Services
New Solution Design
Caliper Content Services follows the best practices of software engineering established during the past 30 years to design and update intelligent content solutions. This discipline is known as content engineering.
Content engineering has these four functional areas:
- Intelligent collaboration and governance
- Intelligent content management
- Intelligent publishing
- Intelligent delivery
There are five phases in the content engineering process:
Caliper Content Services collaborates with you in each phase of your project:
- Scope and Plan – We’ll review your current content, processes and publications to determine the size and complexity of your project
- Analyze – We’ll help you identify your requirements in each functional area
- Design – We develop design models, authoring and publishing templates, workflow and CMS configurations, and content strategies that satisfy your requirements.
- Build – We work with you and a software vendor or implementor to ensure your content solution is built to your design specifications.
- Test and Train – We minimize change management issues by taking your staff through user acceptance testing and training.
Existing Solution Repair
The content engineering process for this scenario follows the same phases as the process for new solutions: Scope and Plan, Analyze, Design, Build, Test and Train. For each issue, we review the problem to determine its size and complexity and help you identify problem details and key requirements. For each functional area, we provide new designs that satisfy these requirements and help solve the issues. And if desired, we work with you and a software vendor or implementor to ensure your content solution is repaired and updated according to these designs.
Business Case Development
In addition to design skills, Caliper Content Services are experts in business case development. We develop business cases to help you secure funding and resources for new content solutions. We will work with you to create a business case that predicts the value and success of the project. Or for existing content solutions that need repair, we will work with you to create a business case to secure funding and resources to get your solution and you content performing properly.
We’ll work with you to design a business case that proves that your content solution addresses business and content department goals. We’ll design metrics that predict the value in a way that resonates with executives. We’ll create a presentation that proves that your content strategy is in alignment with your corporate strategy and help you become the executive whisperer.
Our next book, Making the business case for intelligent content, provides a methodology for bringing the business case, metrics, and story together.
Content Metrics Design
We design content metrics that predict the value of new content solutions. We design metrics that prove the value of existing content solutions.
We design content value metrics that can be part of a business case to secure funding and resources for purchasing a new solution or for repairing an existing solution.
We also design metrics for existing content solutions that prove your solution and content are performing as designed. Performance metrics are typically used to secure continued funding and resources for software licenses, maintenance, and staff.
For software vendors and implementors, we can perform this ROI service, acting as an independent third-party consultancy, to help you “close the deal”.
Our book, DITA Metrics 101: The business case for XML and intelligent content, is the only content metrics book on the market. In this book, our methodology proves the savings possible from using intelligent content like DITA and similar schemas.
Ready to get started on designing your content metrics?
DITA Consulting
For new content solutions, we may determine during the requirements analysis phases that the DITA standard is a good fit. If so, we will incorporate its capabilities into the design. We’ll design a DITA content strategy that takes advantage of the features of DITA and helps you achieve your content goals. For example, we’ll instruct you on using various methodologies such as warehouse topics and master topics as described in our book, DITA Metrics 101: The business case for XML and intelligent content.
If you have an existing content solution that uses DITA, but you are not getting the content performance that you expected, we can help. Similar to our Existing Solution Repair Service (link to that page), we can analyze issues with your current solution and recommend fixes. We’ll also analyze your content processes, DITA content strategy and DITA maturity model for possible improvements. If applicable, we’ll instruct on using various methodologies such as warehouse topics and master topics as described in our book, DITA Metrics 101: The business case for XML and intelligent content.
Master Classes
Content Modelling Master Class
Caliper Content Services follows the best practices of software engineering established over the past 30 years to design and update intelligent content solutions. This form of engineering is known as content engineering. In this class, you will learn to take an object-oriented design approach to your content. You’ll learn how to design content models that will become authoring templates in your intelligent content solution. We’ll start with simple exercises, but end with advanced so that you’ll leave with the ability to design your own content models. Content models can be used to specify the design of a new content solution or can be used to specify the design of new document types for an existing content solution.
This class includes eight hours of sessions which are given remotely. You may choose to receive all sessions in a single day or receive them over several days.
This class includes two hours of consulting services in which we help you perform content analysis and design upon a document type of your choice. We’ll provide guidance and review component and document content models that you’ve designed to help further your understanding of the methodology.
When you finish the Content Modelling Master Class, you can:
- Apply schema-neutral object-oriented content design to your content projects.
- Describe content models clearly to your team members.
- Design content models where you can apply custom content metrics.
- Resources: Recommended book on object-oriented design for non-programmers (included with class registration fee)
Preparation:
Get ready for this class by watching a presentation on Object Oriented Design for Technical Writers
Testimonial about this presentation: John O’Gormon: “Probably the best exposition of the OO (object oriented) concepts and their application to the structures in content management I’ve ever read.”
Registration is $4,000 USD for up to five students.
Content Metrics Master Class
In this class, you will learn how to design:
- Metrics for your content models
- Cost models for authoring or for all roles involved throughout the content process
- Metrics that incorporate content reuse savings
- Metrics for content maintenance
Whenever possible, we can customize this class to meet your specific metric design needs. For example, we can show you how to effectively use metrics in business cases to help you secure funding and resources for new or existing content projects
This class includes eight hours of sessions which are given remotely. You may choose to receive all sessions in a single day or receive them over several days.
This class includes two hours of consulting, where we help you design metrics for a content model or document type of your choice.
After you finish the Content Metrics Master Class, you can:
- Design content metrics that address business and content department goals that supports your content strategy.
- Design spreadsheets for your content metrics that anyone in your company can understand.
- Resources: DITA Metrics 101 book – The only book on content metrics in the industry (included with class registration fee)
Registration is $4,000 USD for up to five students.
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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.