By Ann Rockley and David Coleman

It is Ann's premise that content is often created in a vacuum by authors that need to collaborate, but instead the content goes through iteration after iteration with each version getting the input of each author in a serial manner. This is what happened to one of my Master's Thesis, I had 5 people on my committee, each had their own input and point of view on my thesis, and I ended up having to write 5 versions of my thesis (this was before word processors) to satisfy them. This kind of thing happens in the enterprise every day, as Ann contends that it can be dealt with more effectively by changes in (behavior) corporate policy than technology. I have to agree to a point… behavior always wins over technology (at least in the collaborative world)… David Coleman

Organizations create a lot of information; information that supports their products, their services, their employees, and their processes. Within an organization there are often multiple content creators:

• Marketing/Communications
• Human Resources (HR)
• R&D (Engineering/Product development)
• Technical publications/product support
• Training

Developing content for multiple content users:

• Customers
• Suppliers
• Channel partners
• Employees
• The value network

Creating multi-channel information products:

• Internet
• E-Commerce
• E-catalogs
• Intranet
• Enterprise portals
• Marketing communication/product materials
• Documentation
• Training
• Support

However content is often created by authors working in isolation from other authors within the organization. Walls are erected among content areas and even within content areas, which leads to content being created, and recreated, and recreated, often with changes or differences at each iteration (like my masters thesis). The authors rarely share their content or are even aware that it exists elsewhere in the organization. This results in inconsistent information, duplication of effort, and increased costs. We call this The Content Silo Trap™.

Collaborative Strategies has looked at this issue extensively. For example, what happens at a commercial bank, when a distributed team is trying to develop a new product or service offering and sharing critical product documents and information among team members is often cumbersome. The impacts of this has include:

• An inefficient process for sharing information among team members can result in sub-optimal decision-making and delays in meeting commitments by the bank
• The bank may experience a loss in market share due to competitors with more innovative and cost-effective product offerings.
• The bank is perceived to be slow to meet customer-lending needs in the market.
• The bank has released products to market they later recalled or modified because the product offerings didn't meet the market need.
• The bank could be under additional revenue pressures due to missed opportunities.
• The productivity level of product teams can drop below the desired level.
• Product team members may have to work excessive overtime to meet project due dates.
• Poor document sharing may effect other internal groups at the bank, which feel their issues are not being addressed fully by product teams.
• This may cause other groups complain about overtime worked by their staff on project. And possibly result in…
• Quality problems that surface after product launch that impact other bank groups.

Based on some of the examples above we can see that content silos can have very detrimental effects on organizations, resulting in increased costs, reduced quality, and potentially ineffective materials. The effect of content silos include:

Poor communication

When walls are erected within an organization, vital information is poorly communicated among all the areas that need it. Poor communication is evident when one group fails to inform another group that something has changed, that something exists, or that something has been discontinued. Poor communication can also occur within one group.

Lack of sharing (“Not Invented Here” syndrome)

Authors work on many different types of projects. They may create content for different media (e.g., paper, web), for different customers (e.g., decision makers, end users), or for a different contexts (e.g., support, training). Authors normally bring much experience and expertise to their work and use it to carefully craft content both for the users' needs and the presentation format. Because of their deadline-driven environment, authors do not share their good ideas, lessons learned and finished work with others working on similar projects, and they do not expect others to share with them. This can result in inconsistencies, mixed messages to the customer, and increased costs of development as each author “reinvents the wheel”.

Reduced awareness of other initiatives

Within an organization, problems and resolutions are rarely restricted to just one area. Frequently, multiple groups within an organization experience the same problems, and to resolve them, each group often launches independent initiatives, likely duplicating another group's efforts. An initiative that one group is working on could benefit—or harm—another group, but because they are working in silos, they are not aware of the effects of their efforts outside their own department.

If all the initiatives come to fruition, they may result in incompatible technology solutions, disparate process changes, and increased costs. In addition, one group may be forced to use a product or to implement a process that is inappropriate for their purposes, as in the following example.

Lack of standardization and consistency

When content is created in multiple areas by multiple authors, it invariably differs, resulting in mixed, or even incorrect messages. This not only causes confusion, it can be potentially dangerous, as illustrated in the following example.

Higher cost of content creation, management, and delivery

When content is created multiple times, by multiple people, and delivered in multiple ways, the costs to create and deliver it increase by the number of times the content is recreated or “massaged.” Multiple versions of content also require that the content be managed and handled multiple times. Additionally, if content is translated, it must be translated each time it appears.

Adopting a unified content strategy

To reduce the costs of creating, managing, and distributing content and ensure content effectively supports your organizational and customer needs, organizations can benefit from a unified content strategy. A unified content strategy is a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front, creating consistently structured content for reuse, managing that content in a definitive source, and assembling content on demand to meet your customers' needs.

Collaboration

Collaboration begins with the unification of content. You need to figure out “what's going on” with your content, how it's being used, how it's being managed, as well as the processes you use to create, publish, and store it. Not surprisingly, you will find that these processes vary across the organization.

Then you need to perform a content audit. During a content audit, you look at your organization's content analytically and critically, allowing you to identify opportunities for reuse and the type of reuse. Once you see how your information is being used and reused, you can make decisions about how you might unify it. What the best processes for creation are, and how the use of collaborative technologies may expedite these processes.

The Collaborative Content Model

Once you have identified the opportunities for reuse, you need to design information models that clearly define:

• How content will be structured for every information product (e.g., newsletter, manual)
• How the elements of the information products will be structured (e.g., overview, product description)
• Where content will be reused (across information products, across content areas, across media)
• Who will create what content when (who is responsible for creating the source and who is allowed to modify the source)

Collaborative authoring

In a collaborative authoring environment authors work together to create a document set. Collaborative authoring is required in a unified content strategy to ensure that content can be reused across many different areas and across many different types of documentation and media.

