When implementing a new intranet platform, most businesses assume a decentralised model of authoring.

This devolves the responsibility for creating content back to individual staff members within the business units.

While this is seen as an effective way of reducing costs and increasing involvement, it is not without its challenges and risks.

In practice, neither centralised or decentralised authoring is the single answer to all requirements.

To gain the best business outcomes, it is necessary to use both models where appropriate, with a full understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.

Option 1: Decentralised authoring

Content for the intranet or corporate website is ‘owned’ by a number of different business groups within the organisation. It therefore makes sense to give them the direct responsibility for updating their information.

In this decentralised approach, the authors are scattered throughout different departments, all feeding information into the content management system.

Advantages

• Harnesses the efforts of many authors.
• Content creation costs and resources are spread more evenly throughout the organisation.
• Makes the content owners responsible for their own information.
• Reduces the need for a large centralised authoring team.
• Integrates content creation into the daily activities of the business.
• May provide more up-to-date content.

Disadvantages

• Extensive workflow is a pre-requisite.
• Large number of users to be trained.
• Challenges in motivating staff.
• Considerable change management effort required.
• Authors must juggle using the CMS with their other responsibilities.
• Overall co-ordination is more difficult.
• Many workstations to be configured with the CMS software.
• Higher licensing costs for CMS software.

Training and change management

If decentralised authoring is to deliver promised benefits, it must be both used and supported by staff.

This is no small challenge when potentially hundreds of users across the business will be creating content.

Considerable resources must therefore be devoted to the establishment of workable processes, and providing sufficient end-user training.

Change management activities will also be necessary to eliminate the natural resistance to change within an organisation. This includes clear communication of the goals of the project, and ongoing updates on progress and issues.

Finally, trust and respect must be established between the owners of the content management system and the authors. Without this, staff will be reluctant to embrace the added responsibility and workload that decentralised authoring required.

Finding time

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing decentralised authoring is the lack of available time.

Staff already have a full-time workload with their normal activities. Authoring is then an additional activity, on top of their existing responsibilities.

Unless management provides staff with sufficient time and resources, it is unreasonable to expect them to shoulder this additional work for an extended period of time.

The danger is that content creation will then slowly ‘wither away’. If this happens, the CMS as a whole will fail.

To avoid this, explicitly include content creation in the job descriptions for staff, and provide sufficient time for them to do their authoring well. This should also be assessed as part of their normal performance review.

Option 2: Centralised authoring

This involves setting up a dedicated team to create new content, and manage the publishing process. This team consists of the following roles:

• technical writers
• editors
• journalists
• indexers
• subject matter experts

There is close liaison between the team and the business groups that ‘own’ the content. In this way, the content team acts as a ‘service group’ for the rest of the organisation.

All information that is published by the team is reviewed and signed off by the business, to ensure accuracy and relevance.

Advantages

• Team skills ensure very high quality content.
• Simplified project management.
• Ensures that resources are available for even large jobs.
• Allows development of large, complex and highly structured material.
• Provides a central location for feedback.
• Ensures global consistency, and extensive cross-linking.
• Supports continual improvement.
• Ensures accountability for changes.
• Reduces the need for powerful and costly IT solutions (such as workflow).
• Provides a ‘driving force’ behind content updating.

Disadvantages

• Centralised team requires full-team staff and resources.
• Can form a bottleneck to updates, if not efficient and responsive.
• Updating is separated from business owners.
• Relies on processes to notify the team of changes.

Ties with the business

A centralised authoring team cannot work in isolation from the rest of the organisation if it is to meet business needs.

Close links and communication channels must be forged between the centralised group and the content owners.

If the content is to be kept up to date, mechanisms must be put in place to notify the team of changes or updates.

If these notifications are to be sustained in the long-term, they must be incorporated into the standard business processes.

Professional standards

If the centralised team is to deliver value to the business, it must conform to the highest professional standards.

This includes:

• Documented style guides for authoring, indexing and linking.
• Rigorous project management and change control.
• Full audit trail of changes.
• Comprehensive process for editing, reviewing and authorising updates.

Guidelines for selecting a model

This section outlines some broad guidelines for when to use decentralised or centralised authoring.

Use decentralised authoring when:

• Content is already created as a normal part of daily activities (eg. business documents).
• Information is for internal use only.
• Frequent updates must be made.
• Quality of information is not critical.
• Staff have the time available to prepare and write content.

Use centralised authoring when:

• Information is very complex, or highly structured.
• There are legal issues surrounding the release of the information.
• Information is commercially-sensitive.
• A very high writing standard is required.
• The information must be ‘distilled’ from many different sources into a brief format.
• Overall structure and consistency is required.
• Content is to be published externally.