The high cost of content management: June 24, 2002 issue of New Thinking

June 24, 2002 New Thinking:
The high cost of content management

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Gerry McGovern

Content Critical

Gaining competitive advantage through high-quality web content

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June 24, 2002

The high cost of content management

By Gerry McGovern

Quality content is expensive to create, edit and publish. This is because it takes skilled people to create, edit and publish quality content. Technology has added unnecessarily to the cost of content management by offering convoluted and complex solutions. Organizations have not properly planned for their publishing processes. This has added cost, increased frustration and reduced efficiency.

At the heart of the content management problem is the fact many managers don't know how to manage content professionally. Managers have been trained in managing people and physical assets. They simply don't have the skills to manage content professionally.

I am often astonished at the way organizations view their content. Managers readily agree that content is king. That content is a very valuable asset. However, in practice, content is often treated like bags of coal. In fact, an average manager understands much better the cost and value of a bag of coal than a document of content.

This is an information economy. Content is a critical form of information. Yet, a great many organizations have no model by which to measure the cost of the content they publish.

In February 2001, Melcrum Research published a study of over 500 organizations involved in intranet development. Entitled, 'Managing and developing intranets for business value,' it stated that: "One of the central issues for respondents' intranet development was the difficulty of accurately assessing the true costs of their intranets. A surprising number were unable to supply an estimated budget for maintaining and managing an intranet.

"There is substantial evidence to suggest that organizations significantly underestimate the cost of the intranet in the medium term," the Melcrum report continued. "Organizations can often underestimate the cost of maintaining intranets, which can account for a majority of the expense. Supporting evidence and interview opinion suggests that organizations went over budget by 200-300 percent."

In June 2002, Jupiter Media Metrix released a report entitled, 'The Content Management Threshold.' This report stated that, "Overly optimistic predictions for Web-based business initiatives have led some companies to spend a hefty $25,000 per non-technical employee per year to manage simple content on a Web site. In many instances, customization, integration and deployment costs can rise as high as six times the basic licensing fees."

The Jupiter report went on to state that many organizations felt burned by content management software that over-promised and under-delivered. This is certainly true. Technology companies just love to sell products that do a thousand things, instead of doing the hundred things that really need doing.

Again and again, organizations fall into the 'future proofing' trap. They are fanatically concerned that the system they buy will deal with all sorts of eventualities. So much so, that they often forget to focus on what the product needs to do today to get content published easily and quickly.

A classic scenario is where an organization goes out and buys the most convoluted content management software it can find. Then, it goes back and begins to define its publishing processes, only to find that the process requirements don't match the software capabilities.

Until managers learn to truly manage content, content management will be a discipline that delivers high costs and little value. This is not a software issue. Rather, it involves the most fundamental management principles of understanding what your content costs to publish and what value it delivers.

Gerry McGovern

Next issue: The benefits of a content management system
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"The term "bible" is now highly over-used in reference to tech books – but if it weren't, that's how I would categorize Content Critical."
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Gerry McGovern's books are recommended reading at the following universities

Augustana College, United States
Brandeis University, United States
Drury University, United States
Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland
Indiana University, United States
Monash University, Australia
Northeastern University, United States
University of Applied Sciences, Germany
University of Regina, Canada
University of Teesside, UK
Manchester Metropolitan University

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