Not all digital is transformation (webinar)
Gretyl Kinsey shares some examples of digital content production done well and not-so-well, and discusses practical tips for ensuring that you make the most out of your digital transformation.
“Digital transformation is the use of technology to enrich information delivery.”
—Gretyl Kinsey
[cbdgc-form form_id=19868]
Related links:
Twitter handles:
Transcript:
Elizabeth Patterson: Hi everyone, and welcome to The Content Strategy Experts webcast. I’m Elizabeth Patterson, and I’m going to be moderating this presentation today. Gretyl Kinsey will be presenting, not all digital is transformation. The Content Strategy Experts webcast is brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize and distribute content in an efficient way. Just going to go over a couple of housekeeping items before we get started today. Attendees are going to be muted during this webcast, but we still want your input during this session. So some of you have already submitted questions when you registered, and I’m going to address those questions with Gretyl during the Q&A portion of this webcast. But if you have any additional questions that come up, please submit those at any time in the questions module. And like I said, we’ll get to them at the end of this session.
EP: So if you would just go ahead and locate that questions module in the GoToWebinar interface, so that you know where it is. And you can also be on the lookout during that session or during that time of the session for a link to our evaluation survey. We would really appreciate your feedback. So we have a couple of events coming up. We are going to be doing a follow up video chat on Thursday, this coming Thursday, July 30th at 1:00 PM. We’re going to be using Google Meet for that. And you can see the link on the slide here. However, I will be sending the link out to all registrants later today, along with the link to the recording of the webcast.
EP: That will be coming out to you either later today or first thing tomorrow morning, so be on the lookout for that. So you don’t have to write that down, I will send you the link for that. This will be an opportunity for you to join the Google Meet and talk with us, ask any more questions. So a much more personal type of conversation than just a webcast. We also have another webcast coming up on August 27th, at 1:00 PM. This is going to be Think global, act global, go global with Bill Swallow. And you can register on our events page. So with that, I’m going to go ahead and pass things off to Gretyl. Gretyl, are you ready?
Gretyl Kinsey: Yes, I am. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. And hello, and welcome to all of you. I wanted to just give a quick little introduction for myself before we dive into things. My name is Gretyl Kinsey. I’ve been a technical consultant with Scriptorium since 2011. And at Scriptorium we develop enterprise level content strategies to help companies meet their business goals through more efficient content production. And we also do things like building systems to help companies put those strategies in place. In particular, I focus on information architecture, so looking at the structure of content, building content models, that sort of thing.
GK: And I also focus a lot on DITA tools and technologies. We have about 80% of our client base in structured content. And then about 80% of those that are in structure are specifically in DITA XML. So I have a lot of experience helping companies choose the right tools and technologies for authoring, managing, and publishing their content in DITA. And along those same lines, I’ve played a pretty major role in the development of LearningDITA.com. And that is our DITA training resource. So feel free to check that out as well. And without further ado, let’s jump on in.
March 2025 update: We have moved LearningDITA to a new platform. The Introduction to DITA course is still free, and you can sign up for courses at store.scriptorium.com.
GK: So to start, what is digital transformation? How do we define digital transformation for the content industry? And I think this is a question that we have been grappling with, talking about. It’s been the theme of a lot of different online events and presentations and conferences in the last couple of years. And this definition here is something that Scriptorium CEO, Sarah O’Keefe, proposed in a session at LavaCon last year. So as it relates to content, digital transformation is the use of technology to enrich information delivery. And this definition aligns with the content strategies that Scriptorium has helped our clients to develop.
GK: We have a checklist for digital transformation, with some examples of how digital content fulfills each point on this list. So first we have, digital transformation changes the cost of products. And that means that we are eliminating the cost of paper and moving paper around when we go digital. Second, we have speed up production. That means that we’re eliminating the time that is required to move that content around. And that’s because instead of moving paper, we are publishing on websites. And finally, we have introduced new features that are not available in the incumbent product. So digital content has things like structure, and context, and links, and that stuff that you’re not going to get in print based content.
