It is a common misconception that content refers only to electronic documents or Web pages, or some vague notion of text saved on a hard drive somewhere. In one respect that is correct. In reality, every document, whether a life insurance policy, employment contract or Web page, forms part of an organisation`s content.
If a business has a customer who has signed a contract, it has content. If your customers interact with you in any way at all, then you`re in content management. If your customers are strategic to you, then content management should be strategic. Content is endemic to all businesses. It`s there, and it needs to be managed and turned from a painful thorn in the side into a strategic asset.
The need for better content management is not simply a way to streamline business - although this is one of the benefits.
Paul Mullon, marketing director, Metrofile
The days of treating paper and electronic content separately are over, especially for companies treating electronic documents as the poor cousins from the south. It won`t be long before an electronic document carries as much legal weight as a paper document and the intricacies in managing both will require constant attention if processes to control this are not put in place now. The old idea of solving content problems by buying a content management system or workflow management system is also outdated.
From experience, I can certainly prove these systems work and can deliver returns above the most optimistic sales pitch, but they only deliver when used correctly. This means a lengthy process of analysing what content the business has and what it means to the business. This is followed by deciding how it needs to be handled, with due thought given to current legislation about what documents must be held, for what length of time, and when they should be destroyed. The company then decides how it intends to manage the various types of content and only then is a technology solution brought in to meet the identified needs.
This process should prompt companies to create a virtual mailroom into which all documents flow. Physical documents are digitised and, according to the process above, are used in the company`s workflow cycle, while the content lifecycle determines the time and place for the indexing and storage of the physical document.
However, management is only the first step. Companies should focus on the strategic use of the content as well, not merely its administration. Often such an enormous amount of time is spent on storing, finding, retrieving and shuffling content that little effort is spent adding value to it. Companies should focus on turning records into strategic assets.
Making sure content is easily available once indexed and filed electronically (or physically) is probably the most important part of the management cycle. A report from Gartner states: "The amount of time that knowledge workers spend creating, searching for, retrieving, repurposing and filing documents has very serious implications, especially for document-intensive industries such as banking, insurance and healthcare. If enterprises do not bring internal and external content under control, the amount of time wasted by the average knowledge worker on document-related non-value-added tasks will increase to between 30% and 40% of their time by 2003."
In real terms, this could translate to needing 30% more staff to do the same amount of work your current staff does. And this just because staff waste almost half their day running around looking for information that someone filed somewhere and forgot about.
The need for better content management is not simply a way to streamline business - although this is one of the benefits. After the financial scandals in America and the increasing emphasis on adherence to the King II recommendations, good corporate governance requires effective control of content. Given the evidence presented in many of the scandals, it`s easy to see that content covers everything from contracts and letters between the company, its customers, employees and partners; as well as e-mail, Web site data and documents created during the normal workday - such as memos and meeting minutes.
Content is also the glue that welds the back office to the front office - bringing all corporate knowledge to the people who need to use it in their day-to-day functions. Quick access to customer information via a click of a mouse can assist helpdesk staff in serving customers faster while providing a better service. It also opens the door to customer self-service, allowing customers to manage themselves and become part of the supply chain. Self-service offers many benefits, one of the main ones being lower costs.
Companies need to gain an executive understanding of the value of all their corporate content and the risks associated with not managing it properly. Content management is a strategic part of business process improvement initiatives designed to realign business to meet the demands of today`s economy. As with most business decisions, the critical aspect of content management is not the product that is installed at the end of the day, but the strategic processes and procedures that define the management lifecycle. The product simply acts as the tool to streamline the process and make its implementation simpler.
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