Why Content Management?: Part Three

The Brook Group Content Management System Value on Investment series is a set of brief discussions about the issues faced by organizations that introduce content management systems into their Web publishing operations. To learn more about content management consultations, and Tacklebox, Brook Group’s award-winning CMS, contact Brook Group at 410-465-7805, or info@brookgroup.com.

Why Content Management?

It is Friday afternoon at the annual executive retreat. The managers are getting restless. They’ve reviewed last year’s results, agreed on mission-critical objectives, unveiled new product plans, discussed the long-term growth initiative, and now the subject takes its predictable annual turn to costs.

The CEO speaks: “Our costs are rising out of sight. Every one of you needs to tell me how we’re going to reduce cost and maintain or increase quality. I want to focus on cost centers. Let me give you a concrete example. Between Marketing and IT, we spend a ton of money every year on our Web site. I know, I know, stop groaning. We all know we’ve got to have it, but all I hear are complaints about it. It’s out of date and has bad information on it and it’s inconsistent and it’s a major pain to get new content online. I don’t know what the answer is, but for as much as it’s costing us, there has got to be a better way.”

Staff Savings

For most, Web sites are pure cost centers. And in almost all organizations looking to reduce those costs, the focus is on how the site itself can lower overall company costs – for example, by reducing customer service calls–or increase revenue, by generating new customers or selling products online.

There is another way. That is to make your Web operation more efficient. That’s where content management systems come in.

“Hot Lead” Web Sites

Forty years ago, newspapers were put together using a machine called the “linotype.” Writers and editors would write copy on typewriters and send the pages down to the composing room. The compositors would then retype the words into linotype machines. Every time a letter key was punched, the linotype would create a block representing that letter using molten lead. The letters would be blocked into words, and the words would be laid side by side with other page elements, like images and vertical and horizontal lines, to create a three-dimensional metal version of the newspaper page, all in mirror image, so that it could be inked to produce the finished product.

Publishing back then was a labor-intensive back-and-forth production and review process, between the machine operators in the pressroom and the editors in the newsroom. My father was a newspaper writer, and used to tell me how important it was to have good relations with the guys in the composing room, because you inevitably relied on them to get your words in the paper the way you wanted them.

In many organizations, the Web page production process is not so different. HTML-based Web sites are still largely in the “hot lead” era. As a result, most organizations view their Web site and the Web team that supports it as cumbersome, necessary evils.

That is because even the simplest Web pages are actually program files in which the content–words and pictures–are surrounded by Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), a programming code that handles the layout and design aspects of the page, as well as some “metadata” that Web servers use to validate and display the page.

Web pages aren’t quite lead, but they are program files written in a programming language to facilitate the publication process, not the editorial process. If you add scripting languages, database content, Flash programs, or other more advanced technologies, the pages can get a lot more technical, but even with basic HTML, they are too technical for the average person.

Because of that, although Web pages themselves are largely “editorial”–containers for words and pictures–their creation is a highly technical production job. That is why the job of creating and maintaining Web sites was often handed to the IT department, or a content department would have to bring in a group of techies. Content originators from marketing, PR, product areas, and other non-technical parts of the organization, would create the page elements—words and pictures—and then transfer them to the “new” composing room: the Web team, who would wrap the elements in HTML, FTP them to servers, and deal with the myriad of technical tasks and issues that accompany publishing the page and maintaining the site. And, as in my father’s newspaper days, content owners rely on the Web team to correctly interpret their publishing needs and requirements—with uneven success.

Okay, nice analogy, but what does all of this have to do with content management and saving money? Content management is the first step in advancing from hot Web pages to an editorial publishing system. Let’s return to the CEO’s complaints, and look at how a CMS can address them.

1. CEO Complaint: “…It’s out of date…”

   How do you keep your content up-to-date when you’ve got a hot lead Web site? It’s very difficult, and is embodied in the problem we call the Webmaster Bottleneck.

   Content pours in to the Web team from numerous sources throughout the company. Each source has her own requirements and deadlines. HTML team members have a desktop full of must-have publishing requests, some of which may involve numerous review and approval steps, new graphic creations (which have to go to another group), complicated page layouts, or even technological requirements such as Javascript or database access.

   To the content owner, who probably does not know what’s involved in getting that content online, it is simply another “I need this right away” request. The Web team, though, must set priorities among all of their content clients, create and test and fix their pages, deal with technical issues, and pretty soon “right away” goes by the wayside. Inevitably, the result is unhappiness and frustration for content owners, over a system that takes content out of their hands. Some content owners then become adept at my dad’s technique of getting in good with the production staff, to ensure that their stuff bubbles to the top of the list.

   CMS Response:
   A primary benefit of a CMS is that responsibility for maintaining content can be released to the content owners themselves. Rather than relying on the HTML team to turn a word processing document into a fancy Web page, the content owner can log on to the system, open up the page they need to create or update, and copy and paste that content directly into the page. The “hot lead” process is replaced by an automated system that knows how to place the content on the page, apply styles, and publish it. Content can be updated in minutes or less, without any intervention by the technical team.

2. CEO Complaint: “…and has bad information…”

   A surprising number of our clients are amazed to find that their Web site has erroneous, incomplete, or otherwise “bad” information, the kind of content that does not reflect their organization the way they want it to. This manifests itself in a number of ways.

