In a recent post on lean content strategy, I wrote about a focus on waste reduction:
After creating a nice automated XML-based process, waste in formatting is eliminated, and we declare victory and go home. Unfortunately, the organization is now producing irrelevant content faster, and the content organization is now positioned as only a cost center.
Is your content perceived as a commodity?
Lean manufacturing begat lean software development which in turn begat lean content strategy.
What does lean content strategy look like?
The roles and responsibilities in an XML (and/or DITA) environment are a little different than in a traditional page layout environment. Figuring out where to move people is a key part of your implementation strategy.
Design and automation are often positioned as mutually exclusive–you have to choose one or the other. But in fact, it’s possible to deliver content in an automated workflow that uses a stellar design. To succeed, you need a designer who can work with styles, templates, and other building blocks instead of ad hoc formatting.
More content across more devices requires scalability–and that means more automation. A strategic approach to content needs to incorporate both design and automation as constraints and find the right balance between the two.
Product development, content development, and localization processes are too often viewed as a waterfall process.
This is not at all accurate.
In this webcast recording, Sarah O’Keefe discusses how content silos make it difficult to deliver a consistent, excellent customer experience. After all the hard work that goes into landing a customer, too many organizations destroy the customer’s initial goodwill with mediocre installation instructions and terrible customer support.
Do you have a unified customer experience? Do you know what your various content creators are producing? Join us for this thought-provoking webcast.
This premium post is a recap of a presentation delivered by Sarah O’Keefe at Localization World Berlin on June 4, 2015. It describes how and why to align localization strategy to the customer journey.
The new buzzword in marketing is the customer journey. What does this mean for localization?
Does your house have good bones? Ugly paint, terrible carpet, and dated appliances are all fixable. But if a room is too small, a door is in the wrong place, or the rooms don’t match your requirements (need a downstairs master bedroom?), then you have a serious problem.
Content can also have good bones. Or not.
I used Uber and lived to tell the tale. And I found a lesson for content strategy in my rides to and from the airport in San Francisco.
“What CCMS should we buy?”
It’s a common question with no easy answer. This article provides a roadmap for CCMS evaluation and selection.
First, a few definitions. A CCMS (component content management system) is different from a CMS (content management system). You need a CCMS to manage chunks of information, such as reusable warnings, topics, or other small bits of information that are then assembled into larger documents. A CMS is for managing the results, like white papers, user manuals, and other documents.
