Without effective content management and integration, even the most
data-rich companies will struggle to deliver knowledge, writes
Lindsay Nicolle.
One of the most challenging issues for organisations over the next
few years will be implementing effective content management
alongside enterprise integration.
Content management is increasingly becoming a part of the software
infrastructure, being built on the foundations of an application
server and integrating with other software such as enterprise
portals, e-business platforms and business process management
tools.
Users now want content to be application-oriented, instantly
available, easily managed and dynamically delivered - which is a
must for fuelling e-business. Thus, some form of content management
system is essential.
As the amount of digital content continues to proliferate,
unstructured content, such as emails, images and documents,
accounts for over 80% of data in a typical business. Within most
companies the Internet, partners, suppliers, customers and internal
documents generate masses of information, but this is stored in a
variety of locations, including central servers, distributed
servers, local PCs and mobile devices.
All of this information - including any that resides on middle-aged
legacy departmental systems - needs to be integrated if the company
is to take full advantage of it. Without the ability to organise
this content, the information is lost and a valuable asset is
wasted.
Global enterprises have three key requirements when it comes to
content. They need a smooth internal and external communication
medium for delivering content to different places; collaboration
between the parties that hold a broad spectrum of cross-functional
knowledge and content owners; and the intelligence to analyse this
content and determine how it is used.
However, few companies achieve this Nirvana, as Jonathan Benbow,
EMEA director of product marketing at content management
specialist, Vignette, explains.
"Often the departmentalised working environment is at odds with the
global market concept," says Benbow. "The same content gets
re-created several hundred times in fragmented blocks and it must
be updated and maintained separately. Enterprises haven't focused
on developing a unified system where content is not duplicated and
is available seamlessly across different portals."
Despite the fact that properly managed and integrated content can
be a competitive weapon.
So what is best practice in content integration? Who are the major
players and should users opt for bespoke or packaged content
management solutions?
The worldwide market for content management systems will be worth
$7.2bn by 2006, according to industry research firm, Butler Group.
The company predicts that the market will eventually polarise into
two sectors - providers of content management infrastructure, and
providers of content management applications.
Content management systems today reflect the divergence between
different vendors. The larger software vendors, such as IBM and
Microsoft, have been manoeuvring to try to establish a position,
both through acquisitions and strategic alliances, while the market
is currently led by Broadvision, Divine, Documentum, FileNET,
Interwoven, Stellent and Vignette.
The solutions that survive the vendor shakedown will comply with
open standards, for example XML (Extensible Markup Language). This
is because open standards are key to integrating content, business
processes and transactions across both internal and external
enterprise systems.
When it comes to choosing either a bespoke or packaged content
management solution, bear in mind that a content management system
can facilitate all aspects of content collaboration, management,
delivery and syndication.
Accordingly, bespoke systems offer the greatest chance of limiting
a company's data and system integration headache since the system
can be tailored to the exact needs of the company.
Off-the-shelf packages might require additional, costly development
to add functionality if it is to be of use to all areas of the
business. Packaged systems also require additional servers,
databases and extra administration, compared to a tailored system
that requires minimum technical resource and system
management.
David Gingell, EMEA marketing director for Documentum, says: "It is
unwise to say that content management is easy to achieve. However,
selecting the right content management product, which has a
heritage of integration with other applications, will provide a
high degree of investment protection and also reduce the reliance
on bespoke development to tie systems together."
The main integration headaches users will face are:
- Legacy system architecture
- Point applications and management reporting
- Rights management for content distribution
- Content value and billing
- Customer relationship management to leverage existing branding,
or re-brand
- Cultural and change management
- Personnel skills and training.
The key to a content integration strategy that delivers
wide-ranging business benefits is to ensure that your company's
business processes, strategy, application requirements and staff
considerations come first, not the technology, according to Chris
Kidd, senior manager of publishing for the Telecom Media Networks
business practice at consultancy Cap Gemini Ernst &
Young.
Another important consideration is not to view integration as a
separate task but as part of the overall content management system
implementation. Understand up-front what applications the content
management system needs to interface with now and in the future.
Gingell advises: "Carefully evaluate your content management
supplier to ensure the broadest range of integrations is available
from them. Where they are not, then look at the vendor's
application development environment. Is it fully featured? Is it
easy to use? Does it support the leading standards? Will you be
tied into Java or .Net or will you have flexibility in your
development tools? How easy is it to manipulate content with the
content management system and how easy is it to link content
together from multiple sources?
"In other words, how flexible is the application programming
interface of your chosen content management system? Ensure that the
relationships that your vendor has with the vendors of the other
enterprise applications are well-founded and that there will be
mutual support for the level of integration proposed."
Clearly, on current estimates of the proliferation of digital
content, it is unlikely that bricks and clicks companies will
survive in the competitive fast-moving 21st century without
dovetailing content management with enterprise integration with the
help of software suppliers and systems integrators. The only
questions left to answer are: when, and with whom?