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

Category: Content management & strategy (Page 147 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/

Autonomy Enhances Interwoven Teamsite

Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L) announced the general availability of an enhanced version of Autonomy Interwoven TeamSite, powered by Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) server. The latest version of TeamSite integrates Autonomy Interwoven’s web content management (WCM) platform with multivariable testing (MVT) and closed-loop analytics capabilities, helping marketers to more easily create, deliver, optimize, and analyze websites that engage online visitors. Leveraging Autonomy Optimost’s website testing capabilities in a self-service model within TeamSite, the new solution combines the intelligence of web A/B and multivariable testing and analysis with the ease and power of their WCM solution. TeamSite 6.7.2 SP1 is available now. http://www.autonomy.com/

 

Quark Teams with IBM Enterprise Content Management to Bring XML and DITA to the Masses

Quark announced that it has teamed with IBM Enterprise Content Management (ECM) to enable the broad adoption of XML across the enterprise by integrating Quark XML Author with IBM FileNet Content Manager. Quark makes it possible for any IBM FileNet Content Manager user working in Microsoft Word to author intelligent content that can be reused and delivered to multiple channels or formats. The ability to author, manage, and reuse structured content enables critical business needs, such as managing intellectual property, complying with regulatory mandates, and automating business processes. A simple and streamlined process for XML authoring also helps organizations to enable enterprise-wide adoption of XML and DITA. Quark XML Author for Microsoft Word is an XML authoring tool that allows users to create XML content in a familiar word processing environment. Quark XML Author enhances Microsoft Word’s native XML support by allowing users to create narrative XML documents directly, without seeing tags, being constrained to boxes, or being aware of the technical complexities associated with XML. http://www.quark.com/

Second Life Gets an International Life: An Interview with Danica Brinton of Linden Lab

At the recent Worldware Conference in Santa Clara, California, I was delighted to learn about how a high-tech company was achieving great success in internationalizing their software through crowdsourcing. The story gets more interesting. This was not back-room software plumbing but an innovative application, none other than Second Life, a virtual world and a social-networking MMORG (Massive Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game).  Launched by Linden Lab in 2003, Second Life enables its users, called residents, to interoperate with a virtual world  through software called a Second Life Viewer. Residents can socialize, participate in group activities, and create and trade virtual property.  According to Google, there are over 9 million residents currently on Second Life.

I attended the presentation, “Brave New (Virtual) World,” and had an opportunity to catch up with Danica Brinton, Director of International Strategies and Localization at Linden Lab.  Here’s what she had to say.

Kadie:  When did Linden Lab realize the importance of internationalization?

Brinton: Around the middle of 2008, Linden Lab realized some discrepancies between U.S. and international business.  While 60% of the residents and twice the new registrations were from outside the U.S., revenue and retention numbers, while still healthy, indicated a gap in the localized  user experience.

Kadie: What happened when you entered the scene?

Brinton: I joined the company in June.  When I checked things out, I was stunned.  I discovered that we were paying $40,000 per quarter to LSPs.  What were we getting?  The viewer was translated only partially into 3 languages, and was nearly incomprehensible.  The website was translated partially into 2 key languages.  In both cases there were a lot of localization bugs.  On the flip side, hundreds of wiki-based Help pages were translated quite well into 8 languages, which was pretty darn good.  An interesting trend…

Kadie: So what did you do?

Brinton: Although we were a small company, when I showed my management the opportunity they were very supportive…but with limited funding.  So we had to get creative.  We enlisted the help of power users to translate the application and website.  To ensure quality control, we set up a repeatable localization framework, with translation, editing, testing, and end user review.  We established a tier system of resident translators, drawing on our super-users.   We built and acquired localization tools to manage translation memories and the localization process, and installed a locale-based ROI calculator to manage costs.  Finally, we hired 3 in-house linguists.  So you can see, it was a hybrid of crowdsourcing from the Second Life community on the one hand, and our in-house linguists and contracted translation agencies on the other.

Kadie: How did you divide up the work?