GK: So let’s take a closer look about how this all works. And I want to do that by starting with an expansion of that first point on the checklist, which is delivery cost and time. The paper versus website concept is pretty well understood. So with paper you need distribution networks to get the content out to your audience. But when you have digital content, electronic delivery eliminates a lot of that cost and it shifts what little cost is left onto the consumer. So it doesn’t cost you anything to increase your reach and you can deliver content instantly to your customer base.
GK: And I would also add to that, that there’s a shift in power. When there was cost associated with getting paper content a big company could control the conversation, but when we have electronic delivery that power shifts to the consumer. So now content producers are trying to hang onto control with things like paywalls and subscriptions and so on. And I think you see that, especially in journalism, right? So that’s why I’ve got some newspapers here. You see a lot of things going up behind these paywalls and these gates. And that’s been done with some limited success because you’ve always got other people who are just making their content freely available.
GK: So now let’s talk about structured content. And structured content means that you can define and enforce required components. That means that you can set up labels to describe the information, or give it what we call semantic value. And when the information describes itself semantically using these tags and things like metadata, then you can do some pretty interesting stuff that is just not possible with paper based content. In particular, you can do a lot with search and filtering, and custom delivery, delivering content that is specific to a portion of your audience, and being able to do things like mix and match.
GK: And finally, let’s take a look at how digital content introduces new features that did not exist before. And the biggest thing that’s added is context. Responsive design is one quick and easy and obvious example of something like context. And this is just Scriptorium’s website. And what it does is queries your browser to find out the size of the screen you’re using, and then has responsive design built into the theme to modify that content formatting accordingly. So if you’re in a browser, this is what you see. Whereas if you are on a phone, you see something different. If you’re on a tablet, you see something different still, and so on. That’s how that particular context works, it takes the context of whatever device you’re using and gives you a different format.
GK: Another kind of context we can use is location. And one thing that, that does that I think most of us check every day is the weather. So you can use the context of where you are to deliver weather and any other location dependent information. The website can request your location and make assumptions, or you can supply your location, or you can set a default location for a particular website. So you’ve got a lot of different options for how you can get that contextual information like weather for your area. And another common example is online shopping, such as Amazon. So Amazon offers things like recommendations, order history, and all of these things are contextual. So as you can see here where I’ve got it circled, I’m logged in and it’s easy enough to give things like my order history and recent searches when I’m logged in. The website sees that it’s me, and it offers up information based on what I’ve viewed before, the things that I might find useful.
GK: And some of the recommendations are pretty good. I found particular things like books, movies, other media tend to be pretty accurate, but then we’ve also seen these hilariously bad recommendations, right? For example, you bought a washing machine, obviously you’re starting a laundromat, so here are millions more washing machines. So this is one of those areas where contexts can be helpful, but it’s not perfect yet. And I think that’s something that’s still developing over time. But even though it’s not perfect, it’s still adds a lot more to the user experience than what you would get without it. So if there was no context and you came here to shop, you wouldn’t get any of those recommendations, whether they’re helpful or not. So even though it’s not quite perfect yet, it’s definitely on the right track.
GK: There are a lot of other possibilities for delivering contextual information. And here’s just a list of a lot of them. We’ve talked about some of them like your device, your location. And you also can have things like your time, your level of interest or expertise. And this is something in the content industry that might be especially relevant if you’ve got training content, if you need to say this user is an expert versus a novice versus intermediate. You can also have product configuration, and that would allow you to do something like deliver content to a customer that is only relevant to their product set. So for example, if they don’t buy your entire suite of products, they just buy one, then that context allows you to only deliver the content that’s relevant for that one product.
GK: You can also have user or general usage data. You can have cross connecting content. And a lot of the companies that Scriptorium has worked with uses some mix of these context possibilities in their digital content delivery. So now that we’ve taken a look at what qualifies as digital transformation, let’s take a look at some more concrete examples. So what are some everyday items that have been digitally transformed? One of them, very simple, is just watches or clocks. So on the left side of the screen I’ve got an analog example of a watch. That’s a wristwatch with face and hands to tell time. And then over on the right we’ve got an example that’s not analog. This is a desk clock that uses an LCD screen.
