Leveraging Content
Posted by Joan Lasselle on Fri, Sep 11, 2009 @ 11:58 AM
Last week I wrote about the mega trends that are affecting content development and delivery. One of those trends is the dramatic increase in the amount of content. Estimates are that it is increasing at the rate of 60% a year. How can you manage this relentless growth and leverage this valuable asset?
Three approaches offer ways not only to increase efficiency, but also to ensure that the content you develop and maintain is effective.
Approach One: Focus on the User. Understanding the needs of the user is central to managing content. Assumptions about the information users need are based on what's been done in the past rather than understanding how users work today and what information is needed to improve performance. The workforce and customer base are changing: both are global, multicultural, and multigenerational. Developing a 360 degree view of user personas that goes beyond demographics and job description to fully understand how they work and the information they need to be productive on the job can result in innovative content and learning solutions that map the content model directly to the work model. By shifting the focus from simply creating or capturing content to delivering the right content (who needs what, when, and how) new content and learning models emerge and it becomes possible to prioritize high value content.
Approach Two: Single Source Content to Reuse, Repurpose, and Reduce. One of the most important ways to leverage content is through reuse and repurposing. By creating content components or modules you can re-use content to build a range of deliverables in different formats for different audiences and purposes. While single sourcing and reuse is often touted as an efficiency measure it is increasingly acknowledged as a method for achieving higher productivity and customer satisfaction—another way of saying higher quality. You can customize content more easily to address the needs of specific customers and create new types of deliverables as well.
Many people assume single sourcing is a technology solution. While tools are an important component of the solution, it's a change in your approach to developing and delivering content. It's a business approach and includes a new understanding of your customer (internal and external), new skills for content developers including a move to topic based writing and looking at workflow and processes.
Approach Three: Optimize Content Infrastructure. Too often organizations that develop content—technical publications, learning, and marketing communications, focus on just that—content. They don't look beyond the content to the infrastructure or system that creates, delivers, and maintains it. Other parts of the organization such as manufacturing optimize lifecycles and supply chains. Content, however, is often developed within a department that fine tunes content deliverables without recognizing the opportunities for cross functional collaboration to lower costs and improve overall customer satisfaction that drives increased retention and delivers revenue. Five key areas that work together and need to be evaluated are: customer, content, technology, process, and the content development team. If you want to manage and leverage content to focus on the user and get the benefits of the component content, you need an infrastructure to support that move.