I had a conversation today where I was discussing strategies for content architecture with a Fortune 100 high tech company. The person I was speaking with stated that they wanted to create a strategy where the content was completely independent of the tool set used to create and process it.

I believe his premise was that by making the content tool agnostic, that it enables independence from tools, and allows different parts of the organization to choose different tool sets independently to meet their specific requirements. Provided all the tools can magically inter-operate and just load and save the content in the same model everything will be wonderful.

So my question is. Is this really feasible, or is it just a flight of fancy?

My opinion is that if you are focused on satisfying the actual business requirements of users who are authoring, managing, translating, and publishing that content you cannot practically separate the tools from the content because the requirements themselves are not satisfied by either the content model or the tools, but the combination of both.

This is why you never see this type of separation in other software categories like CRM, Financials, or ERP.

If your organization was looking for a new CRM, would they design an independent data model and strategy around managing client information, then find tools that will use the model? I doubt it.

Instead they would most likely gather their business requirements, which by definition need to be independent of implementation, then go to the market with an RFI or RFP. This enables them to consider all the possible ways and technologies available to solve their problems.

I would love to hear your opinions and feedback on this subject.

Paul Trotter
Founder and CEO
Author-it Software Corporation

It has been an interesting start to 2009. It is clear that the financial crisis continues and the world awaits the outcome of President Obama’s stimulus package to see how this will affect the US and global markets. As many commentators have hypothesized; while access to credit is a real issue, it is the consumer coal face where change will start. Changes in consumer spending flow through the entire business ecosystem from B2C through to the B2B sector.

So in a market such as this, how do you drive forward?

I think the answer to this question lies in how businesses are affected and are subsequently seeking to deal with the crisis. The effects are first felt in a reduction in sales revenues. This is a natural market reaction to a crisis – ‘hunker down’ mentality. This leads to additional emphasis on sales execution and a review of costs.

At Author-it we have been heavily focused on these issues in our client and prospect discussions. That is; how can Author-it help our clients with sales execution and how can we cut their costs? Obviously there is an investment to be made in purchasing and implementing Author-it, so we have been ruthless in presenting our case for real dollar cost savings above other gains. Here’s some scenarios to illustrate this point:

Issue: Authoring teams (of all persuasions) are under significant pressure. Teams are being asked to do more with less people and still expected to complete projects on time.
Solution: Author-it allows 40% + gains in authoring efficiency through advanced reuse, single sourcing and multi-output publishing. More output from less.

Issue: Authoring teams are becoming a distributed mix of permanent employees and contractors. This makes collaboration, authoring, edit review and approval very difficult.
Solution: Author-it Live allows web based, ‘anywhere, anytime access’ to content for authoring, review and publishing. Huge time and efficiency gains.

Issue: Localization budgets are under pressure but there is still a requirement to sell in global markets and therefore deliver localized content.
Solution: Author-it Localization Manager can cut localization costs by more than 50%. This is a real cash saving.

Issue: Sales teams need to produce more revenue. This means more sales proposals and therefore more administrative load.
Solution: A number of clients (and us of course) use Author-it to generate custom sales proposals at a small fraction of the time and effort required using traditional methods. This means better quality, compliant proposals and an increased chance of sales success.

Issue: Authoring applications are siloed meaning it is difficult or impossible to leverage content assets across an enterprise.
Solution: Author-it is an enterprise authoring and content management application. Its ease of use and intuitive UI means it can be used by all business units allowing content to be shared and reused throughout an enterprise. Huge efficiency gains across the enterprise.

The above scenarios focus on addressing the core issues many companies are experiencing right now that is how to; cut costs and increase revenue. I believe it is by focussing on ROI and these key areas that both software purchasers and vendors can come together and mutually work through the worst effects of the current market.

Posted by Steve Davis, President, Author-it Software Corporation

Welcome to the Author-it Blog.

It’s been an interesting journey working with our team to conceive, create and now deliver the Author-it Blog.  I previously thought of Blogs as the ramblings of people who ‘didn’t have a life’. They filled this void through endless hours of musing on subjects of great interest to themselves but of little interest to anyone else. So I did a bit of research; I looked at some blogs both within and outside our industry and ended up at the ’source of all knowledge’… Wikipedia.

A few things stood out to me in the Wikipedia definition… commentary, online diary, network, and community. The ‘community’ aspect in particular tweaked my interest.

For many years the Author-it User Group has formed a fabulous part of what we are to the marketplace.  It provides an invaluable link between users. A place where they could share ideas, ask questions, provide tips to users and feedback to us.  It really is a community.

I see the Author-it Blog extending this community aspect by providing a medium for greater participation by our Author-it team.

The vision is a vehicle to open the doors of the company. To allow our clients, partners and prospects the chance to look inside Author-it, to meet us, ask questions and share ideas.

Commercial reality dictates that some of the amazing ideas and creativity that flows through Author-it sometimes have to be restrained, but I’d like the Author-it Blog to be a place where we can post our opinions, ask questions, solicit feedback and share our perspective with you.

While we are obviously biased, our perspective is born of more than a decade in the industry, tens of thousands of prospect meetings and over 3,500 client implementations all around the world.

I expect that we will challenge some of the general thinking out there.  Author-it has never been afraid to be different where we believe we are right.  We seek to solve business problems, not the symptoms.  To us the solution is always more important than specific technology fads or standards purported to be the only way to solve the problem.  In this, I hope we are able to stimulate debate and debunk some of the myths we believe exist in the market.

A blog is nothing if not read, thought about and responded to.  Your feedback is important to us and will help us improve this blog and its value to all.  Please comment on our posts, and if you feel the need, contact me personally with any additional thoughts.

Thanks and best regards,