One Management System to Rule

Them All?

Noz Urbina - @nozurbina

Blogger - www.urbinaconsulting.com/blog

Content Strategy Practice Owner, Mekon - www.mekon.com

Congility Events Chairperson - @congility / www.congility.com

congility.com

Agenda

~ Introductions

– The session

– Look who’s talking now (Me/Mekon)

– What is an MS? (vs. a Database?)

– Why do we need MSs?

~ MS overviews by type

– DMS

– WCMS

– CCMS

~ Unification & Conclusion

congility.com

Photo (C) http://www.flickr.com/photos/hhoyer/3249473645/

This Session is About Differentiation

~ A comparative overview, not master-class or specific product recommendations

CCMS DMS WCMS

Me

~ Mekon Content Strategy Practice Owner~ noz.urbina@mekon.com @nozurbina

~ Mekon has 20 years in content-driven business processes

~ Technology independent consultancy, tool selection support, training and systems integration

~ Congility Events Chairperson– Today’s content needs agility!

– www.congility.com @congility

~ Co-Author– Content Strategy: Connecting the Dots Between

Business, Brand, and Benefits www.thecontentstrategybook.com

Cross-Industry Experience

What makes an MS?

~ Storage

~ Metadata

~ Integration

~ Capture

~ Indexing

~ Retrieval

~ Distribution

~ Security

~ Workflow

~ Collaboration

~ Versioning

~ Searching

~ Publishing

An MS is not a DB

~ Management Systems are “business logic layers” (basically a special kind of application) built on a repository (almost always a database)

MS Application – Behaviours, user interfaces, features, integration, application programming interfaces (API)

Repository – Storage, transaction management, fail-over

Reasons to use an MS

~ Content Agility– Right content, right platform, right format, etc..

~ Efficiency– Publishing automation/single sourcing– Collaboration

~ Metrics, control & measurement– Publishing analytics– Workflow and auditability– Regulatory or procedural compliance and governance– Security

~ All vendors will tell you their system is great at all of these.

MSs for Another Day

~ We’re leaving out:

– LMS – Learning MS

– TMS/LMS – Translation/Localisation MS

– PLM – Product LifeCycle MS

– CLM – Client LifeCycle MS

– CRM – Client Relationship MS

– And Wikis...

Common MS Types

Component

Content Management

System

e.g. IXIASOFT, Trisoft

(LiveContent Achitect),

XDocs, Vasont,

“Source materials” Building

blocks and media ready for

reuse in any

document/format/output

Document Management

System

e.g., SharePoint,

Documentum...

Whole, formatted documents

Web Content

Management System

e.g., Drupal, Alfresco,

WordPress, OpenCMS...

Web sites, web pages, media

files and downloadable

documents

CCMS

WCMS

DMS

Differentiation

~ Manageable Units:

~ Documents

vs

~ Components (aka

modules)

~ Fragments

~ Variables

DMS

WCMS/CCMS

Differentiation

~ Structure & metadata:

~ Unstructured, or Structure & metadata is UI-driven

vs

~ Structured source

~ Structure survives across platforms regardless of UI

DMS/WCMS

CCMS

SYSTEMS OVERVIEWS

DMS

Documents, compliance, release, libraries

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Document Management System

~ AKA EDMS (Electronic Document Management Sys)

~ Static and Live Documents

~ Live = updated during day-to-day work

~ Static = unchanged until circumstance or schedule requires and update

~ e.g. Archives, Reference libraries, Authoritative Copies

~ Organisation-wide document control

~ Document numbering

~ Final formal release

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Document Management System

~ Usually internal but often delivers either to secure extranet or hands off to WCMS

~ DMS + WCMS in one packaged application = Enterprise Content Management System (ECMS)

~ List of systems: http://bit.ly/nysDMs

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Document Management System

Strong on:

~ Finance (Accounts Payable/Receivable, Records Management)

~ Supplier & Contract Management

~ Audit and compliance

~ HR and Policy Management (Benefits Admin, Performance Review)

Challenges:

~ Requirements management

~ Content reuse and fine-grain publishing

~ Technical documentation

~ Any sort or content structural control – DMS manages at file level

~ XML management

WCMS

Web Publishing, Analytics, Communities

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Web Content Management

System

~ Websites and web content (HTML, HTML5)

~ You consume content from WCMSs every day

~ Content structures are controlled usually with forms or not at all (unstructured)

– Modules are “info-typed” (blog, article, overview, ad, link bundle, etc.) and assembled into pages

~ Over 1500 known systems in the world

– A short list (still huge): http://bit.ly/cmscrWCM

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Some information

typing on modules.