Brinton:  Who did what depended on the language tier.  Let’s look at the viewer, for example.  For tier-1 languages, we developed the glossary, did the translation, and collaborated with the Second Life community on the editing, QA, and some of the glossary.  For tier-2 languages, the Second Life community did nearly everything.

Kadie: What kind of results did you achieve?

Brinton: Less than a year later, I can truthfully say that we achieved some dramatic results.  We now translate the viewer and the website into 10 languages, and expect to reach 16 in May.  The active residents from outside the U.S. grew to 64% of the user base, and new registrations are now more than 2.5 times the U.S.  Even better, international revenues have surpassed U.S. domestic revenues.  Between the Viewer, the website, and the knowledge base, we now regularly localize over 150,000 words per language.

Kadie: What’s next for localization at Linden Lab?

Brinton: Strangely enough, past is prologue.  This new localization program is helping to increase customer satisfaction and bolster an affinity group.  You can even say that community-driven translation is building brand advocacy.  Some of the elite power users are evolving into business partners.  Localization is not only supporting our business, it’s helping to grow it.

The Content Globalization practice at the Gilbane Group closely follows and  blogs on the role of multilingual communication in social networking (see interview with Plaxo).

EMC Announces Solutions for Case Management and Document Management

EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) announced two new enterprise content management (ECM) solutions: A new EMC Documentum Case Management Solution Framework, which accelerates the development of case management applications, and EMC Documentum ApplicationXtender 6 with new modules for workflow and retention management. Case management is a pattern of work commonly used in almost all industries, such as financial services, public sector and healthcare, that requires a group of people to systematically process and collaborate on a case folder that consists of both content and data. The Case Management Solution Framework enables system integrators and application partners as well as internal IT developers to build case management solutions faster. The Case Management Solution Framework includes: pre-integrated technologies utilizing the core capabilities of the EMC Documentum platform, a tutorial that illustrates the creation of  a case management solution, a case management sample application and other best practices covering, application development and deployment, and an Express Install tool which provides single-click installation of all the components needed for case management on a single server.

ApplicationXtender is a departmental document management solution for organizations with limited IT budgets and supporting resources. The solution provides out-of-the box capabilities that allow departments to manage content such as images, documents and reports. Built on a central repository, ApplicationXtender provides capabilities for high-speed image capture and storage and is designed for quick deployment. New features in ApplicationXtender 6 include: A Workflow Manager module for creating departmental workflow solutions designed to improve efficiency in business processes, built on Microsoft .NET, and: A Retention Manager module for applying automatic retention capabilities such as holds, reporting, disposals and audits trails to documents to ensure regulatory compliance. The Case Management Solution Framework and ApplicationXtender 6 are available now. http://www.emc.com/

In The End, it’s Mostly About Content.

As the world of technology makes literally breathtaking strides, the world of automation finds itself increasingly focused on the technology. Indeed, in many areas of popular culture, the technology becomes an end in itself, conferring the patina of success on projects that are techno-heavy, never mind that they may not meet their objectives particularly well. This despite the pronoucements of virtually every management authority since the 60’s that technology and automation are different and the latter is the most important to success of the organization.

Nowhere is the tendency to focus on technology itself, to the detriment of meeting functional goals, more pronounced than in the general area referred to as “conent management” or CM, and in no part of CM has this tendency more clouded the picture than in the relationship of its semantic components; “Content” and “Management.” In today’s CM world, the focus on Management means that software and technology takes center stage with an implicit assumption that if one just adheres to the proper technological dictums and acquires the most powerful CM software, the effort will be successful. When efforts so constructed fail to meet their objectives, the further implicit assumption is that the technology… or the technology selection… or the technology governance… or the technology infrastructure has failed. In many cases while some of these may be true, they are not the reason for the failure.

Often, the cause of failure (or marginal performance) is the other side of the CM terminology; the content being created, managed and delivered.  Look closely at many automation environments and you will see a high-performance management and delivery environment being fed by virtually uncontrolled content raw material. If “you are what you eat”, so too is a content management and information delivery environment. In fact, failure at the delivery end is more often than not a failure to develop usable content instead of a failure of management and delivery technology. So why, with all the tools at our command, do we not address the content creation portions of our information life cycles?