GK: So you get to see a digital rendering of the time, you also get to see it in military time. But does this truly count as digital transformation, even though it’s a digital clock? I would actually argue no. Something like this Apple watch is the true digital transformation, instead of just this not analog digital clock. And that’s because the clock, even though it’s digital, it still only offers the time. But something like an Apple watch offers so much more, you’ve got all of these apps, you’ve got ways to track your steps, your movement, your heart rate, all of these things. That to me is more of the example of digital transformation.
GK: Let’s look at another example, and that is crossword puzzles. So I think we’re all familiar with the paper version that you might see in a newspaper or magazine. And here’s an example of a crossword puzzle digitally transformed. And this is the New York Times online crossword puzzle. And what makes this digital transformation instead of simply a digital crossword puzzle, it’s this list of added features. So you’ve got a timer, you’ve got highlighting in the clue and grid area. You’ve got something that highlights your errors if you’ve gotten a clue wrong. You’ve got statistics, streaks, puzzle archives. So all of these things are features that you just do not get when you have a paper crossword.
GK: Let’s look at one more example, and that is books. So for the analog version we’ve got paper files. And this can be books, but also just individual papers, data sheets, manuals, things like that. And how do we transform this digitally? That would be with an e-reader, such as Kindle. And what makes an e-reader digital transformation? Once again, it is all of these features. You can really enhance your reading experience by doing things like customizing your font and size. You can have a building dictionary to let you look up unknown words. You can have text search. You can have other media embedded like audio and video. And this also gives you the chance to have things accessible. So if, for example, you have someone who’s visually impaired, you can have screen reading built in as well. And so again, these are all features that you can’t do with paper. And so when you’ve got all these features that not only enhances the reading experience, but makes it so much more transformable, adaptable, and accessible in ways that it never was before.
GK: One question that we get a lot with our clients is, does it count as digital transformation if you are going from paper to PDF? And again, to answer that question, here’s that checklist that we had back at the beginning of the session, where we looked at here are the things that we ask ourselves if it counts as digital transformation. For the first point, changing the cost of products, the answer is yes. PDF does satisfy that requirement. When you go from printed books to electronic PDF delivery, that basically eliminates your delivery cost. For the second question, the answer is also yes. When you produce PDF, that speeds up your production process. And that’s because you don’t have to ship your physical copies anywhere, you can just instantaneously make them available online.
GK: But what about that last question, that last point about introducing new features that were not available before? That’s where PDF falls short. PDF doesn’t give you this truly transformed content. It doesn’t give you structure. It doesn’t give you context. It doesn’t give you new features that were not available in print, other than maybe a simple text search. All these things that you should be able to do with digital content, so things like faceted search, multimedia customization based on the context of your user base, none of that is available in PDF. It’s basically just the same thing as your printed book, but in an electronic format. So PDF doesn’t qualify as digital transformation, it is simply digital. At best, it’s something that we consider an intermediary step along the way to digital transformation of printed content.
GK: So we’ve seen that with clients, where for example, they want to make things digitally available. They start with going from print only to both print and PDF. And then once they’ve done that intermediate step, then they go onto something like making it available on a website, on a portal, in an app, something that can be much more customized. And that really gets into the heart of what digital transformation means. When you transform your content you’re not just providing a digital copy of what used to be analog, you’re adding all of these functions and these features that the analog doesn’t have, you are enhancing what you had before. And that means your new product may actually be significantly different from your old product.
GK: So think about the difference between all these types of content delivery that I just talked about, a printed user manual or a book, versus a PDF, versus a website, or a portal, or an app, where you can search through the content. You can sort it, you can filter it, you can get the content that’s specific for you served up to you immediately. Maybe you even have things like content that’s built into the user interface of the product itself, especially if you’re dealing with a product like software, or maybe something in the interface of a vehicle. If you’ve got content that gets served right alongside the product itself, that’s an example of digital transformation.
GK: So in all of these cases, the old version is the print manual, the digital version is something intermediate like the PDF. And then the digitally transformed version is this customizable online help system. And moving those analog features over into digital isn’t good enough. And that’s where you really get the PDF manual highlighting this. Yes, if you have PDF it’s digital now, but it’s still not truly transformed. If you need digital transformation that implies that you have analog stuff. And that means that your company has been around for a while, you’re old school.
