Bret Freeman of Vasont Systems
San Diego Meeting of the STC
March 2006
Bret Freeman of Vasont Systems introduced content management systems
(CMS) to the San Diego STC this month with his presentation, "Digesting
the 'Alphabet Soup' of Technical Writing and Publications." Bret
has been with Vasont Systems for over 6 years educating companies about
the benefits of CMS.
Content management systems have been around since the 1990s. Content
management systems encourage content reuse by storing information in
a central repository. The content can then be ported to many document
formats. Vasont's software and data services use XML, DITA, and XSLt
(an incomplete list) to transform text into client-specific documentation.
One of the most powerful features of CMS is its capability for updating
multiple documents from one source, the content housed in the XML application.
CMS saves time, money, and staffing headaches while ensuring consistency
within the content across deliverables-whether those deliverables are
used in engineering, marketing, or customer service. Bret shared tips
on how to decide if a CMS is right for your company-whether it's a small
4-person shop or something on a much grander scale, such as Hewlett
Packard or Lockheed Martin, both Vasont clients.
Prime candidates for CMS are companies that print content to multiple
channels, including the Web, in-house training materials, policies and
procedures, engineering specifications, and service documentation. While
these deliverables have very different target audiences, they often
contain the same information throughout. Style sheets, also a part of
the CMS, determine layout and formatting. For example, when an engineering
change order dictates a change in an engine part, this change must be
documented in every deliverable where the engine part is called out.
How do you determine whether CMS is right for your operation? Bret
recommends asking yourself and your team the following questions:
- Where are you now in your documentation needs?
- Is there an existing structure in your current tools?
- Why move to structured content?
- What problems exist with your current documentation?
- What does your solution look like?
The switch to structured writing using CMS has specific challenges,
the most notable of which is what Bret called a "paradigm shift"
in how writers think about content; he said we are no longer using documents
but chunks of text. Writers have to be re-trained and taught to learn
new tools. If your CMS solution claims to have out-of-the-box capabilities,
beware. Switching to structured content has a steep learning curve,
but the benefits are worth the cost.
Having answers to the above questions will make you an educated buyer
who's ready to research CMS. Several tools are available, including
Vasont Systems site (http://www.vasont.com/vasont/)
Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery by JoAnn T. Hackos
(2002)
Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy by Ann
Rockley (2002)
|