The traditional concept of ownership changes in a collaborative authoring environment. While in the past an author may have been responsible for a particular document or a set of documentation, an author may now be responsible for creating content for a set of common topics that appear across documents. The author may no longer own the content for a whole document; the author may be responsible for a piece or a cross-section of a series of documents.

So, while an author still “owns” a particular element of information in the sense that he/she is the creator of the content and should be the only person who changes that content, the author actually has joint ownership with everyone else responsible for creating the information set.

The lack of complete ownership of content can be frustrating for an author. Authors may feel that the value of their contribution is diminished because they can't specifically point to a complete information product. However, like an athletic team that can show pride and joy in a team win, so can authors.

In addition, when authors are required to use content written by other authors they often exhibit the “not invented here syndrome.” Sometimes people find it hard to believe that content somebody else created could possibly meet their needs. After all it was written for a different purpose and media, and the author couldn't possibly know their customer/audience/requirements. In addition, other authors may have a different style. To resolve this issue work with your authors to develop a common style and ensure that they understand and appreciate everyone's contribution.

Managers also feel they “own” the content associated with their area. It can be difficult for a manager to understand and work with other managers to ensure the consistency of content across information products. Managers need to be educated to understand the issues of differentiating content. Point out the costs of differentiation; more time to write, more time to edit and review, and if your organization translates content, the huge cost of translating all these different elements of information. When you are dealing with multiple requirements it helps to have a content coordinator that can negotiate the unified content requirements and negotiate consensus with the product managers.

To help authors adopt collaborative authoring techniques involve authors in the analysis and design process and teach them conflict resolution skills. Involving authors in the analysis and design process will help them to see the commonality in the work they do with the work that others do, and it will help them to work towards a shared understanding of content. Conflict is inevitable, especially in the early design phase and in the early adoption phase. Organizations need to recognize this and train people to deal with it.

Creating collaborative processes

A unified content strategy also involves people and unified (collaborative) processes. The unified processes must create a collaborative environment in which authors throughout the organization can contribute to and draw content from a definitive source of information. Collaboration ensures that the content elements, such as product descriptions, are consistent and can be reused wherever they're required...in a printed brochure, on the web, on the intranet, in user guides, and so on. Processes should be redesigned to match the unified content strategy and support the way the authors work. Workflow can be used to support these processes.

Technology

There are two types of collaborative authoring tools available on the market today. Synchronous or real-time tools like Viack, allow authors to work with each other in real-time and to see the changes each is making to the document, discuss them and emerge with a final document. This type of tool is often good for shorter sales and marketing documents. The second type of tool (which is more common) is the asynchronous collaborative authoring tool. EReview is a good example of this.

As you will note in this issue of Inside Collaboration, there have been a host of document and content management vendors that have recently acquired collaborative tool vendors to integrate collaborative technologies into the content creation process to solve the problem we have outlined in this article. The most recent is Vignette, which acquired Intraspect earlier in September. Last month Interwoven acquired iManage, and earlier this year Documentum acquired e-Room.

This is tangible evidence that content management systems (CMS) are moving towards more collaborative tools with the addition of collaborative project management software and most recently collaborative review processes. Different CMS tools and technologies support reuse in varying degrees. Most enable an author to create a virtual document (a document which is a pointer to reusable elements of information), but only a few actually support collaborative authoring through systematic reuse.

Systematic reuse is automatic reuse. Once specific content has been identified as reusable in a specific location, the reusable content is automatically inserted (auto-populated) to the appropriate locations. Authors do not have to determine if the reusable content exists or search for and retrieve it. Systematic reuse reduces the burden on authors to know that reusable content exists, to find the reusable content, and to insert it appropriately. This supports collaborative authoring through the clear identification of where content should be reused and the automation of that reuse. To support systematic reuse a CMS must have the ability to support dynamic content.

Conclusion

Collaborative content creation can be a complex process, but a critical one. To make sure that your content is consistent and reusable throughout the enterprise you need to develop a unified content strategy. A unified content strategy is a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front, creating consistently structured content for reuse, managing that content in a definitive source, and assembling content on demand to meet your customers' needs. Collaboration is a key component of a unified content strategy. Integrated enterprise content is a true test of collaborative authoring and processes, but the results are lower costs, more efficient processes to create, manage, and deliver content, and higher quality consistent content.

Ann Rockley is President of The Rockley Group, Inc., (TRG) an information management consultancy that specializes in the development of enterprise content management and unified content strategies. Rockley is the author of “Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy” with TRG Senior Consultants Pamela Kostur and Steve Manning, New Riders Publishing ISBN 0-7357-1306-5, Oct. 2002. Rockley is an Associate Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication and has a Master of Information Science from the University of Toronto, where she teaches Enterprise Content Management. She can be reached at 905-415-1885 or rockley@rockley.com , www.rockley.com .

David Coleman is the Founder and Managing Director of Collaborative Strategies LLC (CS) and the editor of " Inside Collaboration ". CS is the leading analyst firm covering collaboration technologies and its use. Serving both vendors and end-users of these technologies, CS provides a variety of publications and services that help these populations in being more successful in selling or using collaboration technologies. Collaborative Strategies can be reached by e-mail at davidc@collaborate.com , or by telephone at 415/282-9197.

Collaborative Strategies makes every effort to bring you timely, accurate information on collaboration and knowledge management. However, we are part of a rapidly evolving market ourselves and events occur during the publication of this newsletter every month that we do not become aware of or that happen post-production. If you know of such events please contact us at davidc@collaborate.com so we can note these key events in the next edition of this newsletter.