GK: New companies have a bit of an advantage because they have a headstart on digital content delivery. And that is because they don’t have this backlog of analog stuff that has to be transformed. So instead of making a transformation, if you’re a new company, a startup, you can just go ahead and start with all digital. So what does that mean for companies that do have that backlog of analog content, the companies that are well-established, that have been around for a while, and they have to transform what they’re doing for the digital age? To answer that question, we’re going to look at some very different examples of two companies. And these are mini case studies that are sort of loosely based on things that we have seen with quite a few of our clients.
GK: And what we’re going to do is compare two companies that both need to undergo a digital transformation to handle their analog content. So let’s just have the starting point as a baseline. This is a quick snapshot of two companies, which we’re going to call company A and company B. And right off the bat, one thing you see from these lists are that these companies are very different organizations. They are different sizes, they’re in different industries and they are serving up different types of content. And that’s why they’re starting out in very different places. They have very different contexts for what they’re trying to do when it comes to digital transformation.
GK: So with company A, their main business requirement is improving the efficiency of creating and delivering the help content that goes alongside their products. At the point of need for digital transformation, they’re offering content in some very disconnected ways. So things like word documents, internal Wiki, things like that. And there’s no single source of truth for that content. There is no shared repository that all of the departments across the company can access. So that means that you’ve got pieces of content stuck in different systems and no way to connect them together. So when you’ve got different departments like marketing, training, support, etc, that need to borrow from the official help documentation, that means they’re going to be copying and pasting the help content and reusing it. And I say reusing sarcastically or in quotes because it’s not true, reuse, right? It’s copy and paste. So in the case of company A, their main way of delivering content to end users is web-based help and PDF for download online. So they’re on the way toward digital transformation, but they are certainly not there yet.
GK: And then we’re going to take a look at where company B started. So with company B, their main business goal is also around improving efficiency. But they’re not dealing primarily with help content, instead they’re publishing content from a variety of different sources, both internal and external. And so some of the content that they’re offering internally is actually instructions to help customers understand how to use the information that comes in from the external sources. So they’ve got this mix of content from all kinds of places that’s offered in all kinds of different formats. And their main method of delivery is PDF for download online. But customers can also read some short form content like articles on web pages. So again they’re on the way to digital transformation, but they’re not quite there.
GK: So we’ve got these two companies, they’re starting in very different circumstances, but they have pretty much the exact same end goal, which is delivering custom digital content to all of their users. And what I mean by custom digital content is targeted personalized content based on the end user’s needs. So for example, if one of company A’s end users has purchased a specific product, they need to be served up the help content that’s just for that product instead of sifting through the entire help for the whole product suite. And by contrast with company B, if one of their end users has a login that gives them access to certain content, then the login would say, “Okay, serve up the content, both the external content and the internal instructions on how to use it, along with any other articles or short form content that they might need. And filter out any content that’s not relevant.”
GK: And in addition to having that content be customized, both of these companies wanted it to be fully digital. And that means searchable, filterable, not just the PDFs for download. So they’re trying to achieve what we’ve talked about earlier with getting beyond just this delivery of a PDF and getting to something that gives them these features that they didn’t have before. So both companies are seeking digital transformation, and now I want to look at how each of them plans to go about it.
GK: So let’s start with company A’s plan. They decided that moving to DITA XML was going to get them the flexibility that they needed for custom content delivery. And it would also allow for reuse across different departments in the organization that needed to share content. And they plan to approach moving to DITA by starting small, setting manageable goals, and working their way outward in the implementation process. That meant the first step was converting their content to DITA XML. And then once the content was converted, the next step in the plan was to migrate it into a CCMS or component content management system, so that they could have more efficient authoring, and content management, and content delivery.
