Content Re-use through CMS

In a world that has gone mad with overused terms such as re-use, green and recycle (not that those are bad things) I will attempt to make a case for content re-use that seems to be alluding companies both large and small.

For the past 12 years I have worked with numerous companies to help them develop more effective web strategies utilizing technologies like content management, portals and ecommerce. And to this day I find it both fascinating and somewhat sad to continue to see more and more companies siloed in their website and intranet approaches.

Content Re-use is one of the absolute key benefits of implementing a web content management system. In fact just about every company talks about it, demands it and makes it a “must have” in their RFQ. But how many actually implement it? I have no scientific data but from my experience it is probably less than 5%.

For example: a global company has a corporate public website and perhaps multi-lingual sites for specific regions around the world. This same company has a customer portal for placing orders or reviewing account history and a global intranet that services their employees. This is a pretty typical configuration for companies of all sizes and specialties. As a norm I have seen the website controlled by a disparate CMS, the portal controlled by some half-hearted web implementation of their ERP system that really isn’t well executed and the intranet controlled by Share Point. One company, one mission, one vision with three disparate management tools and numerous repositories. These systems are not in sync but expected to control communications with their customers, employees, prospects and other stakeholders. Very inefficient, expensive and cumbersome to manage. Think about this content such as products, news, corporate information, general pages, images, documents, video,  functionality, layouts and page elements can be standard and used across these websites, intranet and customer portal, once.

It’s a no brainer that any company implementing CMS should have goals of content distribution and synchronization of assets stored in multiple databases and re-used across multiple websites (including intranets). Again just about all CMS implementations start with this requirement only to lose the dream to one of the following reasons:

1. “There is no way we can have one centralized repository”
2. “Different websites are served from different servers”
3. “That site is not part of our domain, it is managed by this other business unit or IT”
4. “We don’t have that kind of budget”
5. “Oh there is no way we can integrate with that legacy system”…and on and on.

All of these excuses are valid on the surface but they are all noise and the only restriction to overcoming these is having a realistic strategy, including a hard ROI, followed up by hard work.

Now what are some of the myths that need to be exorcised to achieve content re-use across the enterprise:

1. It is an absolute and real ROI to have single pieces of content and other digital assets to be written and stored once, and then used in multiple locations or contexts. This will cut back on employees hired to strictly manage and maintain these sites and the time it takes to locate re-usable assets.

2. Many will argue the need for one central content repository or database. It is my recommendation that this requirement will be the roadblock to success. There is no need for one centralized database. Content Re-use can be achieved by implementing a robust and scalable CMS across the enterprise and a great services team to bring together the other repositories of content that can be searched, edited, re-used and published once.

3. You will not have to hire people to manage this process (aside from your vendor to implement). In fact it will allow you to streamline the human input and management factor and truly bring an overhead cost savings.

4. Keeps messaging, communications and brand consistent across the stakeholder spectrum.

5.  Provides for much greater control and accuracy

6. Eliminates multiple CMS tools, editors and support problems

7.  Content re-use makes everyone happy! OK, maybe that is a stretch.

I would like to hear any success stories you have on content re-use.

Written by Tony Pietrocola