Category: Content management & strategy (Page 174 of 483)

Got quality?

Join Mary, Shannon Zimmerman from Sajan, and myself on Wednesday October 24th for a discussion of quality in the Global Information Age, in which mere information availability no longer suffices. Today’s customer expectations demand relevant information that is culturally acceptable, appealing, and most important, understood. Delivering contextual, multilingual information – communications that make sense in the customer’s language of choice – is fundamental.

Any company with a multinational revenue profile knows that fusing quality and translation is a significant part of the formula for success in a global economy. In and of itself however, the act of translation provides no “certificate of excellence” or “seal of approval” for its quality quotient. So, the obvious question is: What is quality translation and how will organizations know when they achieve it? What is a quality quotient?
Join the discussion as we offer our take on improving, maintaining, and measuring the quality quotient of information products for the Global Information Age. Register here.

We’re moderating a session entitled Successful Processes for Selecting a Content Management System: How to Become an Expert in Technology Acquisition at DocTrain East 2007, Thursday, Oct 18, 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm.

The session begins with a discussion of why technology acquisition is not about tools, but about assembling capabilities that lead to competitive advantage for your organization. We walk through two scenarios that draw on our recent experience helping users acquire XML publishing and web content management technologies. The fun begins when we turn to a panel of experts who will share what they’ve learned about making a business case, distilling requirements, crafting great RFIs and RFPs, developing the short list of suppliers, and scoping a successful proof-of-concept. We’ll also look at acquiring software as a service and how the acquisition process is different from acquiring licensed software solutions.

The goal of the sesson is show attendees how to develop the skills to lead a successful technology acquisition process. If you’re interested in the topic but can’t make it to the conference in Boston this week, send us email and ask for our presentation materials. We also welcome comments from readers who’d like us to address a specific question during the session.

While WCM needs-analysis and generation of a master requirements document (MRD) usually prove to be quite in-depth undertakings for most clients, the RFP submitted to vendors should aim to be as simple and concise as possible. Here’s why.

When vendors receive a very long, nuanced description of a functional requirement, it becomes easier for them to craft a response that technically satisfies the requirement and simultaneously to withhold other relevant and more meaningful detail. On the other hand, when vendors receive a brief description of a functional requirement or category, along with specific instructions to provide as much detail as possible (at risk of not receiving credit if enough detail is not provided), they often feel compelled to write as much they can. The abundance of information found in such responses usually allows the customer to discern just how well a vendor’s products or solutions match line items in the MRD.

Recommendation to Gilbane clients: After detailed needs analysis and creation of an MRD, pare the language for each functional criterion in the RFP to a somewhat general level. For example, rather than inquiring specifically about content locking models (along with the other 20-30 minute components within library services) ask instead for a complete description of what the vendor’s solution provides in the library services category. It is essential to state that more detail in the response is better than less, and that if a vendor omits relevant information, they may not receive full marks for that category. Following this suggestion, you will be surprised at how much more insight you gain from vendors RFP responses.

Over the next few months, I will post a series of 6-8 best practices for ensuring a high degree of usability in WCM implementations. This first entry in the series focuses on the ability for users to author content in the context of actual web pages.
While many vendors claim to support in-context editing, there is a lot of variation in how this feature is presented to users. In some cases, content authors fill in HTML forms and then click a preview button, which renders a virtualized copy of the web page. In other cases, authors double click on a staged version of a web page, which launches a WYSIWYG editor. Upon saving content in this editor, the author refreshes the web page and sees the updates. In the best cases, authors can simply edit content directly on web pages without having to fill in separate web forms or to launch an external editor. Content on web pages can be edited just as though it were in MS Word.
These differences may at first seem trivial, but it quickly becomes apparent to those who spend much time authoring content or creating web pages that eliminating unnecessary steps and reducing the number of applications in these highly iterative processes produces dramatic time savings throughout the organization. For example, if an enterprise has 25 content authors who each maintain 10 web pages daily, and each page update takes just 10 extra minutes because of redundancies, the time wasted over one year totals more than 10,000 hours. This represents about $500,000 of unnecessary labor costs.
Recommendation to enterprises: Be sure to analyze carefully during vendor demonstrations exactly how content can be edited directly from a web page. The most highly usable WCM systems will allow you to treat the web page like word processor.