FREE DM Review Site Registration!
Sign-up today and access DM Review on the Web!

Your FREE registration entitles you to:
FREE email newsletters

FREE access to all DM Review content

FREE access to web seminars, resource portals, our white paper library and more!

   

Publisher reserves the right to serve qualified requesters only.

Content Management: The Antidote to End-Users' Technology Overload

  • Dan Ortega
  • DM Review Special Report, October 2007

How prevalent is technology in our lives? Try this: Empty your pockets or purse. What do you find? Smart cards, car keys with embedded software, a flash drive key chain, a phone or PDA, maybe a Bluetooth headset. You'll find a similar level of technology penetration in your car and, increasingly, in your house.

While convenient, all this technology triggers a bigger issue. Products are becoming more complex, interdependent, and harder to understand and operate. Are we keeping up with the technology onslaught? Or are we falling behind, ready to throw up our hands and stick with outdated models that keep us in our comfort zone?

Dissatisfied or frustrated customers could limit growth in manufacturing for years to come. Companies with high levels of unhappy customers are also subject to operating margin pressure, and usually from the same root cause - customers who have a hard time understanding how to use the products they've just bought and tend to look for a shallower learning curve.

Manufacturers often overlook the impact product information has on the user experience. Most manufacturers are not allowed to ship product without documentation (in many cases it's actually illegal), and with most manufacturers still mired in a "print" paradigm, complex technology is explained by poorly written, outdated documentation.

Typically, manufacturers develop products and the associated product documentation in parallel. The core document is usually a functional specification, written by an engineer and subsequently used by a technical documentation writer as a reference to create a user manual. The document is written with authoring software (Adobe Framemaker, Microsoft Word, XMetaL, etc.), stored in a content management system (CMS) and accessed as needed.

Most CMSs store documents in a relational database that runs into a hard wall when the document requires changes. When a change is made to a document in a relational database, all the pointers to that change begin to lose referential integrity. Most CMSs are designed to store and provide access to static content - content that never changes - and, in that capacity, they are very effective.

Problems arise when the content needs to change in response to underlying product changes, which are constant in the lifecycle of a technology-dependent product. Most manufacturers tend to throw more resources at the problem or delay the launch of the product while waiting for the associated documentation to catch up, particularly for a global product launch. The result is increasing pressure on operating margins, increases in customer dissatisfaction, loss of market share, etc.

For manufacturers, the key to success is not so much a simplistic user interface but rather, making sure the customer gets timely, relevant information on the product, thereby making the overall product experience more compelling.

The core challenge is capturing, storing and making product-specific information available to people who need it. When product information is locked in the text-centric paradigm, static product documentation is printed and shipped with the product. Eventually, a PDF of the documents is made available for download from the manufacturer's Web site.

What's wrong with this approach? First, the product is changing constantly. It's almost inevitable that when the product is ready, the associated documentation (either in print or PDF format) is already out of date. Static documentation does not meet the needs of a dynamic product.

The second issue concerns document storage when using CMSs based on an unstructured content model (i.e., no format structure or topic-based hierarchical presentation of information). This model works for static content, but when the content is constantly changing, various out-of-sync versions of the product document are created. For example, online or printed documentation often differs from the documentation used by customer support.

Manufacturers need a system that makes all relevant product information available instantly, in multiple media formats (e.g., graphics, text, video) and for any delivery source (e.g., print, online, PDA). All output comes from a single source, therefore, all customer touchpoints provide a consistent experience.

For example, consider a field service technician who needs to change a processor board for a CAT scanner at a hospital. She walks in with her wireless tablet, enters the model number of the CAT scanner, along with a query: "How do I change a primary circuit board for a Siemens Medical CATScanner model # QP7707?"

As recently as three years ago, the technician would have had to lug a thousand-page manual with her, look up the specific procedure for that model (hoping that the information is up to date), and thumb through cross-references as needed.

Today, she can simply enter the query that gets sent over a wireless network to a CMS. All the product information about the particular CAT scanner is stored in an object database broken down to a very granular level. Because all of the information is stored in XML format, all content objects related to the CAT scanner have referential integrity. This means that when the query comes in to change the primary circuit board, the response sent back by the system contains only the information that is relevant to the particular operation in question. The entire manual is not sent, nor is it made available (that wasn't the question asked). However, because the underlying database is an object database, any type of relevant information can be stored and made available. This includes 3-D CAD/CAM drawings, Flash files, MPEGs, .wav files - essentially information in whatever media type makes the most sense for a particular end-user's requirement for an answer to a specific question.

Such a CMS eliminates the disconnect between products and their documentation. Consequently, well-documented products can become increasingly complex without the risk of confounding the end-user. The system can make information available to the end user in whatever format is most useful. More importantly, the end user is not overwhelmed by the documentation. Questions can be answered with precision and relevance.

Manufacturers, in turn, can seamlessly meet the pressures of delivering more products more quickly to more markets that demand localization. The results? Increased customer satisfaction drives more repeat business and better operating margins, which directly improve both top- and bottom-line revenue growth.


Dan Ortega is vice president of Marketing for Astoria Software, where he is responsible for product marketing, product management and marketing communications. Ortega brings over 24 years of technology marketing experience to this position, having previously served as VP of Marketing for a series of successful startups, including content management companies such as Metacode Technologies (acquired by Interwoven). Ortega can be reached by at dortega@astoriasoftware.com.

For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:



Industry Vendors