The Road to Intelligent Content: Analyze Content Development Needs
Posted on Thu, Oct 29, 2009
Today Alaina is sharing her thoughts on how you can incorporate some key "intelligent content" strategies into your existing content development solution.
I'm a big fan of XML technologies, so I'm intrigued with the idea of "intelligent content." I like the name: it's catchy and commands notice, especially when promoted by industry luminaries. And it advocates and restates a respectable XML objective: content should be reused and not limited to one technology, purpose, or output.
That said, several thoughts come to mind regarding intelligent content:
- Is intelligent content something new? Or is it instead simply the rebranding of what content development specialists call a well-planned and complete implementation of XML-related technologies?
- If a company's documentation is still in an unstructured format, what is the process to convert that content to intelligent content?
- And what about the ROI for content conversion?
Let's bypass the first point for now and focus on the latter two. The journey from unstructured, clunky-to-leverage content to intelligent content is rarely simple, brief, or inexpensive; proper up-front analysis is necessary to determine the current and future states, and to calculate ROI.
Content development, including technical publications and elearning, is a key line of business at Lionbridge. We've helped clients develop and deploy structured authoring environments, including Structured FrameMaker and, more often, to full utilization of XML and its associated technologies. Following the carpenter's rule to "measure twice, cut once", we recommend that companies considering a move to a structured environment conduct a Content Needs Analysis. You can conduct the analysis in-house, or you can request assistance from a content development vendor, such as Lionbridge.
Whichever course you choose, be sure the following is included in the final report:
- Corporate goals and initiatives, and how migrating content to XML will help your company achieve its goals and initiatives.
- Current state analysis, including an overview of the software and technology your content development team uses, the workflow and review processes they follow, and the content types they create. The section must also include what is working and what is not, and why. During this phase, you may also choose to conduct a deep analysis to determine content leverage.
- Future state recommendations that describe each problem discovered during the current state analysis and the recommended, detailed solution to each. Tools, technology, and associated costs as well as detailed processes are included in this phase. You should also expect high-level CMS recommendations.
- Summary of potential savings, including a breakdown of which actions will likely save your company how much. From a high level, a savings summary might look like the table below (and it should be accompanied by details to back up the assumed savings):
- Proposed roadmap and timeline, which will detail the steps necessary to achieve your goals. Most often the timeline is measured in months rather than weeks, and a solid well-planned roadmap and timeline will forecast out 3-5 years.
Properly prepared, the Content Needs Analysis will provide everything you need to make an informed decision on how to best move your content towards an "intelligent" solution.
Questions? Comments? Post here, or contact me directly at Alaina (dot) Eldredge (at) Lionbridge (dot) com.