Converting and Integrating Content When Implementing a New CMS

Editor's Notes

• #2: Good afternoon, everyone! Thanks for joining us for this webinar. Today we’re going to discuss the best formats and practices for content conversion when you’re migrating to a new content management system. I’m Greg Fagan, and I’m the Sales Director for the publishing and financial industries at DCL. Because you’re all busy people, I’ve tried to keep this presentation as concise as possible. I’ll talk for about 15-20 minutes and then open the floor to your questions.
• #3: Just some quick background information on DCL. We’re content conversion experts. We take content in any format you might have it and convert it to reusable formats for digital output such as XML, SGML, HTML5, DITA, and EPUB. We not only convert your content, but we can enrich it to make it more discoverable, usable, and deliverable to any output format or device. Aside from conversion, we offer a suite of services, including hosting, editorial services, and project management.
• #4: Our deep experience, sophisticated infrastructure, and ferocious commitment to quality are what set us apart from the pack.
• #5: We serve a broad range of clients. Myriad large, global companies from many different sectors entrust their content to us.
• #6: And our clients span a wide array of industries, which speaks to our familiarity and fluency with many different XML schemas. Publishers, societies, pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, and government agencies are just a few of the types of clients and industries we serve.
• #7: So you’re implementing a new content management system. Or maybe you’re upgrading an existing one. This means that you’re serious about organizing your content to make it more searchable and retrievable, and that you’re probably keen to reuse and repurpose your content in multiple ways and to multiple outputs. That’s good business practice, and it’s something every organization that provides content should do. Delivering content to your users in the way that they want it is critical to your overall success. So now that you’ve decided to move forward with this new CMS, what’s next?
• #8: Any content management system requires content to be in some kind of structured format. In most industries, from publishing to financial services to aerospace, just to list a few examples, that structure will likely be some flavor of XML. But which XML schema should you use? Is one better or more appropriate than the others? Sure, you have a plan for the new content that you’ll be entering into your CMS, and you very likely have an authoring tool designed to work with that system. But what about your legacy content? How many years’ worth of content do you have? How is it currently stored – mostly paper, PDFs, bound books – and what’s your plan for integrating it into your CMS? Do you need to convert all of your content now, or can you prioritize and do it in stages? These are all important considerations, and hopefully you’ve thought about them before you decided to implement a new CMS.
• #9: Think about your business drivers for developing a CMS. Is the goal to publish to multiple channels – print, Web, mobile apps, streaming audio/video? Is it to reuse your content across your enterprise from a single source so that you can streamline content creation and avoid redundancies? Do you want to make updating your content easier? Or maybe you’ve seen the inefficiency of converting your content multiple times for different outputs. More than likely, your business drivers involve some combination or even all of these reasons. After all, the whole point of implementing a CMS is to get your content into a structure that provides greater control and flexibility.
• #10: In addition to the financial challenges of converting content from one source to another multiple times, the content cannot simply be “moved” from one design to another. Content for books is written to be read from beginning to end. This approach creates dependencies that make it difficult to use the same content in a different order or for a different purpose, such as a mobile app. For example, wording such as “in the previous chapter” is not appropriate in a non-book experience. Non-XML sources embed the formatting into the content. When an author applies a format in a source file, such as an InDesign file, the styling is embedded into the content. Because this styling is not usually applicable in another deliverable, the formatting must be updated for each deliverable type. Tool-specific files lock your content into a dependency on the functionality, including output generation, for that tool. All of these factors contribute to limiting the delivery possibilities for your content.
• #11: For the most flexibility across all content types, my recommendation would be DITA, which, if you’re not familiar with it, stands for Darwin Information Typing Architecture. DITA is an open standard for creating, managing, and publishing modular content, which is what will be stored in your content management system. It supports the definition of new content types within a comprehensive content ecosystem, and it has been increasingly adopted across a wide range of content disciplines and industries.