GK: Next, they wanted to establish a publishing system for delivering personalized digital content to their end users, both online and alongside the product itself. And finally, they wanted to establish that content management system as the central repository for all of the departments to use. So in addition to techcomm that’s making their official documentation and their online help, they’ve also got people from training, marketing, support, everybody else that references that CCMS as the central repository. And that allows them to reuse the content correctly instead of copying and pasting it, and resulting in all of this uncontrolled digital copies of content. So that’s going to allow them to increase much more consistent content across the board and help them get to their goal with digital transformation.
GK: Now let’s look at company B’s plan. So just like company A, they also thought that moving to DITA XML was going to be the best way to support their goals of custom digital content delivery. And the first step in company B’s plan was developing a DITA XML content model that could handle all of their content. So that is both the content that they published from external sources, as well as content that they authored themselves. And that meant that they would need to create a variety of different templates and scripts that could make it possible to convert all the content they had from all these different sources into a single DITA content model.
GK: So once they have the content model and conversion infrastructure in place, the next step of the plan was to get set up in a CCMS for content management, and to start migrating all of this content into the CCMS as it was converted. And finally, they wanted to set up a publishing system that could serve up the personalized digital content to their end users based on login credentials. So both companies had the similar solution to their content problems using DITA, but somewhat different approaches as far as how they would get there. So they’re at different starting points, they both say, “Okay, let’s use DITA.” They have different paths to the same end goal. So did these companies succeed in achieving digital transformation of their content? Let’s take a look at what happened.
GK: So the result with company A, they had a plan and they pretty much stuck to it despite some unexpected obstacles that popped up. They started by converting their help content to DITA just like they had planned to do. It did take some time for them to move to the next step of getting into a CCMS, just because of external factors, company realignment, other delays. But what was smart was they used that time to go ahead and start using their DITA content as what they were publishing so that they could start reaping the benefits of things like improved search, metadata, delivering different outputs from a single source. They just didn’t have a CCMS yet to help them manage the content, so they had to temporarily manage it under source control. But when they finally had an executive champion who approved the CCMS they had planned, and also dynamic delivery, they were able to finally move on to that next step and start delivering targeted custom content all at once.
GK: So they’ve not only moved into the CCMS where they have much better control over their content, but they’ve now got dynamic publishing on top of it. That caught them up from some of the delays that they had faced. And from that point company A was able to migrate everything in the CCMS, reorganize it for custom delivery via their new portal, and finally start doing what they had intended all along, which was that targeted custom delivery. So the ultimate result is that they have achieved digital transformation. They can now deliver personalized content to end users through their portal. And if an end user doesn’t have a particular product or a login, they can still go in, they can make use of search that’s based on metadata on that content. They can filter it, they can mix and match and get the content that they need. So company A as a result has achieved digital transformation.
GK: And of course, achieving digital transformation is a fantastic goal to meet, but that’s never the end. So now company A’s next steps involve connecting more and more departments and the organization to their DITA repository. And again, that was one of the goals that I mentioned previously. They want all the different departments to share in the same repository, to reuse content, to have consistency across the enterprise. And so this digital transformation is going to continue being expanded outward from documentation to other things like marketing materials, training guides, policies, legal documents, etc. So company A is well on its way to taking the digital transformation they’ve already achieved and just broadening it across the enterprise.
GK: Now let’s take a look at company B and how they fared and their effort to achieve digital transformation. So just like company A, they started with their planning and stuck to it. And they managed to achieve that first step, which was developing their custom DITA content model. After they had the content model, they started developing their conversion scripts to get all of their content into DITA. And that’s where they started going off the rails and running into some trouble. While they were working on their scripts and templates for conversion, they prioritized formatting over structure. And that’s something that we commonly see across the board with a lot of the organizations we work with. If they are coming out of a print-based environment where formatting has always been part of the content creation process, it can be really hard to let that go and to embrace a new role where formatting is going to be automated.
GK: And so when they were figuring out how to convert everything into DITA, they were running into content, especially from all their external sources that didn’t quite fit this content model that they had proposed. And instead of saying, okay, let’s go back to the model, let’s revisit it, let’s restructure it and make sure that it’s able to handle all of the different requirements we have, what they decided to do was start making exceptions to the structure, to allow for weird little one off things that didn’t quite fit. And as they made more and more little compromises like that, they were no longer able to enforce a consistent structure because they were allowing all of these different exceptions. And so that was a major hurdle that they faced.
