Welcome to the Astoria WebLog

Analysts have been writing about Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for a few years now, creating reports that focus on such things as enterprise content trends, content management software applications, business requirements, vendor profiles, and best practice recommendations. A majority of these reports focus on unstructured content and content primarily destined for Web sites.

A recent report, though, issued by the Forrester Group Forrester Wave Report: Content Centric Applications, Q1 2006 raised some eyebrows and heated discussion from the content management community, and makes the subject of how to use and interpret analyst reports particularly timely. The Forrester report highlighted several important business requirements for “multichannel customer experiences and primary interaction points” for “quality content.” The report went on to discuss content-centric applications and several technologies available from large ECM vendors.

The controversy arose in what the report failed to examine, i.e. the world of structured content, including Component Content Management (CCM), an alternative approach that manages “content at a granular level...rather than at the document level” to quote content management guru Ann Rockley, president of The Rockley Group. According to Rockley, author of Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy (which spells out a strategy for managing granular, reusable content), "Content components represent a single topic, concept or asset (e.g., image, table). They are assembled into multiple content assemblies (content types) and can be viewed as components or as traditional 'documents'. Each component has its own life cycle (owner, version, approval, use) and can be tracked individually or as part of an assembly."

For background, the component management approach uses granular “building blocks” to assemble customer-centric information. Typically, the components are managed as XML and can easily be re-assembled on-demand based on business rules and the requirements of the content consumer. This approach allows organizations to deliver the right information (personalized by role or interest area), to the right people, at the right time, in the right language, and in the right format.

In the technical publications industry, there's a big push to take advantage of component-based content models. One such initiative, The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), an technical publications standard, manages content at a very granular level (Topics) and provides authors with a easy method of reusing content components (Topic Maps) to create deliverables.

The oversight in not including component content management in the Forrester report, is in the fact that content management strategy and solution evaluation should be relevant to the requirements of the end deliverable and its application - i.e. how, and for what purpose will the the information be consumed?

In the case of component content management, the approach is additive – you assemble or build components that match the needs of a specific product (or customer) deliverable. This is especially relevant to industries with products that have various configurations, languages, platforms, audiences, releases, etc. and are subject to constant change at the component level.

Since customer satisfaction is a key metric for many companies, constantly improving product information deliverables such as user guides, online help, parts catalogs, repair guides, and customer support and knowledge centers, etc., is a given. In addition, a growing business requirement that supports use of a component-based content management approach and tools is where companies want to dynamically deliver personalized content in any required configuration. Since it is not always possible to anticipate all the potential ways your product is used, a component management system provides advanced ways to manage the relationships (or links) between components, which really is critical if your content components are heavily shared, and re-used. Component reuse relies on metadata to include just the information required for a specific deliverable, ending the "here's everything we have, look through it and find what you need" approach used by far to many organizations today.

Component content management shows its best colors when applied to a deliverable that has topics that are related, such as supporting the 'how to' requirement of an online help system. Users require rapid search and navigation to help them zero in on the information they need to complete a task. They can click on related topics link(s) if these desire further details or require additional information. If too much information is presented, users can grow frustrated and perhaps overwhelmed. In these situations, they often give up looking and search for alternative ways to find the answers they need.

A suggested way to use analyst reports

What’s troubling to me is that too many analyst reports fail to focus on the final purpose of the content or the content components that are to be managed. Assumptions are made that do not fit business requirements. It’s difficult to talk about software tools and applications when the true purpose or 'use scenario' is not identified. Analyst reports can focus too much on technology trends and not enough on the actual application for that information.

Despite these shortcomings, analyst reports can be a source of relevant information; however, your mileage may vary from analyst to analyst. The best approach is to evaluate the information provided by a diverse set of resources (analyst reports, customer case studies, white papers, and articles). This approach can help you locate the information you need to solve your business problems.

No matter what type of resources you look to for guidance, it’s important to start with a careful understanding of your organizational and business requirements and rank them by priority. Much of this information can be found within your customer surveys, product plans, and company goals and objectives. Clear interpretation of your requirements provides much needed clarity and will help you make the best use of the information included in analyst reports.

So what useful information can be found within an analyst report? Usually the best analyst reports include information about actual customer deployments - providing comparisons of what was planned and their actual results. Additionally, user satisfaction results by similar companies provide realistic insights on objectives, and results of the solutions implemented.

I'd like to know what your take on the role of analyst reports. Do you use them? Are they valuable or do they too often miss the mark?

Next month we'll take a peek at several analyst reports, including the recent Aberdeen Group report entitled Next-Generation Product Documentation: Getting Past the “Throw It over the Wall” Approach.