• #12: A few years ago, the common wisdom was that if you were developing narrative content, you should use DocBook, and if you were developing modular or topic-based content, you should use DITA. That was true to an extent but was always somewhat misleading, in my view. Books can be written with DITA and modular content can be authored with DocBook. DITA has really advanced in the last couple of years, to the point where I think it’s superior to DocBook, especially when implementing a CMS.DITA can be published to all outputs, and it can be easily customized (or specialized, to use the preferred terminology of DITA advocates) to many different content types, such as educational, financial, and legal, just to name a few. That’s important for the development of mobile content, apps, and enhanced ebooks. You can produce both HTML5 and EPUB with readily available open-source tools from DITA. And while both have their strong points, DITA is the more flexible schema of the two: it can do everything DocBook can, but the reverse isn’t always true. For example, DITA is better-suited to granular storage of content that you see in a most content management systems.What about XHTML? Although it’s often thought of as one, XHTML is not a true schema; it’s really a document styling format and thus not structured enough for a CMS.
• #13: One of the essential functions of any content management system is that it should support most if not all output targets, and DITA provides both a consistent XML structure and the flexibility of specialization to do that. How many of us foresaw the advent of all the current deliverable types five years ago? Can you predict the quantity or variation of the deliverables your company will need to create to meet changing user needs in the next five years? If you separate your content from its delivery now, which is what a good CMS does, then you don’t have to try to predict the future; instead, you can future-proof your content so that it’s ready to be transformed into whatever outputs your customers need. Now it’s one thing to do that with new content. Piece of cake, right? You simply set up templates and tools that integrate with your CMS. But what about…
• #14: That’s a different challenge. So let’s talk about that.
• #15: Integrating your legacy content with a new CMS is no easy task, but with a logical, well-planned approach, it’s not as daunting as it might seem. A phased approach makes a lot of sense, as it helps you to avoid costly mistakes, like realizing you’ve implemented a system that doesn’t work before you get too far down the road. Prioritizing and converting your content in stages, doing some conversion and learning more about your content requirements before choosing a CMS, and running small pilot programs before getting locked into a CMS, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, are all good examples of a phased approach.
• #16: With that in mind, let’s discuss some relevant DITA and CMS lessons in detail. DCL recently conducted a series of interviews with DITA implementers at twelve companies. The intent of the study was to better understand the reality of live implementations vs. the perceptions that exist in the industry. We promised anonymity so we could ensure the results would be representative of the group’s actual findings.
• #17: The three most popular answers were: Reduced need for composition Content reuse and reduced translation costs. All three resulted in cost savings, decreased time to market and improved internal efficiencies. This isn’t surprising. We know from our own years of experience that having content in a structured format in a content management system has many benefits, with these three among the most cited.
• #18: The top answer to this question was the ability for various teams to multi-purpose content to suit their particular requirements. Utilizing chunks of content for multiple purposes dramatically reduced costs and improved overall reliability. I referred to multi-purposing in an earlier slide, and it’s highly likely that it’s at or near the top of any organization’s list for moving to a structured content format within a CMS.
• #19: [Read bullets.] This one came as a surprise to us. But there are ways to speed the process. After all… time is money!
• #20: Half of the respondents selected their CMS at the beginning of the process. The other half followed after running various pilot programs. The companies that selected a CMS later started doing conversion and getting comfortable with the data first, then selected a management system when they had a better understanding of their own data requirements. Two of the companies had switched from their initial selection to another CMS during the testing phase, which highlights the value and wisdom of running small pilot programs before full implementation. Absent that testing, they might very well have continued down their respective paths with content management systems that weren’t meeting their needs. That would have meant large sums of money spent for poorly implemented solutions. And it also would have resulted in walking papers for those decision makers.
• #21: Once again, the ability to multi-purpose content was the number one criteria for measuring success and return on investment. Some of the notable savings came from the improved ease and efficiency of the following: [Read bullets 2-6.]
• #22: Only two of the twelve companies we interviewed were actively taking advantage of content reuse. Yes… we were surprised by this as well. Those two companies had decided upfront to build an extensive re-writing phase into their implementation plan. While this additional phase extended the implementation time, the upfront planning was critical to the success of their overall project. The most common reasons for not implementing a reuse plan up front included projects being too large for anyone to manage or requiring too much rewriting. Notably, many also mentioned the drastic change that would be required for their writers to move to a more modular writing mode and to work more collaboratively and with more guidelines than typically they were accustomed to.
