The term ‘double-edged sword’ may have been created with content management systems (CMS) in mind. On one edge, they hold great promise for organisations in terms of their ability to create and manage content that is more accurate, less costly to produce, and more consistent in appearance. On the other, they can present a myriad of challenges in their implementation and acceptance by the people using them – and purchasing them. Let’s examine the challenges that a CMS presents, along with ways those challenges can be overcome…

Challenge #2: Migration
Migrating an enterprise’s existing information into this new format, requires a big investment in time and labour as the sheer volume of content is overwhelming in comparison to what it would have been 20 years ago at the time financial information was being converted.

And as this content represents 80% of an organisation’s data, the importance of the migration phase cannot be overestimated. In the end, migration requires a technology solution with some CMS’s more adept at allowing people to import content quickly, and in popular formats. Unfortunately, successful migration involves other factors, specifically the formatting of the original document. The less structured a document, the more difficult it is to import it into the CMS.For example, a manual created by a writer in the technical publications department will be relatively straightforward, since most technical writers are meticulous about style and formatting. But a manual written by a different department may present a different set of issues. We’ve seen documents created by HR, for instance, in which the writer came to the end of a line, hit the Return key, and then used the spacebar to line up the next paragraph.

Importing a manual with this lack of style involves much more labour and effort. CMS vendors without advanced migration capabilities may well propose that a company simply create all new content. But having already invested millions of dollars in their content, organisations cannot be expected to give it up lightly.

Of course, many of the same vendors are willing to provide migration assistance at a substantial cost – sometimes as much as $15 a page. One way around this is to migrate only the content that is absolutely necessary. Ie: don’t migrate manuals for products that are no longer manufactured or for procedures that have been discarded. The amount of content that can be left on the side of the road is often quite voluminous.

Posted by Paul Trotter, CEO, Author-it Software Corporation.