Implementing a unified content strategy.

• Author: Taylor, Sheila
• Position: Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy (Book - Book Review

TITLE: Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy

AUTHORS: Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, and Steve Manning

ISBN: 0-7357-1306-5

PUBLISHER: New Riders Publishing

PUBLICATION DATE: 2003

LENGTH: 565 pages

PRICE: $27,19 U.S.

SOURCE: www.Amazon.com

Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy defines content as the words, phrases, sentences, charts, and graphs created by authors that make up information products such as user guides, brochures, press releases, Web site content, and technical specifications.

Drawing on their technical writing and documentation backgrounds, the authors present a methodology by which organizations can develop a unified content strategy that identifies their content requirements, creates consistently structured content for reuse, manages content in a definitive source, and assembles content on demand to meet customers' needs.

The book is divided into six parts. Part one, "The Basis of a Unified Content Strategy" introduces the causes (e.g. lack of awareness of other initiatives) and effects (e.g. lack of standardization and consistency) of the content silos that occur when authors working in isolation from other authors within an organization create and recreate content, often with changes of differences at each iteration. This part also examines the business imperatives for content reuse (the practice of using existing content components to develop new "documents"), thus enabling organizations to leverage the time invested in authoring content. The section also illustrates how to calculate the return on investment for a unified content strategy using a fictitious company as an example.

Part two, "Performing a Substantive Audit--Determining Business Requirements," shows how to analyze an organization's content in order to formulate recommendations for a new unified content life cycle. The authors discuss how to identify organizational dangers, opportunities, and strengths and how to analyze the content life cycle (create, review, manage, deliver) to identify the unified processes an organization needs to ensure that everyone who develops, stores, and publishes content does it the same way--or at least is able to interact effectively and share content. Part two includes a methodology for conducting a content audit to analyze how content is used, reused, and delivered to various audiences and provides content audit findings for five fictional companies.

Part three, "Design," begins by illustrating...