GK: Another one was the fact that they migrated their content into the CCMS and started using it for their content development workflow without training their writers first. And that caused several issues. And yeah, if you do this, it’s going to cause issues no matter what. And that’s because when you don’t train your writers or editors or anybody else on using your new systems and your new tools, if they’ve had any resistance to the changes in their day-to-day workload, that’s only going to get worse if you don’t support them with proper training. Giving them that training is one of the best ways to help manage change. And unfortunately, company B did not prioritize that. So that meant that things were a lot more difficult when they had to go into production, because they had all of these writers who were trying to adapt to a new system and had no idea what they were doing and no training to help them along.
GK: And when you have a situation where you’ve made a lot of these kinds of compromises and exceptions to your structure to handle one-off formatting, and then you also don’t train your writers, you’re very likely to end up with things like people making mistakes as they create content, and not catching mistakes that other people make because there are all these exceptions to the rules and there’s no training. So it’s really, really easy for things that should not be in the content to slip by. And people don’t catch mistakes, they don’t enforce best practices. And that just leads to frustrated and confused writers, and also leads to messy content that is a lot more difficult to publish.
GK: So those decisions made things a messy process. But in spite of all of that, company B still managed to migrate a lot of their content into DITA and get systems in place to migrate new content as it comes in from external sources. And even though the writers didn’t get the training they needed, they are still writing new content and DITA, and they are delivering digital content to their end users while they’re continuing to get things tested, get some of the issues worked out and start to give the writers the support that they finally need. So the ultimate result is that company B is delivering digital content, but because of the limitations they impose on their structure, that means that it’s not currently personalized, it’s not fully searchable, the metadata structure is not there. So as far as transformation, we’re going to say not yet, but they are getting there. So they’ve achieved digital, they’ve not achieved transformation, but it’s definitely still possible.
GK: The biggest difference in the way that company B was delivering content before, is that customers are now able to read everything that they used to only be able to read in PDFs on webpages. And so even though there are still things like issues with search, issues with metadata, that’s still a pretty big step. So they did make an improvement in their digital delivery, they just didn’t achieve the transformation they were going for in the timeframe they set. But again, like I said, there’s still room to change things. There’s room to get things on the right track. And over time it’s definitely possible to achieve their original goal.
GK: So what lessons can we learn from all of this, aside from the fact that hindsight is 2020? One is to approach digital transformation in manageable chunks. Company A’s entire plan was focused around not biting off more than they could chew. And that was one of the big things that kept their plan going and help them stick to it. And the only time that they broke away from that was when they had an executive champion that got them a little bit of extra budget. So they did their CCMS and their dynamic delivery at the same time instead of in different stages. But that did not throw them off track, it just caused things to get a little bit more stressful and a little bit busier on the way to reaching their goal.
GK: And again, like I said, company B started off on the right track too. They just ran into issues when they reached their conversion phase. And that was mostly just because they were trying to do a large scale conversion of content from a lot of different sources under a very tight deadline. And what that caused was caving into pressure on making these compromises to their structure. And that was just because they had to get their content out the door. So if you take things in manageable chunks, if you don’t bite off more than you can chew, if you know you have a very tight deadline, it’s always better to just take on a smaller goal for that deadline instead of trying to just shove through a really big change. Because it’s a lot more likely that you’ll succeed if you do a smaller manageable part of your strategy in that timeframe.
GK: Another lesson is to be flexible about adapting to change. And company A handled this really well when they were facing some of the changes at the beginning with organizational restructuring. And they were able to find ways to keep things going in spite of some of the delays that they faced. Company B had trouble with various content stakeholders who didn’t want to adapt to the formatting changes that DITA would require. And so that caused them to make some compromises with all of these little formatting exceptions to the structure, that hurt the overall success of the project. So if you have decided we need to move to structure and this is why, then yes, that’s going to involve change from the way that you have worked before in a print only environment. And it’s always going to go better if you’re more adaptable to that change, if you are open minded about it and you really take the time to understand why that change is being made. And don’t try to fight it and resist it because otherwise that’s just going to make you get in your own way.
