POV-Five-Methods-to-Keep-Content-Relevant-in-the-Organization

Improving the Quality of Results in Search p 4 Ensuring Optimal Implementation of CMS Improving the Consistency of User Interface p 6 Decrease Complexity of Content Library Reducing the

Most IT departments these days find issues with supplying and maintaining relevant content to the rest of their organization The most typical reason for this is that IT will tend to see their role as selecting, maintaining, and upgrading Content Management Systems (e.g SharePoint, Confluence, etc.) without engaging the rest of the organization much outside of those events The results of taking a systems/technology only approach to content management is dissatisfied stakeholders exhibiting an increased likelihood to abandon IT’s solution in search of their own The prevalence of so many content and knowledge management systems available for both on premise and in the cloud places pressure on CIOs to take an increased role in facilitating good

content management practices to safe guard the organization’s investments already made While it is

recommended to reassess the organization’s overall knowledge management strategy every few years or when standing up a new content/knowledge management solution, this paper focuses on providing five highly effective methods suitable for most technological solutions to keep content within the organization relevant, refined, and ready for consumption

Introduction

The adoption of a Content Management System within an organization works similar to that of a new

technology or product in the market place – at some point there is a gap that must be overcome for the adoption to increase Figure 1 – Content Management System Adoption and Lifecycle, depicts five stages of

a CMS Lifecycle This paper focuses on objectives and methodologies to help overcome the “CMS Adoption Gap” through the continuous improvement of content within the platform

Five Methods to Keep

Content Relevant in

the Organization

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Improving the Quality of Results in Search p 4 Ensuring Optimal Implementation of CMS

Improving the Consistency of User Interface p 6 Decrease Complexity of Content Library

Reducing the Occurrence of Irrelevant

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This gap generally exists from the system/technology only approach taken by IT IT generally selects and stands

up a system based on demand by a set of users Eventually other groups within the organization try out the new

platform on their own with little or no guidance from IT using a series of bad practices which in part causes the

adoption gap to exist

In order to facilitate the improvement of content in an organization, and to improve the quality of investment in

Content Management Systems (CMS), an IT department should seek to implement the following five objectives:

• Improve the Quality of Results in Search

• Ensure Optimal Implementation of CMS Features

• Improve the Consistency of CMS User Interface

• Decrease Complexity of Content Library Organization

• Reduce the Occurrence of Irrelevant Content

Implementing these five objectives will substantially improve the quality of content in an organization over time by addressing the most common issues that occur with CMS systems This paper provides a methodology for each

objective and steps to implement, which is summarized in Table 1 – Five Methods to Keep Content Relevant

Implementing the five objectives suggested within this paper will allow an IT department to greatly improve the

chances of crossing the “CMS Adoption Gap” and increasing the potential for reaching a full return on the

