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May 28, 2001

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Curing The Content Migraine

Managing content is becoming a gigantic pain, but it doesn't have to be that way

By Tony Kontzer (tkontzer@cmp.com)

More on content management:

sidebar: Vendor Selection: Beyond The Hype

sidebar: Market Analysis: Is A Content Management Shakeout Inevitable?

ook around corporate America, and the signs are everywhere: content is becoming a gigantic pain for IS.

Between the press releases, financial reports, sales summaries, transactional records, product documentation, executive speeches, training films, and dozens of other types of documents and digital files that shoot across corporate networks, it's a wonder anyone can store and retrieve all this stuff, much less manipulate, review, and deliver it efficiently.

With studies indicating that the volume of Web content is doubling every 110 days, don't expect it to get any easier. Add in the growth of the content-management market, where the vendor playing field has increased from three players to more than 100 in a few short years (see story, "Market Analysis: Is A Content Management Shakeout Inevitable?"), and the process of getting a handle on content takes on daunting proportions.

To get a sense of how quickly a company's content can mushroom, consider this sobering statistic from Charles Schwab & Co. Inc.: In 2000 alone, the number of sites that make up the stock brokerage's intranet grew by a staggering 80%, to a total of 500. To fill those sites, the 1,000 people contributing content by the end of the year fueled a 50% increase in volume. Imagine the impact that a sudden 50% increase in the number of books would have on your community library.

All of this supports the notion that, when automating content management, companies should factor pain management in to the process. Whether that means taking a cautious approach to integrating software, stressing procedures before tool selection, or even building the software in-house, any approach that eases the transition is a good one.

Here, we'll look at five companies and how they've tried to reduce the pain associated with adopting content management. (To learn what criteria to use for choosing your own content-management system, see the story "Vendor Selection: Beyond The Hype.")

Charles Schwab: The Scenic Route
Given the growth of its intranet, content management is a pretty big deal at Schwab, a brokerage based in San Francisco. "It's really a strategic component of our next-generation intranet," says Jean-Pierre Lochman, a technical director who led a recent content-management vendor review for Schwab's intranet and is heading up the subsequent implementation. "It was pretty easy to build a strong business case for this technology."

Even with significant internal buy-in, Lochman knew that if he and his staff didn't choose the right software, there'd be lots of griping, resistance, and, yes, pain. For that reason, Lochman chose the scenic route, starting out by licensing Interwoven Inc.'s TeamSite software--strictly for Schwab's human-resources policy portal.

Lochman says the HR portal, which is filled largely with static content that isn't subjected to lengthy approvals, provided an ideal testing ground. "We wanted to make sure that whatever we used had been proven as a successful solution," he says.

The HR implementation went well, opening the door to an intranetwide licensing deal that included adoption of the vendor's TeamSite, OpenDeploy, DataDeploy, and FrontOffice applications. Lochman declined to divulge the value of the deal, but Interwoven's average sale--including software, implementation and service--is $330,000. The odds are Schwab's intranet represented an above-average sale.

In the end, Lochman says, the automation of content management will pay off in the form of streamlined search and workflow functionality, as well as improved accuracy of content on SchWEB, as the intranet is referred to internally. And because of the gradual approach that was taken, this will all be achieved with only a modicum of organizational pain.

Motorola: The Procedural Approach
Mary Perisic, marketing initiatives manager for Motorola Inc.'s wireless unit, also chose to approach a decision on content management carefully. The primary objective in injecting content management into the unit is to improve the accuracy of the information hitting the Web, in the face of ever-increasing amounts of content coming at ever-increasing speeds. As a result, Perisic didn't want to introduce a new source of pain in her effort to alleviate existing pain.

So rather than focus on the software-implementation strategy, Perisic chose to go over internal procedures before a vendor review was under way. "A lot of companies go out and pick a tool and then say, 'Now what?'" Perisic says. "We're trying to handle the 'Now what?' first."

Perisic says companies should get away from thinking that effective content management is about picking the right tool and instead focus on developing core processes that make the treatment of content a priority. To that end, Perisic has taken the time to prepare staff for the change, ensure compatibility with legacy systems and applications, and make content a higher priority organizationally. That's all in an effort to make the eventual software implementation less jarring.

