Are You Experiencing Any of These
Common Content Problems
Caliper Content Services has solved all of these problems that were preventing organizations from achieving their business goals.
Authoring & Collaboration
- Inconsistency in Writing
- Difficult to Find Content
- Incorrectly Updated Content
- Errors & Poor Quality Content
Workflow & Governance
- Enforced Governance or Specific Content Processes Required
- Enforced Entitlement – Controling Who Can View and Access Content
Content Management
- Content Creation Costs Too High
- Long Delivery Times
- Duplicate Content
- Inefficient ContentOps
Publishing
- Customers want personalized content
- Multiple publishing formats
Translation
- Translation Costs Are Too High
- Translation takes too long to deliver
- Unnecessary Re-Translation
- Translation Software Issues
Delivery & Consumption
- Difficult to Find Content
- Published Content Has Low Usablity
Authoring & Collaboration
Inconsistency in Writing
Readers notice when content doesn’t follow a template or style guide. For example, procedures. Readers notice when the structure of the content is inconsistent from procedure to procedure. Readers notice when content is written by multiple authors who didn’t follow a style guide. Readers will perceive the content as not being written with a single voice. Inconsistent and poor-quality content causes readers to lose confidence in the product and damages your organization’s branding.
Related business goals: Increase customer satisfaction. Improve branding.
Difficult to Find Content
Authors state that it is difficult to find the source content that they need to update. If content is authored in word processor like Microsoft Word, then the only search features available are the basic “text search” in the operating system and in Microsoft Word. The author is not able to execute robust (intelligent) queries against the source content to effectively and quickly find the desired content.
Related business goals: Reduce development costs. Reduce maintenance costs.
Incorrectly Updated Content
If an update is made to a piece of content and the change is incorrect or inappropriate for whatever reason, the content department needs a way to return the content to the state it was in prior to the update.
Related business goals: Reduce maintenance costs.
Errors & Poor Quality Content
When customers find errors in product information, it causes them to lose confidence in the product and damages your organization’s branding. If an error causes injuries or property damage, litigation may occur.
Related business goals: Facilitate governance. Increase customer satisfaction. Improve branding.
Workflow & Governance
Enforced Governance or Specific Content Processes Required
For regulatory or compliance reasons or because of the nature of the content, content may need to be authored, reviewed, or approved by specific roles and be workflowed through a specific content process. This can apply to documents or components. Not using the prescribed content process and not having an audit trail results in fines from the regulatory agency.
Related business goals: Facilitate regulatory compliance. Facilitate governance.
Enforced Entitlement – Controling Who Can View and Access Content
The organization needs to be able to control who can view or update source content. The organization needs to be able to control who can view published content.
Related business goals: Facilitate governance.
Content Management
Content Creation Costs Too High
High content creation costs are typically caused by several different problems:
- Duplicate content
- Difficult to find content – by authors at the CMS
- Difficult to manage resources and production schedules
- ContentOps are inefficient
Long Delivery Times
Product documentation cannot be delivered in a timely manner. The delay results in lost sales and revenue.
This problem is solved by reducing effort. The same discussions about reducing cost and effort apply to this problem. See “Content creation costs are too high”.
Related business goals: Reduce time to delivery.
Duplicate Content
The organization has a family of products that have identical features and similar features and therefore the product information for each product may have similar content. For example, when products share identical features, then the how to (use a feature) topics are identical in the user manuals.
In this use case, there can be a large amount of duplicate content. In the current content solution, each product requires a separate copy and version of the user manual content. Creation and maintenance of content must be performed in each copy. This is inefficient, costly and runs the risk of not every copy being found and updated.
Related business goals: Reduce cost. Reduce development cost. Reduce maintenance cost.
Inefficient ContentOps
Content processes are manual and inefficient. The following are examples of antiquated and inefficient content operations.
- Co-workers review and edit printed copies. The review and edits must be performed in the digital document which is a duplication of effort and is an opportunity to introduce errors. Printed copies can be lost which requires that the review and edit effort must be duplicated.
- Co-workers e-mail copies of a document to each other for review and edit. Edits and feedback must be merged and performed in the digital document which is a duplication of effort.
- Each document is stored in a shared folder. If co-workers do not coordinate who is the current owner of a given document, work can be overwritten and lost.
Related business goals: Increase operational efficiencies.
Publishing
Customers want personalized content
Customers are demanding more and more personalized content. When a customer knows that a piece of content is about their area of interest, the customer is more likely to read the content than generic content that is offered to everyone. For example, customers only want to be e-mailed content about products or topics in which they are interested. Customers do not want to receive e-mails that are generic marketing blasts. Customers typically do not read them.
When customers are logged into a product or information website, content is difficult to find using the basic search feature. Customers want the website to support a “you might also be interested in the following products or topics” feature.
Related business goals: Increase sales. Increase customer satisfaction.
Multiple publishing formats
Customers are for publications to be produced in print, web and mobile formats. In the current content solution, this requires a separate copy and version of the content for each publication format. Creation and maintenance of content must be performed in each copy. Each publication format is an additional cost. The cost and effort to accomplish this in the current content solution, is effectively three times higher than the cost of using an intelligent content solution.
Related business goals: Reduce cost. Reduce development cost. Reduce maintenance cost. Increase sales.
Translation
Translation Costs Are Too High
High translation costs are typically caused by several different problems:
- Duplicate Content
- Content is unnecessarily translated
- Translators charge extra when they must work in specific software
Translation takes too long to deliver
Products that are translated to other languages cannot be delivered in a timely manner. The delay results in lost sales and revenue.
This problem is solved by reducing effort. The same discussions about reducing cost and effort apply to this problem. See “Translation costs are too high”.
Related business goals: Reduce time to delivery for translated products.
Unnecssary Re-Translation
If an organization does not know which content that has been previously translated, they may send it for translation. Translators may be re-translating that content which is a cost that can be eliminated.
Translation Software Issues
In addition, content that is formatted or is in a page layout tool, may require that the translator work within that specific software. Translators charge more for having to know how to use this software. This is a cost that can be eliminated.
Related business goals: Reduce translation cost. Reduce time to delivery. Reduce development cost. Reduce maintenance cost.
Delivery & Consumption
Difficult to Find Content
Customers and prospective customers state that information is difficult to find information at the organization’s website. The only search feature is a basic “full text search”. Sometimes this feature finds many topics and the customer has to look at each topic to find the one that contains the desired information. Or, sometimes the search feature doesn’t find the desired information because the search feature is too simple.
Related business goals: Increase customer satisfaction. Increase sales.
Published Content Has Low Usablity
Readers notice when the structure of the content is inconsistent from topic to topic. For example, if procedures don’t follow the same structure from procedure to procedure, this puts a burden on the reader. The reader must spend energy determining which of the content is the pre-requisites, background information, etc. Or the reader must spend energy determining where each step begins and ends. Content that does not follow a consistent pattern is difficult to consume is said to have a high cognitive load. Readers complain about this. Readers lose confidence in the product and this causes branding damage.
Related business goals: Increase sales. Increase customer satisfaction.
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About Us
Caliper Content Services is an intelligent content consultancy.
We have 15+ years of experience solving content problems in a variety of industries: Financial, Life Sciences, Oil and Gas, Airlines, Government, Insurance, Sports and Curriculum.
Our Services
We take an engineering approach that is based on the best practices of software engineering developed over the past 30 years. We take this approach to design new content solutions, repair existing solutions, and design metrics and business cases.
What We Do
We work with organizations to identify goals that are not being met because of content problems.
Then we design intelligent content solutions and content strategies that solve those problems.