expected investment of a content management system

Page 3

Figure 1 – Content Management System Adoption and Lifecycle

Table 1 – Five Methods to Keep Content Relevant

Improving the Quality of Results in Search

Users expect search to be a single source to find most

content within the platform Most content management

systems give users insufficient search results if no

customization is performed This is caused by not making

use of the built in features for making search effective To

avoid this issue, an organization should create a search

improvement and analytics group This group keeps track

of the effectiveness of search within the CMS and makes

adjustments to search Configuration Items (CI’s) in

accordance with noted deficiencies At a minimum this

group should meet monthly to perform its duties

Typical Issues if Not Performed

• Users unable to find expected content – Users expect

certain materials to be easily located via search (e.g

HR policies, holiday schedules, department

overviews, etc.) If these searches do not yield at the

top of results sets for keywords the user expected to

give success, the user gets frustrated Over time the

user loses confidence in search and sometimes

abandons regular use of the platform

• Less important results near the top of the search

ranking – Users must sort through several pages of

results when running searches for terms they expect

to be common in an organization As a result they get

frustrated having to spend time looking at multiple

pages of results for items

• Important materials have insufficient visibility –

Internal campaigns and important materials do not

get seen by all users when looking for related content

(e.g user searches for benefits but does not get

information about upcoming benefits changes HR

need to tell staff about), creating a missed

opportunity to inform users

Methodology Implementation Steps

• Create an appropriate cross functional group – The

monthly search improvement and analytics group

should consist of appropriate analysts from IT with

knowledge of the configurations items available within

the search function, individuals from a group that is

responsible for internal communications (or staff that

are very knowledgeable about all parts of the

business and how each part needs to interface

internally), and an owner of the CMS or change

management process for the CMS to decide on

changes to configuration items in the platform

• Review search statistics for problematic search terms – The group should review reports on the most common failed search terms, and test these out to see what the current results look like If there is obvious reordering of the search results that should occur to promote more relevant results, the group should create an action to reorder the results for the keywords under review using the CI’s responsible for ranking/results ordering

• Custom tailor first results for most common search terms – The group should review the most common search terms and custom tailor the first result or make use of highlighted keywords or other capabilities the CMS offers.[1] Having the most common search terms return very directed results will increase the usefulness of the CMS significantly

• Help facilitate creation of content missing based on search trends – As trends emerge for content that does not yet exist in the platform the group can work with the appropriate areas of the business to let them know users are wanting content their department might own

• Review sites with heavy usage and invest extra effort

in making them feature rich – The group should review internal usage reports to find out which workspaces/sites have the largest amount of user traffic and occasionally staff IT resources to support enhancing these sites to use the most appropriate CMS features based on use cases Doing this to the most heavily used sites will ensure the most positive user experience by a large audience

• Leverage user ranking of content features – Where possible the group should seek to ensure heavily used sites also leverage newer technologies or features to assist with improved tagging, meta-data management, ranking docs usefulness to improve search results Most CMS’s which support these will use these to add refinement to search results and improve the relevancy of indexed content

Ensuring Optimal Implementation of CMS Features

Users often run into problems using the workspaces/sites

in a CMS since, in many instances, Content Owners set them up incorrectly and inconsistently If the CMS Team does not know the platform’s Content Owners and do not ensure that they understand the platform’s capabilities, it

is unlikely they will have time to learn this on their own

In order for the CMS Team to ensure optimal

implementation of CMS features they must establish a

community of Content Owners with regular training and

resources Once Content Owners are capable of effective

setup of workspaces/sites users will be more likely to

adopt and use the CMS with frequency

Typical Issues if Not Performed

• Erroneous interpretation of platform capabilities –

Users get a false interpretation of what the CMS is

capable of since Content Owners set up their

workspaces/sites incorrectly If Content Owners use

features incorrectly or do not apply the correct

features for their use cases, then the CMS will appear

to be the incorrect solution to manage content for

these users and they will not want to adopt it

• Platform underutilized and investment reduced – When

new features are setup or purchased most Content

Owners will be unaware of the new capabilities This

results in a limited return on the new technology being

added/updated In addition, if the new features are

applied ubiquitously throughout the CMS without

foreknowledge by Content Owners, they may not be

prepared to deal with managing the new features in

their workspaces/sites

• Competing alternative CMS solutions are implemented

by other parts of the organization – When Content

Owners do not understand what the CMS is capable

of, they will seek out alternative solutions for their use

cases, leading to duplicative investments in

technology, and a loss of governance and control for

IT Security groups In some cases if these new CMS

solutions gain momentum, the IT department may be

forced to inherit them in a configuration that is not

sustainable or scalable to the rest of the organization

Methodology Implementation Steps

• Identify Content Owners in each department – The

CMS Team will need to construct and upkeep a list of

all the Content Owners maintaining workspaces/sites

within the CMS Without this it is not easy to

determine who must be engaged within the platform

on training, upcoming changes, etc Most of the

communications about the CMS should be made to

this group of individuals rather than using

companywide broadcasts

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• Teach best practices on features use – The CMS Team should facilitate the training (or enlist the support of external training resources) all Content Owners within the organization on the proper use of features, and content organization and standards to

be used It is recommended for the IT department to work with Human Resources to establish the Content Owner role as part of job description and annual performance reviews so that the role of Content Owner is more formal To assist internal certifications

or proficiencies can be formalized to help track and monitor training progress

• Keep Content Owners knowledgeable on platform changes and roadmaps – Content Owners should be informed on all approved changes to the platform along with its approved long range strategic direction This ensures that there are no surprises which Content Owners are not aware of, and allows for them to raise potential issues before they might occur for their users

