The second CM Briefing for February asks the question: is workflow the wrong metaphor? To quote: While workflow is a key component of content management systems (CMS), the unspoken truth is that workflow often fails (or is only moderately successful) in most organisations. This briefing explores the reality of workflow in organisations, identifies a number of problems and issues, and asks the question: is workflow the wrong metaphor?

The first of February's CM Briefings explores how staff look for documents. To quote: In the earlier article Rolling out a records management system, three critical success factors were identified: the software, classification scheme and message. This briefing focuses on a specific aspect of document management, records management and intranet projects: how staff look for documents. Understanding that there are a number of distinct situations in which staff look for documents sheds light on how to develop suitable software, and design useful classification schemes.

The issue Tenders are a life-or-death process for most vendors. Either you win jobs, or you don't. Now, I've been spending a lot of time reading tender responses and sitting in on vendor demos recently, and I've seen a lot of the same problems arise. They include: Written tender responses from vendors that are confusing, or don't provide the information that is being looked for. Written responses that are too long, or too short. Pricing information that is incomplete or confusing. Demonstrations that are too complex or technical, leaving the audience feeling drained and overwhelmed. Vendors who rush through demos,

I'm really pleased when I come across a new idea that can help people select a content management system more effectively. Now, the key challenge when choosing a CMS is building sufficient confidence that it's the right tool for the job. In most cases, you would use approaches such as: written vendor responses to tender, RFI documents, etc vendor demonstrations visits to reference sites trial periods demo copies Often though, what you are most interested in is not the functionality of the product, but its usability, particularly for novice users. One very interesting way of assessing this is to get

My KM Column for this month looks at rolling out a records management system. To quote: With the shift towards electronic records (including documents and e-mails), efforts have instead turned to rolling out an electronic records management system (RMS) across the entire organisation. The challenge then becomes ensuring that staff throughout the organisation adopt the use of the system, and take on the added responsibilities involved. Up to this point, many organisations have attempted this 'enterprise' implementation of records management, but few (if any) have succeeded. This article explores, from a new perspective, the challenges involved in rolling out a

I've been working with a large educational organisation on their project to select a content management system. Beyond all the hard work they put into developing a good tender document, they've done a few things that I thought were worth sharing here: They setup an announcements e-mail list for the project, sending out monthly messages giving a summary of progress, current activities, etc. Nice point: it's not just sent to the project team, but to both internal stakeholders and outside parties (such as myself). It contains useful, concrete details, without any hype. It's also sent out on a regular basis,

This is something that I hear quite often, when talking to vendors or prospective purchasers: Myth: Content management systems are pretty similar in capabilities, and…

My KM Column article this month is on content reuse in practice. To quote: Content reuse' is often seen as one of the key benefits to be gained by implementing a content management system (CMS). It is certainly true that there are considerable advantages in being able to use a single page (or piece of content) in multiple locations on a single site, across multiple sites, or in different published formats. The reality however is that few organisations are able to realise this vision of content reuse in practice. Instead, content reuse is typically only used in a few limited

I've seen this time and time again: big corporations making the automatic assumption that because they are large, they must purchase a similarly large and expensive content management system. This is not the case. In many cases, even large organisations have pretty simple web content management needs. Conversely, some small organisations have tremendously complex and expensive CMS needs. When considering the purchase of a CMS, focus on the complexity of your site, in terms of user interaction, integration with other business systems, etc. Also explore the complexity of the back-end needs for the CMS. These two factors will then determine

This is the first of what may become a series of CMS myths to be tackled (briefly) in this blog. CMS Myth #1: Installing a CMS must be hard In the beginning, content management systems were used to solve leading-edge problems. The web was new, and uncharted territories were being explored. Naturally, a lot of custom development and consulting went into deploying CMS solutions in this environment. Nowadays, however, many organisations have pretty simple needs. They want to publish a website, containing mostly static content with a handful of extra features (such as secure login, online events calendar). If you