What is Content Management?

Content Management owes its parentage to two converging technology areas, that is document management and the Web. The latter needs no introduction; as for document management, fair to say that it is a well-mined seam for those that know it, and a minefield for those that don't. To document management we owe one principle, namely:

Everything is a document

This principle is central to understanding content management. Put it this way, everything form of data, from an email or a a spreadsheet to an audio file or a banking transaction, can be considered as a document. This principle becomes even more important when we take into account something else inherited from Document Management, namely XML which is the ideal packaging mechanism for all these so-called "documents". We describe XML here.

More on this later, but for now lets consider what content management is for. Over the past five years, many millions of Web sites have been evolving from from simple, text-and-graphics-based informational sites ("brochureware") to complex resources linking many forms of information and enabling a far richer "end-user experience" (if you will). Against this backdrop, the "content" - that is, the text, graphics, audio, video and other data - needs to be managed. It needs to be created, verified, delivered, maintained and bumped off when it has reached its sell-by date.

The Interleaf white paper here presents a good explanation of what content management is about, as well as the role of XML in content management. Okay, it also describes Interleaf products, if you read that far.

Content Management is often linked to portals - which are no more than content farms, from an application perspective. A short and readable article can be found here, covering the relationship between content management, document management and portals, and discussing how application vendors are lining up behind each.

Content Management does tie into other application types. For a start, as it is Web-based it needs to work with application servers, e-commerce engines and other paraphernalia of the Web. Linkage between content management and CRM are inevitable, in a drive to get that "experience" unique for each and every user - and, of course to log every key-click they might make. We discuss CRM here.

The Business Need for Content Management

The evolution towards richness of content has caused increased costs due to the complexity of the information. It is far easier to manage a few pages of text to a multi-layered, multimedia "experience". Even the simplest of sites have a tendency towards complexity, over time. Content management enables content to be stored, managed and maintained appropriately. It also permits the process of content development to be controlled. The litmus test for a content management application is simple - can you use it to recreate your web site as it was on an exact day six months ago? If you want to know why you would need such a facility, just wait six months.

There is a rather long, but good Microsoft article here which provides a useful introduction to deploying content management technologies. It also describes how to apply Microsoft technologies to content management. If you print out the first three pages you will have a useful checklist of what to ask to determine whether content management is useful to you.

Content management can be thought of as a springboard. It is not entirely necessary to manage content in a structured fashion, or to use tools to automate it. However, the successful use of content management facilities will enable organisations to do more with less, to manage more information and deliver it more reliably than otherwise. Enterprise-scale content management applications can be expensive, hence commitment is required from the top not only to cover the costs of the products, but also to implement the necessary processes to enable their benefits to be realised.

Deploying Content Management Applications

The deployment of a content management application should be considered as an integrated part of a company's strategy for using the Web. This article from Documentum provides a summary of what to look for in a content management application, as does this one from Sun. For deploying the technologies, we would refer once again to the Microsoft article here, whether or not you intend to use Microsoft tools.

Content management is as much about process as product. Not only is there the content development and delivery process to think about, but also the other processes (aka workflows) of the organisation will be impacted, in particular the customer-facing processes such as marketing, sales and support. Here is an excellent article (as ever) from the Patricia Seybold group describing the five content-related processes for any organisation. If you're interested, there's a reasonable introduction to workflows (aka processes) here.

Issues with Content Management

Content management is a relatively mature, and hence stable, market and suffers less from teething problems than a number of other application areas. Issues with content management tend to come more from the way it is implemented - implementation of the wrong process, or failure to integrate with external systems and workflows can cause more problems than it solves.

One issue concerns the distribution of content. Content distribution networks relive the pressure on web sites by offering alternative locations for the content. This can solve difficulties of accessing content from specific geographies, not to mention easing the load on a company's "core" web site. An article on content distribution networks can be found here.

Finally, if you're worried about your content being dull, there's a good top-ten list of ways of spicing it up, here.

The Future of Content Management

Content management may have the basic model correct, but it must adapt to fit with new technologies and new business models as they come on stream. It will undoubtedly be impacted by the arrival of broadband technologies (covered here) as these enable new forms of content (such as streamed audio and video) to be delivered. Web services (covered here) and ASPs will also impact on content management, not so much in its principles but in the way it is implemented.

Further Resources on Content Management

The eContent Magazine is a good starting point. Ironically, the site appears to be sometimes unreliable.