I don’t claim to know all the answers, but have formed some impressions over the years:

FIRST: Content creation and its unwashed masses of authors,  providers and editors has traditionally been viewed as outside the confines of automation planning and development; indeed often as a detriment to automation rather than an integral part of the overall process. With that mentality, the system developers often stay completely away from content creation.

SECOND:  The world of software products and vendors, especially those in the management and delivery space, would rather spend more money on their systems in an attempt to make them resistant to the vagaries of uncontrolled content, of course at higher fees for their products. The world of content creation, if it can be called that, is still controlled by the folks in Renton, to their own corporate and marketing ends.

THIRD:  In most automation projects involving content, the primary resource is the IT group that, while highly capable in many cases, does not understand the world of content over which it does not itself have control. The result is usually a focus on the IT itself while the content creation groups in the organization find themselves outside with their noses pressed against the glass… until they are called in to be told what will be expected of them. The resulting fight often virtually dooms the project as it had originally need conceived.

So what should we do differently?

While every project is unique, here are some thoughts that might help:

FIRST: Understand that technology cannot fully make up for the absence of content designed and structured to meet the functional needs on the table.  Indeed, if it came to a choice between good content and high-performance management resources, content can be delivered with a surprisingly low level of technology while no amount of technology can make up for AWOL content.

SECOND: Accept the premise that well-designed content, fully capable of supporting the functional objectives of the project, should be the first order of business in any major project. With this, acknowledge that the content creators, while they may be less controlled and sometimes not easy to work with, are a critical component in the success of any project based on their output. In many content creation environments, negotiation between what would work best and what can be provided will result in a set of compromises that gets the best possible content within the constraints in place. That done, technology can be applied to optimize the life cycle flow of the content. Note that in this construction, the technology is a secondary factor, supporting but not defining the strategic direction of the project.

THIRD: Despite what you may hear from the software industry and its sales force, understand that in the term “content management”, content is the most important component and just buying more technology will not make up for its lack. From this understanding, you will be able to create a balance that accords both content and technology their rightfully important places in the overall effort.

Regards, Barry

Webinar: Build a WCM Business Case that Rocks

April 14, 2:00 pm ET

Need a new WCMS, but have to make the business case first? This is the webinar for you.

Technology investments are undergoing intense scrutiny in today’s uncertain economic times – even when the proposed solution supports mission critical strategies for online presence, prospect engagement, customer satisfaction, and service delivery. How do you build an effective business case for web content management that stands out from the others, gets executive approval, and secures funding?

Tony White, Gilbane’s Lead Analyst for WCM, has the answers. With over 15 years of experience, Tony has developed and presented dozens of WCM business cases across multiple industry verticals – most of which have lead to the successful acquisition and implementation of web content management systems. Using real world examples, Tony will share the details of four “secrets” that win WCM approval and funding:

  1. Leveraging WCM to increase revenue
  2. How WCM decreases operational costs
  3. Best practices for generating ROI metrics
  4. Beyond ROI: the silver bullet that always works

This web event provides valuable insight for any organization that is seeking to implement a new WCMS, but must first make a rock-solid business case. Register today. Sponsored by SDL Tridion.

Updated April 9: Download the new Gilbane white paper.

Content Management Vendors on Twitter

So I have spent enough time on Twitter to conclude that it is useful, indeed very useful, for keeping up with news and trends in technology. Just like the blogosphere, Twitter has its “A list” folks like Guy Kawasaki and many hundreds of interesting people with smaller followings. But I have also found it to be the most useful means I have for following news feeds—from Scientific American (@sciam in Twitter) to Paid Content (@paidcontent) to New England Sports Network (@NESNcom).

Not surprisingly, content management vendors are getting involved as well, and I welcome this. I put out a call ages ago for vendors to alert me to RSS feeds of their press releases, finding them much more useful than emailed press releases in long form. (Few did.) But now I want these things via Twitter. I love Twitter search, and I have begun using TweetDeck to filter and group things. I feel like I can keep much better track of things, read what I want to in long form, and share what I think is especially interesting.