• Establish Content Owners as local end user support resource/platform advocate – Establish Content Owners as local contacts with their end users to improve resolution of issues with quality and access Having Content Owners to work as local support resources to their own users on upcoming changes and planned outages, and basic issues, reduces the burden on the IT department’s support and outreach resources It also improves user satisfaction by having quicker response times, and follow up that is more likely to be correct for an individual users issues CMS’s are large and complex, making a standard service desk model less effective in quickly and effectively resolving the individual support needs of most user requests

• Collect Content Owner feedback on CMS usability/experience – Create a user community for feedback on CMS usability/experience to identify UI or functionality enhancements to improve usability By collecting and incorporating requirements from Content Owners, it is less likely that rouge CMS solutions will be created which duplicate functionality The IT department will also have improved accuracy of the content needs for each department within the organization

Improving the Consistency of User Interface

Users often run into the problem with consistency of how

individual sites are laid out across a CMS, and with the

way navigation works This lack of consistency across the

CMS makes it difficult for users to know where certain

types of standard information will appear inside sites and

workspaces, or what the behavior of navigation menus will

produce While training Content Owners does help support

improvement to consistency it may still be necessary to

create a role focused on maintaining configuration items

and navigation look/feel This Configuration Manager helps

to audit existing workspaces/sites, propose and set

standards for layout/look and feel, and determines the

standards for how navigation is presented/behaves for the

users of the platform

Typical Issues if Not Performed

• Features work inconsistently across the platform –

Features that the end users expect to work

consistently across the CMS platform (e.g search

behavior and scope, workflows, etc.) differ as new

workspaces and sites are provisioned or updated

This leads to issues where new or modified spaces

lose functionality or work inconsistently from the rest

of the CMS Users will mistakenly assume the platform

has bugs and carry a negative opinion about the

choice the IT department has made

• Users cannot easily navigate the platform – Most

CMS’s have an issue with inconsistent navigation

across different areas Both the style and types of

destinations will differ As a result users get lost as the

navigation is inconsistent across each area of the

CMS This leads to an overall impression of the

platform being disorganized, and contributes to a

negative opinion of it

• Users excessively forced to make access requests for

materials – Taxonomies generally are not set in a way

that allows easy inheritance of permissions for

sub-workspaces/sites As a result users constantly find

they are stuck waiting on permission requests to

materials they would expect to have access to This

problem is generally compounded by having a mixture

of organization wide viewable sites with team sites

having unique permissions in the same area As users

wait too much for permission to materials, they will

look for alternative CMS solutions and duplicate

investments made by the organization

Methodology Implementation Steps

• Keep a list of Configuration Items that should be maintained ubiquitously throughout the platform – The Configuration Manager should keep track of all CI’s which are supposed to be standard across the platform, and within certain types of sites

• Create methodology for effectively finding incorrect Configuration Items – On a regular interval, the Configuration Manager should iterate through the platform, or develop scripts which check to ensure CI’s are not incorrect Special emphasis should be given to new workspaces/sites created since the last review

• Review navigation for inconsistency in style and structure – On a regular interval the Configuration Manager should iterate through workspaces/sites in the platform to ensure that navigation is consistent from a look and feel standpoint and adheres to the structure approved by the CMS Taxonomy Group

• Ensure permissions applied to workspaces/sites conform to best practices – The Configuration Manager should review parts of the platform which should be viewable by the entire organization to ensure there are not any private areas In addition, they should review private areas to make sure permission inheritance is appropriate, and that permissions are applied using best practices (i.e for many CMS’s, workspaces should use Active Directory Security Groups or some form of supported Security Group that users can be added to)

• Take action with Content Owners failing to adhere to best practice – The Configuration Manager should take note of Content Owners who appear to be having difficulty adhering to best practices and refer them to the CMS Team for additional training and support

