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Content pitfalls Content silos Industry insights Podcasts

Do enterprise content operations exist?

Is it really possible to configure enterprise content—technical, support, learning & training, marketing, and more—to create a seamless experience for your end users? In episode 177 of the Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Bill Swallow discuss the reality of enterprise content operations: do they truly exist in the current content landscape? What obstacles hold the industry back? How can organizations move forward?

Sarah: You’ve got to get your terminology and your taxonomy in alignment. Most of the industry I am confident in saying have gone with option D, which is give up. “We have silos. Our silos are great. We’re going to be in our silos, and I don’t like those people over in learning content anyway. I don’t like those people in techcomm anyway. They’re weird. They’re focused on the wrong things,” says everybody, and so they’re just not doing it. I think that does a great disservice to the end users, but that’s the reality of where most people are right now.

Bill: Right, because the end user is left holding the bag trying to find information using terminology from one set of content and not finding it in another and just having a completely different experience.

Sarah O'Keefe
October 21, 2024
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Change management DITA Podcasts Replatforming Structured content

Survive the descent: planning your content ops exit strategy

Whether you’re surviving a content operations project or a journey through treacherous caverns, it’s crucial to plan your way out before you begin. In episode 176 of the Content Strategy Experts podcast, Alan Pringle and Christine Cuellar unpack the parallels between navigating horror-filled caves and building a content ops exit strategy.

Alan Pringle: When you’re choosing tools, if you end up something that is super proprietary, has its own file formats, and so on, that means it’s probably gonna be harder to extract your content from that system. A good example of this is those of you with Samsung Android phones. You have got this proprietary layer where it may even insert things into your source code that is very particular to that product line. So look at how proprietary your tool or toolchain is and how hard it’s going to be to export. That should be an early question you ask during even the RFP process. How do people get out of your system? I realize that sounds absolutely bat-you-know-what to be telling people to be thinking about something like that when you’re just getting rolling–

Christine Cuellar: Appropriate for a cave analogy, right?

Alan Pringle: Yes, true. But you should be, you absolutely should be.

Christine Cuellar
October 7, 2024
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CCMS CMS DITA Industry insights Podcasts Structured content

Enterprise content operations in action at NetApp (podcast)

Are you looking for real-world examples of enterprise content operations in action? Join Sarah O’Keefe and special guest Adam Newton, Senior Director of Globalization, Product Documentation, & Business Process Automation at NetApp for episode 175 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast. Hear insights from NetApp’s journey to enterprise-level publishing, lessons learned from leading-edge GenAI tool development, and more.

We have writers in our authoring environment who are not writers by nature or bias. They’re subject matter experts. And they’re in our system and generating content. That was about joining us in our environment, reap the benefits of multi-language output, reap the benefits of fast updates, reap the benefits of being able to deliver a web-like experience as opposed to a PDF. But what I think we’ve found now is that this is a data project. This generative AI assistant has changed my thinking about what my team does. Yes, on one level, we have a team of writers devoted to producing the docs. But in another way, you can look at it and say, well, we’re a data engine.

— Adam Newton

Sarah O'Keefe
September 23, 2024
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CCMS CMS Content debt Content pitfalls DITA Localization Podcasts Replatforming Structured content Translation

Cutting technical debt with replatforming (podcast)

When organizations replatform from one content management system to another, unchecked technical debt can weigh down the new system. In contrast, strategic replatforming can be a tool for reducing technical debt. In episode 172 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Bill Swallow share how to set your replatforming project up for success.

Here’s the real question I think you have to ask before replatforming—is the platform actually the problem? Is it legitimately broken? As Bill said, has it evolved away from the business requirements to a point where it no longer meet your needs? Or there are some other questions to ask, such as, what are your processes around that platform? Do you have weird, annoying, and inefficient processes?

— Sarah O’Keefe

Sarah O'Keefe
August 19, 2024
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Collaborate with a content strategist to transform content operations

Does any of this sound familiar? 

  • Content production is taking too long, delaying product launches, business expansion, and growth into global markets. Every minute of delay costs your company—big time. 
  • Short-term fixes have evolved into long-term problems, creating technical debt, process inefficiencies, and more. 
  • Your content team is running on “emergency mode.” 

It’s time for a new way of managing content. Here’s how a content strategist can help you create successful content operations.

Christine Cuellar
August 5, 2024
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Content debt Content pitfalls DITA Localization Structured content

Technical debt in content operations

Technical debt, hereafter called “content debt,” is “the implied cost of future reworking required when choosing an easy but limited solution instead of a better approach that could take more time,” Wikipedia, “Technical debt.”. Like financial debt, content debt isn’t always a bad thing. You can use a loan to buy a house right away (at least in the U.S.) and then pay off the debt over time while living in the house. Content debt allows you to create something quickly instead of doing it exactly right and taking much longer. 

Too much content debt, though, will hamstring your work. The trick is to find the Goldilocks solution.

Sarah O'Keefe
July 29, 2024
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Content ops forecast: mostly sunny with a chance of chaos (webinar)

In this episode of our Let’s Talk ContentOps! webinar series, Scriptorium principals Sarah O’Keefe (CEO), Alan Pringle (COO), and Bill Swallow (Director of Operations) provide practical insights on the future of content operations. They’ll deliver sunny predictions, warn of upcoming storms, and equip you to weather unprecedented fronts in the content industry.

Sarah O'Keefe
July 22, 2024
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Case studies CCMS CMS Content management Replatforming Structured content

Your tech expertise + our CCMS knowledge = replatforming success

Is your team skilled in navigating your current CCMS, but unfamiliar with the system you plan to adopt? During a recent replatforming project, we worked with a team of in-house experts to build out a new CCMS. The combination of their domain expertise and our replatforming experience was a big success. The client is now self-sufficient and thriving in their new CCMS environment.

Christine Cuellar
July 1, 2024
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AI Industry insights Podcasts

Strategies for AI in technical documentation (podcast, English version)

In episode 169 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and special guest Sebastian Göttel of Quanos engage in a captivating conversation on generative AI and its impact on technical documentation. To bring these concepts to life, this English version of the podcast was created with the support of AI transcription and translation tools!

Sarah O’Keefe: So what does AI have to do with poems?

Sebastian Göttel: You often have the impression that AI creates knowledge; that is, creates information out of nothing. And the question is, is that really the case? I think it is quite normal for German scholars to not only look at the text at hand, but also to read between the lines and allow the cultural subtext to flow. From the perspective of scholars of German literature, generative AI actually only interprets or reconstructs information that already exists. Maybe it’s hidden, only implicitly hinted at. But this then becomes visible through the AI.

Sarah O'Keefe
June 24, 2024
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CCMS Content management Learning content LMS Podcasts Structured learning content

Overcoming operational challenges for learning content, feat. Leslie Farinella (podcast)

In episode 168 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and special guest Leslie Farinella, Chief Strategy Officer at Xyleme, discuss the challenges facing content operations for learning content, insights for navigating information silos, and recommendations for successful enterprise-wide collaboration.

Why do we still have these silos of content? Back to what you said, Sarah, if we’re thinking about the learner experience, the learner doesn’t distinguish between classroom, e-learning, looking something up, or going to technical documentation. They just know, “I gotta get my job done. I need to perform. I need to know what I’m doing.”

— Leslie Farinella

Sarah O'Keefe
June 17, 2024
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