   The organization’s “voice” is not consistent. Marketing, PR, and sales departments spend a lot of time and energy ensuring that the organization’s message is consistent, but often Web sites manifest very different voices depending on the page or section of the site that you are viewing;

   Legal issues can arise when conflicting or erroneous information appears on the site. A recent client talked about being sued over language that the company steadfastly refused they would never use, only to have the complainant point to it on a page of their site;

   The quickest way to turn off a customer is to promise and not deliver. Advertising a product that is no longer available, failing to update contact information on the site.

   CMS Response:
   The best response to this complaint is the use of CMS workflows. Most content management systems provide automated, configurable review and approval processes to ensure that the right people can write and edit content, and that content is reviewed and approved or rejected before it ever reaches the public Web site. Putting the right people in the right places in a publishing workflow is a major step to preventing “bad” information.

3. CEO Complaint: “…and it’s inconsistent…”

   We have all been to Web sites in which it’s easy to get “lost.” Even in smaller organizations, you enter a product area, figure out how to find your way around, then go to another area and everything changes. It doesn’t even look like the same company. If you’ve ever worked on a corporate intranet this problem is even more likely to appear. Different people, responsible for different aspects of the site, have their own preferences. The result is an inconsistent, frustrating experience for customers.

   CMS Response:
   Consistency is key to Web sites. The way that a person navigates through the site, the hyperlinks and icons that are used, and the ways that they are arranged visually on the page, can make the Web experience as pleasurable—or as painful—as the designers provide. Content management systems separate content editing from site design and navigation. Through the use of page templates, which cannot be changed by site authors, sites maintain a consistent look and feel. Unlike HTML pages, authors can only touch the content that is specifically designated to them, and can change it in ways that are consistent with site style. On one hand, this frees authors from the onus of worrying about presentation. More importantly, it ensures that your site’s overall presentation, navigation, and design approach will be maintained no matter how often content is changed. The time-consuming process of presentation is spent at the time the templates are built, and never needs be addressed again.

4. CEO Complaint: “…and it’s a major pain to get new content online.”

   This pain is felt in every Web organization. “All I want is to update a sentence on this page, and it’s like a big hairy deal!” Content owners are understandably frustrated by the bureaucracy that exists in every Web operation. Some things should be simple. If you can open up your word processor and make a change to a memo, why can’t you open up a Web page and do the same?

   CMS Response:
   You can. A well-implemented CMS breaks the bureaucracy by providing a simple method that allows most or all of your site content to be easily updated. Whether it’s a dedicated Web team staffer or a press release writer who works in the PR department, a simple desktop tool opens the content they need, and allows them to update it without having to learn HTML programming. What about the HTML staff you already have? Most systems give them a choice. They can use the same WYSIWYG editing tool, or they can crack open the page and work within the HTML code. It’s not that HTML is bad for everyone. But the choice is critical.

Saving Time

CEO’s want to know about the bottom line. Fine, so a CMS can improve your publishing process and reduce frustration. That’s good, but where is the real savings? It is in the publishing process, and in the answers to the CEO’s original questions.

1. Up-to-date, Not of Date

   Timely content is not just nice to have. Efficient content publishing means that your customers, suppliers, members, the press—whomever your audiences are—have the information they need when they need it. From a production point of view, a CMS saves time by eliminating the editorial back-and-forth between the content owner and the HTML team. As a result, the HTML team can focus on the technical issues at which they excel—with the right people doing the right jobs, you get a smaller, more efficient Web operation.

2. Good Information In, Bad Information Out

   Bad information on your Web site is a business handicap and can be a legal liability. For some reason, the normal document controls that exist in many organizations do not apply to their Web sites. Web team members post bad information, and non-Web staff do not take responsibility for it. A workflow-based review and approval system ensures that the right people always see content before it enters the public realm.

3. Consistency is Key

   Imagine what writing would be like if every author had to worry about presentation. I don’t think Tom Clancy or Danielle Steel really want to be responsible for how the printed page works in terms of fonts, page numbering, and the other details of print presentation. Yet I have often seen authors agonizing literally for hours over presentation issues on an HTML page, because every HTML requires that layout and presentation information be encoded onto the page. With content management, authors work within specific content areas, focused only on the content for which they are responsible. The system takes care of styling the content and placing it where it belongs on the page. Using templates, the HTML presentation is taken care of by the system, saving authors, designers, and HTML staff the work of reproducing it again and again.

4. Easing the Major Pain

   The crux of Web maintenance complaints is that it is just so hard and so time-consuming to get content online. And no matter how you manage your business, hard and time-consuming equals expensive. In the hot lead world of HTML, the lesser the amount of content, the greater the frustration. Sometimes a single word needs to be changed, but the publishing bureaucracy doesn’t scale down to fit. The request still must go to someone with HTML skills, who probably knows little about the content, has a lot of other requests to juggle, and may or may not be available to make the change. With content management, adding or changing content is available to a much greater number of people because it requires much less specific skill and training. Posting content is faster because you don’t have to worry about presentation, or about inadvertently “breaking” the Web page by affecting code. And most often, it only needs to be done once because the person who owns the content—and understands what it needs to contain—can make the update.

Web sites are, by definition, complex public documents, three dimensional in their organization, and reliant on technologies that most of us do not really understand. Content management systems represent an evolutionary step in making them easier to create and to maintain. By better managing the process of publishing, you can better control the cost of your Web site.