMC. Both companies have been developing more CCM capabilities. EMC acquired X-Hive, and a lot of XML expertise along with it. They have since added more XML expertise on both the product management and engineering side. As they have integrated X-Hive into the Documentum platform, they have logically looked to build out more capabilities and applications for vertical markets. The integration with Quark XML Author makes perfect sense for them, giving their customers and prospects a ready mechanism for XML authoring in a familiar editorial tool.

For Quark’s part, the move is a logical and very positive next step. They had previously announced this kind of integration with IBM Content Manager, which has a strong presence in the manufacturing space. With EMC, Quark now has a strong partner in the pharma space. Documentum has long dominated pharma, and Quark XML Author, under Michael Boses and previous owner In.Vision, had built up a long list of pharma customers. Boses and his team know the pharma data structures inside and out, and it will be interesting to see the details of how Quark XML Author will integrate with Documentum and its storage mechanisms. (I am sure both EMC and Quark see the potential as more than just the pharma market–government is also a good target here–but the pharma angle will be fruitful I am sure.)

So, what news is on tap for tomorrow?

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