Perisic expects content management to yield cost savings and increased operational effectiveness, but she's trying to be realistic about how quickly the staff will embrace it. "You can implement a system overnight, but I don't think you can get people to change overnight," she says.

Covisint: Starting From Scratch
The easiest way to minimize the pain associated with the adoption of content management is to make it an integral part of an operation from the outset. Covisint LLC, the Southfield, Mich., online exchange for the automotive industry, enjoyed just that luxury.

Although it's really a consortium of automakers, Covisint is essentially a startup, so it's been able to incorporate content management from the get-go. And, in the style of the automakers backing it, Covisint has done so in a big away: In December, it awarded a seven-figure contract to content-management stalwart Documentum Inc.

Covisint has made content management a priority during its early stages for good reason. It's basically extending its software to an extranet frequented by thousands of suppliers, many of whom have co-branded sites hosted by Covisint. That means an unusually large number of contributors, most of whom are located outside the exchange's firewalls.

"We had the intention of more or less sharing these tools with some of our customers," says Mark Baughman, the IT manager who oversaw the vendor selection and is responsible for application development.

As Covisint's content needs evolve, Baughman admits that the pain factor could rear its head. For the immediate future, however, the focus will be on integrating the Documentum software into a set of front-end applications that manage security, registration, and the portal environment. Whether the software is integrated into more complex back-end apps such as purchasing or the supply chain remains to be seen. "The customers will dictate that," Baughman says.

Trekk Design: The ASP Approach
Most companies are interested in limiting the pain of adopting their own content-management packages. But Rockford, Ill., marketing communications firm Trekk Design Inc. has positioned itself as a sort of content-management application service provider for manufacturing companies that can't justify the expense of obtaining their own systems. In that way, Trekk is making the adoption of content-management software a pain-free undertaking for its clients.

"We'll house the content here and let our customers access their content-management systems remotely," says Jeff Stewart, a technical director who led Trekk's recent content-management vendor review.

Trekk's decision to invest several hundred thousand dollars in software from content-management vendor Openpages Inc. made good business sense. Trekk works with its clients to deliver business communication materials--press releases, datasheets, brochures, even enterprise resource planning data--across multiple forms of media. One of the most important parts of that process is adapting print materials for distribution over the Web, which Stewart says is costly without effective content-management software.

How satisfied are you with your current content management application?

Thus, by acting as virtual content management for its clients, Trekk saves itself and its customers the time and money needed to convert clunky file-system documents into workflow-friendly formats.

In that context, Stewart says any company that doesn't think it needs content management is setting itself up for real pain. "Anyone who does even a small amount of corporate communications has the problem," he says.

KnightRidder.com: Throw Out The Old One
Nobody has to remind KnightRidder.com about the content-management pain it has experienced. As partner to 32 city and newspaper Web sites, KnightRidder.com, the Internet arm of newspaper company Knight Ridder Inc. in San Jose, Calif., is well aware that its content--stories, reference data, photos, and audio and video clips--is its business.

That level of importance is why the company was willing to scrap an investment of more than $1 million and jettison its former, unidentified content-management software in favor of a three-headed application approach, with two of the apps designed in-house.

"We were spending so much money trying to get their product to work with our unique workflow," says Rohn Jay Miller, senior VP of product and technology. "We were essentially doing an in-house development."

So Miller and his staff decided to stop the bleeding and build two pieces of software to address their needs: XM Ultra, an input application that transfers content from legacy systems into an Oracle workflow database; and Cofax, a workflow tool that accesses that database and helps edit, schedule, and assemble content for delivery.

Once content is ready, it's dropped into templates created with BEA Systems Inc.'s WebLogic, a Java 2 Enterprise Edition-based application that personalizes and delivers content.

While KnightRidder.com is considering licensing Cofax to its affiliates, Miller says the company isn't about to package the software for more widespread sale. Its development, he says, was inextricably tied to the KnightRidder.com product. "All this [was done] so we can provide great content, not so we can provide great technology solutions."

Besides, it doesn't need the added pain. It has content to worry about.

Discuss this article: Are you feeling the pain of content-overwhelm, but afraid that the medicine is worse than the disease? Maybe, by sharing your experiences in the Listening Post, you can save someone from the pain you encountered.

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