Decrease Complexity of Content Library Organization

Over time the original taxonomy created for a CMS becomes out-of-sync with the way the organization evolves in part because there is no person or group maintaining it While the Configuration Manager does own the way taxonomy is presented in navigation they do not maintain the actual taxonomy structure In order to keep the CMS taxonomy accurate IT should seek to create a working body that owns the core business taxonomy Having a CMS Taxonomy Group maintain the taxonomy will ensure that it always makes sense to the users of the platform and reduces any issues they might run into from a disorganized taxonomy

Typical Issues if Not Performed

• Inconsistent duplicated content across departments –

Content that can be attributed to more than one

department gets duplicated since there is not a clear

taxonomy and ownership of various content types

This results in conflicts for versions of the same

content, and users getting frustrated from determining

which sources are authoritative

• Orphaned areas after reorganization – It is common for

a business to have content that is orphaned or out of

place after reorganization activities Without any group

to help facilitate a functional taxonomy more resilient

to reorganization or moves of content when necessary,

content gets orphaned in areas that no longer make

sense This leads to potential permissions issues and

users getting lost when following the taxonomy It also

contributes to an overall feel of disorganization by

users in the CMS

• Poor/difficult to navigate content structure within

workspaces – Most CMS’s have too generic templates

for new workspaces/sites, have few standards on

where certain types of content will appear, and lack

structure for meta data used to tag and categorize

content This means that Content Owners build out

workspaces/sites with different metadata for the same

types of content and with similar types of content in

different areas of the workspace This leads to users

getting confused on how to refine their searches or

how to sort content to locate what they want

• Sensitive materials accidentally exposed – Most

CMS’s do not have dedicated areas where all

organization wide viewable content should reside

separate from private workspaces As a result it is

common for sensitive materials to show up

accidentally (e.g department budget plans,

performance reviews, etc.) as users mistaking place

things in places they expected to be private, but which

might inherit global view permissions

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Methodology Implementation Steps

• Establish a CMS Taxonomy Group – Create a group that is led by IT leadership and the CMS Team, but with open participation by all department leads which has the objective of deciding on the functional taxonomy to be used within the CMS.[2] The entire group should meet on a quarterly basis to make adjustments on taxonomy A smaller subset (usually only members from IT) focused on more technical details of the taxonomy (e.g Metadata structure, workspace templates, etc.) should meet as needed based on actions from the quarterly meetings

• Make taxonomy flat and functional rather than departmental – Make taxonomy as flat as possible and based on functional items rather than departmental

As reorganizations occur some business functions may fall under sales, then marketing, or even another area The function does not change, but the

departmental ownership might so a functional taxonomy will require less upkeep over time

• Adjust taxonomy of content when organization changes occur – After reorganization, check to make sure that affected areas of the CMS are still

appropriate to avoid orphaned workspaces When content needs to be moved task the CMS Team with content migration activities to keep the platform representative of what users will expect

• Develop common metadata terms for use in content libraries – The CMS Taxonomy Group should establish certain metadata terms as standard throughout the CMS In addition the CMS Team should ensure Content Owners are using metadata to tag content rather than using cumbersome folder structures

• Keep organization wide viewable content in one area – The CMS Taxonomy Group should ensure that there is

a clear delineation in the taxonomy for public viewable workspaces from private ones.[3] Doing so will ensure that permissions are easier to manage, and that there