What I would like to see next is an easy way to share groups of Twitter feeds, and even collaborate on them. I have been collecting a list of CMS vendors on Twitter, and offer the start of that list here. Anyone have thoughts about how we could create a useful master list? To start with, I would love to add categories to this—some are WCM vendors, others more niche, some are open source, and so on.

Thoughts?

Twitter User Name Twitter URL Company  
 
acquia http://twitter.com/acquia Acquia  
AlfrescoCMS http://twitter.com/AlfrescoCMS Alfresco CMS  
attivio http://twitter.com/attivio Attivio  
boxdotnet http://twitter.com/boxdotnet Box  
brightcove http://twitter.com/brightcove Brightcove  
coremedia_news http://twitter.com/coremedia_news Core Media  
CrownPeakCMS http://twitter.com/CrownPeakCMS CrownPeak  
daysoftware http://twitter.com/daysoftware Day Software  
Dirxion http://twitter.com/Dirxion Dirxion  
DotNetNuke http://twitter.com/dotnetnuke DotNetNuke  
Drupal http://twitter.com/Drupal Drupal Org  
elcomtechnology http://twitter.com/elcomtechnology elcom Technology  
ektrondave   Ektron  
emccorp http://twitter.com/emccorp EMC Corp.  
EMCsoftware http://twitter.com/EMCsoftware EMC Software  
episerver http://twitter.com/episerver EpiServer  
escenic http://twitter.com/escenic escenic  
EE http://twitter.com/EE ExpressionEngine  
gentics http://twitter.com/gentics Gentics  
google http://twitter.com/google Google  
hpnews http://twitter.com/hpnews HP News  
HP_IPG http://twitter.com/HP_IPG HP’s Imaging and Printers Group  
HylandSoftware http://twitter.com/HylandSoftware Hyland Software  
IBM_ECM http://twitter.com/IBM_ECM IBM ECM  
ibmevents http://twitter.com/ibmevents IBM Events  
Intelledox http://twitter.com/Intelledox Intelledox  
Interwoven_Inc http://twitter.com/Interwoven_Inc Interwoven/Autonomy  
ipublishcentral http://twitter.com/ipublishcentral IPublishCentral  
IronMountainInc http://twitter.com/IronMountainInc Iron Mountain  
Jadu http://twitter.com/jaducms Jadu  
Jahia http://twitter.com/Jahia Jahia  
joomla http://twitter.com/joomla Joomla Org  
Lionbridge http://twitter.com/Lionbridge Lionbridge  
Lotusphere http://twitter.com/Lotusphere Lotusphere  
magnolia_cms http://twitter.com/magnolia_cms Magnolia CMS  
SharePoint http://twitter.com/SharePoint Microsoft Sharepoint  
msoffice_us http://twitter.com/msoffice_us MS Office US  
MSDN_Office http://twitter.com/MSDN_Office MSDN Office News  
NsteinTech http://twitter.com/NsteinTech Nstein  
Omtool http://twitter.com/Omtool Omtool  
openedit http://twitter.com/openedit OpenEdit DAM  
OpenText http://twitter.com/OpenText OpenText  
Oracle http://twitter.com/Oracle Oracle  
papayaCMS http://twitter.com/papayaCMS papaya CMS  
plone http://twitter.com/plone Plone Org  
radiantcmsntcms https://twitter.com/radiantcms Radiant CMS  
ScriptoriumTech   Scriptorium  
sdltridion http://twitter.com/sdltridion SDL Tridion  
squizuk http://twitter.com/squizuk Squiz.NET  
streamserve http://twitter.com/streamserve StreamServe  
tizra http://twitter.com/tizra Tizra  
TYPO3_INFORMER http://twitter.com/TYPO3_INFORMER
Typo 3  
vignettecorp http://twitter.com/vignettecorp Vignette  
webworks_com http://twitter.com/webworks_com WebWorks  
wordpress http://twitter.com/wordpress WordPress  
XeroxCorp http://twitter.com/XeroxCorp Xerox  
XMPie http://twitter.com/XMPie XMPie  
       

 

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