GK: Another lesson is that it helps a lot to find an executive champion and solid project leadership. If you are overhauling your content processes, it is a lot easier to justify the cost of that. If you have got an executive, if you’ve got a high level manager, if you’ve got somebody who controls your budget, who truly understands the problem and supports the improvements that you want to make. And then once you get that buy-in from somebody very high up the chain, it’s also important to have solid project leadership, to make sure that things stay on track. So you need to have resources who are accountable for meeting your goals or else they won’t happen. And that was what really, I think, gave company A the edge here. They had an executive champion who understood the content problems they were facing, and made sure that they had the tools and the resources they needed to get on the other side of those problems. And that was what really pushed them into achieving digital transformation.
GK: Another lesson like we just talked about earlier, provide adequate training. And that’s the best way to make sure that when you are changing your processes, that you don’t overwhelm people, you don’t leave the people who are going to be affected by those changes in the dust. It’s really the writers, the subject matter experts, the product owners, the editors, those folks who are going to be actually creating and producing your content at the end of the day. And those people are one of the big make or break factors in how successful your new strategy is. So even if you’ve got all of the executive championship in the world for your project, if you have writers and other content creators who are angry about the changes you’ve made and who are not supported with proper training, then your project is going to fall short. And that’s, again, one of the areas where company B did not do what they needed to do.
GK: And I think finally, just keep your eye on the prize. If digital transformation is your ultimate goal, then keep that in mind as you start implementing changes to make that possible. And don’t compromise on things that are going to impede that goal. Make sure that you stay focused on digital transformation as your end result, and that will make it a lot more likely that you’ll get there. And as far as that prize, the biggest prize that you’re going to achieve from digital transformation is flexibility. You’re going to have content available across all kinds of different devices. You’re going to add features that make it more robust, such as video and audio. And eventually you’ll reach this point where you have true flexibility in the way that you are delivering your content, and where users have flexibility and control and how they interact with it. And so that’s really the biggest win that you get when you achieve digital transformation. So with that, I want to open things up for questions.
EP: Okay. Thanks Gretyl, thanks so much. I’ve gone ahead and dropped the link to the evaluation survey in the chat, so that is down there. If you have questions at this time, if you could go ahead and submit those to the questions module, we will get through those. I do have a couple to get started with Gretyl. The first one, how can taxonomy be implemented while transforming content to digital platforms?
GK: This is a really great question because taxonomy is one of the biggest things that helps inform your metadata structure and the way that users can search and store your content. That’s one of the really important first steps. When you are planning out your strategy for digital transformation, thinking about how users are going to need to search your content, how they’re going to need to sort through the results, how they’re going to need to sift through and organize all of your content so they can find what they need, that’s some of the first questions that you should be asking. And that allows you to establish a taxonomy. And then that in turn informs how you should set up your metadata. It also informs how you would set up consistent terminology across your organization.
GK: So if you’ve got some content that is digital and it’s structured but maybe you’ve still got some that’s also analog or print-based, having a taxonomy that arches across all of that will really help you make sure that your content is consistent and that it can be transformed digitally. We’ve got a lot of resources on taxonomy on Scriptorium’s blog. I did a couple of presentations about it. There’s a webcast that I did with Bill Swallow. There’s also a podcast and I think there are a couple of blog posts on taxonomy as well. But that really is one of the first steps that you should do when you are starting to plan out your digital transformation. And one of the things that can really help feed your answers to your taxonomy questions is customer metrics.
GK: So if you’re not collecting information from your user base, as far as how they’re searching, how they’re accessing the content they need, that’s an important thing to start doing. Because that will help you understand how to organize your content in a way that’s going to be useful for them, instead of just kind of arbitrarily putting it into this sort of taxonomy organization that you think makes sense. If you know how it’s going to make sense to your customers, then you can really serve up what they need. So taxonomy, I think of it as the step one in this whole process. It’s part of the planning phase, and it’s really, really important not to leave that out. And to use your customer metrics and feedback and information to say, “Okay, how do I want to organize my content?” You can start very simple from there with things lists and spreadsheets, and then eventually that will end up becoming your metadata that you have on your digital content.