is a lower risk of sensitive information exposed to the whole organization

• Create templates for consistent placement of

information and structure of workspace

sub-taxonomies – Create 5 to 7 standardized templates for

new site/workspace layouts which have consistent

placement of information and a standardized

approach for how sub-workspaces/sites are allowed

to be made This will make sure users always know

where to look in a workspace for certain types of

common information (e.g key contacts, document

libraries, internal and global navigation links, etc.) once

Content Owners are trained to use the correct

templates

Reducing the Occurrence of Irrelevant Content

Most CMS’s run into the issue of having a large amount of

irrelevant and out of date content, either from Content

Owners not keeping their workspaces/sites up to date or

from organizational turnover creating orphaned content In

order to prevent this from causing users to get frustrated

from their searches getting cluttered, or from accessing

content that is not current, it is recommended to create

retention polices for stale content

Typical Issues if Not Performed

• Old/outdated documents appear first in search –

Search results become cluttered with out of date

information making it harder to find relevant content

Users eventually get frustrated with the results and

feel the platform is not current and seek other

alternatives for finding the content they require

• Navigation of taxonomy to irrelevant or out of date

areas – Navigation cannot take up much space and

thus needs to be concise to be useful Over time

taxonomies become hard to navigate as old content

areas with no activity take up valuable navigation

space The result is users do not find new more

relevant workspaces through the navigation

• Important legal and financial records accidentally

deleted – Most CMS platforms do not have retention

policies for certain types of content As a result it is

possible for Content Owners to accidently delete

content that should be preserved This can lead to

issues for audits or lost information needed for

important legal disputes

Methodology Implementation Steps

• Develop retention policies for records, departmental, project, and personal content – The CMS Team should work with, Legal, HR, and Finance governance leads

to determine retention policies for certain types of information A CMS Content Type Retention Policy should then be made available to Content Owners making it clear what types of retention requirements exist for each content type

• Create method to regularly scan the platform for stale content – On at least a monthly basis, the CMS Team should either develop procedures for finding stale content[4] or make use of automated reporting tools to

do so

• Create process for reaching out to Content Owners with stale content – The CMS Team should have a process for how to engage Content Owners over stale content that allows sufficient time for the Content Owner to take actions with the content if they need to

• Create method to forcibly limit visibility or remove stale content – A set of guidelines should be created by the CMS Team outlining the actions to take on stale content At a minimum stale content should be restricted from showing up in search results if possible Other methods for stale content are to add

“Archive” metadata tags, or place stale content in a separate repository that is less visible In some cases the appropriate action may be to remove stale content from the CMS if it is completely irrelevant and does not meet any retention policies

• Develop automation reporting, and scripts for taking action – Over time the amount of effort required to upkeep policies over stale content will increase As a result if becomes increasingly important to purchase

or develop automation for running reports on stale content and taking appropriate actions scheduled in batches where possible without risk

Implementing all five methodologies in this whitepaper will assist with overcoming the CMS Adoption

Gap, during the Adoption Campaign phase of the CMS lifecycle shown in Figure 1 – Content

Management System Adoption and Lifecycle Most of the methods put in place involve making the

first level of support to users closer and more relevant to the user base, standardizing appearances

and templates, applying intuitive structure to content organization, and reducing the visibility of low

value content Implementing these methods will expose the most capability of the CMS possible to

users in a way they will adopt them for the least resource investment possible

It is important to remember that the IT department should not limit the organization to only one CMS

as some CMS’s are weak in various use cases The role of IT is to ensure they limit overlaps between

CMS’s where possible and provide guidance to Content Owners and users on the strengths and

weaknesses of each individual CMS to be used along with the preferred methods of use

Page 6

This article was first published on www.michaelskenny.com on December 31, 2013 The views and opinions expressed in this article are provided by Kenny & Company to provide general business information on a particular topic and do not constitute professional advice with respect to your business.

Kenny & Company has licensed this work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

About the Author

Brent Weigel is a Manager with Kenny & Company He leads and supports the defining, analysis, planning, implementation and overall execution of client engagements In addition, Brent provides thought leadership and leads the development of the Cloud Computing Strategy & Consulting Services offering for Kenny & Company Brent has more than 13 years experience in IT Consulting, software, startups and manufacturing with Booz Allen Hamilton, Standard Register and Stage Logic He has a BS in Electrical Engineering with Computer Science Minor and a MS in Engineering Management from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology along with a variety of certifications in areas such as Six Sigma, ITIL v3, and Microsoft technologies.

Notes:

1 In the case of SharePoint this is accomplished using custom keyword descriptions, or search “Best Bets”.

2 This group should already exist in some form for IT Security teams to be able to establish Active Directory Security Groups for use by most IT systems.

3 Accomplished by making the root level of the URL path is different (cms.xcorp.com/public/ vs cms.xcorp.com/private/) or the domain name prefix is different (intranet.xcorp.com vs workspaces.xcorp.com)

4 Content that has not been viewed or edited by anyone in a long period (i.e 24 months) is considered stale.

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