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(Simple) Semantic Metadata, but

completely custom-form driven,

and only on the whole module. No

sub-structure is allowed inside the

main content.

Can reuse

whole module

only

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Reusable, but

limited. Needs IT

intervention.

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Web Content Management

System~ Strong on

– Websites~ Including responsive

design and mobile web if implemented properly

– Community management

– Analytics, metrics, measurement

– Easy-to-source skills

– Out of box social media integrations (twitter, facebook)

~ Challenges

– Everything else

– Professional quality print

– Content structures are tied into the (forms) implementation (not portable like XML)

– Single sourcing and reuse can often be a significant hack if not totally unfeasible

CCMS

Multi-platform, multi-format, source-material management

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Component Content Management

System~ Structured, “typed” content components

~ Enables compilation of deliverables from smaller, reusable components and fragments

~ Usually XML-based (often DITA these days)

~ Authors can restructure content without IT support

~ Web CMS and DMS publishing systems, CCMS is about creation and source management across publishing channels

~ List of systems (DITA only): http://bit.ly/ditawrCCM

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Component Content Relationships

~ Changes in status of any related files will be visible to the owners

~ Cross-references can easily be managed:

– Across chapters or documents

– To any published deliverables with a known location (web, intranet)

Fragment (Variable/Inset)

Map

(Collection)

Sub-Map

Image

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CCMS versioning and status

~ CCMS systems can support complex composite objects

– Able to reuse, compare and edit content from various points

– Branching allows parallel work on topics – separate projects don’t disturb each other

– Trace back metadata like specific requirements or for compliance

– This table applies to collections/maps as well

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Composite Image Objects

~ CCMS topics link to “image objects” which handle all format and version relationships.

– The publishing process selects the appropriate image type for the output

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DMS

WCMS

Case Study

CCMS

Doc Owner: “I’m going to publish

soon. I want to see what’s

happened to every section, image

and text inset that my document

uses.”

~ Interviewees regularly complain about content relationship issues:

~ “When stuff changes you don't know what's what. Things only go into the DMS once they are ready.”

~ CCMS allows flexible relationship management and auditing

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CCMSs Need a Publishing Tool

Cu

sto

mers

B

Cu

sto

mers

A

Part

ners

…out to multiple formatsCheck /

Manage

Plan /

WriteUse multiple times...

CCMSRendering

Engine

?

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Component Content Management

System~ Strong on

– Complex documents~ Tech Docs – manuals,

help, web help

~ (e)Learning material

~ Proposals and requirements

– Automated publishing, reuse

~ Challenges

– More complex by nature

– Not many reliable open-source / very low cost options

– Require implementation of publishing channels

– Requires niche skills to implement and maintain

– Some have usability issues

Unification

Unification

~ The systems can share content either programmatically or with manual updates across MSs

~ Metadata is the key

– Tagging things with the same top-level metadata allows sharing without deep integrations

– XML / DITA publish out in other formats like PDF and HTML to live new lives in the downstream systems (DMS/WCMS)

Standardisation Enables Reuse &

Integration

~ Some standards are company-wide, some are local

MSs in an Enterprise Systems Context

Cu

sto

mers

B

Cu

sto

mers

A

Part

ners

Translate

…and back comes business

intelligence (metrics, user

contributions, feedback)Review Testing &

Quality

Checks

…out to multiple formatsCheck /

Manage

Plan /

Write

Use multiple times...

CCMS

WCMS

DMS

Socially enabled across silos

Let users build and

share their own

deliverables, for any

format

Hits are tagged with

their source

Search across MS

and silo boundaries

Conclusion

~ The common types exists for very different reasons

– Apples, Oranges and Bananas can be compared, but they are not the same. Don’t end up with an Orange Pie or a Duck a la Banane

~ Large enterprises and even many small-to-medium enterprises need all 3

Conclusion

~ Some vendors are looking to buy up a “whole set”

~ Few are still pushing the “master system” approach