EP: Great. Thanks Gretyl. I have a comment and a question here. I love the distinction you make between simply digital and digitally transformed. PDFs are a great example. Do you have other examples you can share?
GK: I think another example, other than some of the ones that we already saw in this presentation, would be things like static webpages and websites versus apps. So something where you’ve got the ability to customize your experience, something where you can maybe log in and it serves up what you need, or you can check series of boxes and drop downs to get what you need. That’s a big difference in something that’s delivered on a website or in an app or a portal versus something that’s just strictly static HTML pages that you would scroll through. That’s one example that I can think of off the top of my head. And then I think PDF in our industry is the big one.
GK: You might also see things like, what we think of as more old school help systems. If you’ve got the classic try pane help, where you just navigate through, versus if you’ve got a help portal that locks into your product interface, where you can type in a question and it guides you to a certain webpage, or it gives you a chat bot, those are the transformed versions of the old school online try pane help. So those are a few examples just in a content delivery where you have that difference between simply digital and digital transformation. And really in all the cases the big key is, can your user customize it? Is there context? Is there something that allows them to have a personalized experience with that content instead of just reading it?
EP: Great. Thanks. Another question, after you change to digital, should you offer the old print PDF version as well as the new digital version?
GK: I think this depends a lot on the circumstances of your organization and your requirements from your customer base. So one question to always start with when it comes to, should we still deliver PDF or paper or whatever the kind of older analog version was, is do you have legal and regulatory requirements that say, yes, you have to? And that’s been the case with some of the companies we’ve worked with, especially in things like hardware manufacturing. There are very strict regulations on those industries that say maybe you have a website, but at the end of the day when you deliver this part or this truck or whatever product you have that is something that’s hardware manufactured, you still have to have a printed book that goes with it. It has to be translated into the local language, all of these very specific requirements.
GK: And then if you’ve got something with individual parts, maybe you also have a data sheet that goes with it. So the first thing to check is those requirements, is it required by law or is there some regulation that says you have to still deliver the old version? And if that’s the case, one thing that is really good is that when you’ve gone to a structured environment that lets you have that digital delivery, you can still create printed content from that. That’s one of the things that we consider the beauty or the magic of structure like DITA, is that you can still have printed outputs from that digital content. So you have the option of having one content source that serves your printed books, something intermediary like PDF, a website, an app, whatever. That’s the first question.
GK: The second question is, if you don’t have any legal requirements that say, yes, you still have to deliver print, the next place to look is with your customers. And we’ve seen this a lot of times where if the customer base is extremely varied and there is a big chunk of them who are used to print, that a lot of them will still prefer that and there’s still a demand for it. So again, that’s where collecting those customer metrics and feedback comes in handy. Get the information from your customer base. Do they still want it in print? Do they still need it or prefer it in print? And if the answer is yes, then it makes sense to still deliver it that way. But if the vast majority of your customers just don’t care and they’re like, “No, I just want the digital.” Then it would make sense to just eliminate print and eliminate the cost associated with paper and shipping. So the answer to that is really just, it depends on are there requirements for it? And if not, does your customer base just want it?
EP: All right. Thank you so much, Gretyl. That was a great answer. So it doesn’t look like we have any more questions at this time. If anyone does have anything additional that you want to ask, go ahead and drop that question into the module now so that we can get them answered. You can also send questions to [email protected]. We’d be happy to answer them. I’ve also just dropped the link to the evaluation survey into the chat box. So please take the time to fill that out and give us feedback that helps us prepare for future webcasts. I’m going to be sending out an email tomorrow morning with the link to this webcast recording, along with the link to the Google Meet for the after show on Thursday at 1:00 PM. And also keep in mind our webcast on August 27th, you can register for that at scriptorium.com/events. So no more questions have come through. So I believe that concludes this webcast. So thank you so much, Gretyl.
GK: Thank you, Elizabeth. And thank you all for coming.
EP: Yes. Thank you all for joining the presentation, and be sure to follow us at @scriptorium on Twitter for updates on our next event. Thank you so much.
[/cbdgc-form]
About the author