• #23: Four of the twelve companies were actively doing a lot of translation. All four reported major savings. Even without content reuse, the savings of standardized data in terms of translation were vast and long-lasting. The eight companies who did not translate their data stated that it was a likely future endeavor but that right now, even with globalization, they were able to get away with English alone. All of the respondents said that translation was definitely a future requirement.
• #24: All twelve companies felt that the conversion went smoothly. However, many didn’t do much conversion in their initial stages. Several had decided, to their later regret, to rewrite most materials from scratch, which simply took way too much time. These organizations ultimately left most of their legacy data unconverted until after the CMS implementation. Two companies initially thought that having the writers do it themselves would be good training, but noted that, in retrospect, this wasn’t a good idea.
• #25: A major reason for attraction to DITA was that it works out of the box, at least for most. Others can expand its benefits by applying specializations when necessary. The companies we interviewed all agreed that for their materials DITA pretty much worked out of the box, and that standard composition software was for the most part suitable for their needs. Only three of the companies reported using specialization, and those were for minor items like customized document covers. Of course, these organizations were all working with technical documents of one kind or another, which are the type of documents DITA was originally designed for. Other kinds of documents would likely need more specialization, although there are a number of emerging standardized “specializations” for different document types.
• #26: Let’s talk about lessons learned. When asked what they would do differently, the most common response was “more cleanup of data before conversion.” Many wanted smaller—and simpler—pilots, as well as more time to experiment. They felt they had focused too much on the complex outliers in their pilot, and jumped into production too quickly without enough time to adjust for lessons learned in the pilot. Underestimating the human factor was a common note. Allowing more time for people to adapt to the new system and the philosophy of DITA, as well as earlier training, were also prominent suggestions in hindsight. Finally, buy-in and support from upper management was viewed as critical by all respondents.
• #27: Here is a table of common content pain points and how DITA implementation solves them.
• #28: So what are the benefits and drivers for content conversion, specifically when converting to a new CMS?
• #29: Well-structured content has many benefits, with the most important being that it can increase revenue by decreasing time to market and enabling new product development. It also decreases expenses, such as publishing and translation costs, over time, which makes it a smart investment. Often legacy content is more complex and difficult to manage than new content. In many cases, it was designed for one specific output and not much thought was given to proper storage, retrieval, or reusability. There are also different document types, formats, and levels of complexity, like heavy math and tabular material that was never meant for digital output. This is where the help of a trusted partner can be invaluable in helping you identify, categorize, and convert your content to a well-structured format. Your content should drive your business strategy.
• #30: But you can’t structure your content and think your work is done. It’s an ongoing process to keep up with industry standards, compliance, and constantly evolving outputs. Once the major work is done, however, the changes are much easier to manage, and your content is ready for delivery to any output. Content drives every aspect of your business, so make sure yours is ready to take you in the right direction.
• #31: Structured content has many uses, with reuse and repurposing the most important in my mind. Why? Because they generate revenue. The others are important, too. Different industries have differing degrees of importance, but money talks in all of them. When your content is structured at a granular level, you can assemble the different components into new products and new revenue sources.
• #32: So the key considerations for conversion when implementing a CMS are as follows: You must plan thoroughly and then be prepared to adjust once theory turns into practice. To quote General Dwight Eissenhower, “No battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever one without one.” Prepare your teams and manage expectations. Try to anticipate problems before they occur. That’s easier said than done sometimes, but it’s the key to good project management. Implement your conversion and your CMS in phases. Pilot projects are a great way to discover and head off potential problems before you head too far down the wrong path. Establish multiple checkpoints and milestones and test your system often with real users and real content. The people who will have to use the CMS every day are the people who will provide the most valuable feedback. And finally, we give this advice often, but it’s always worth repeating: Don’t go it alone! For a project of this scope, you’ll need outside expertise. Bringing in the right expertise is almost always more cost-effective than trying to manage every aspect of a large-scale project inhouse.
• #33: I’d like to thank you for tuning in today. Feel free to contact me directly anytime; my contact information is there on the screen. Now I’m happy to take your questions.