1.4 Web content management and IBM Web Content Manager 

This section explains the concept of web content management and what IBM Web Content Manager offers.

Web content management within the context of content management

What is content?

Content can mean many different things. We start from a common understanding of what the scope of business content is.
Content supports the work that the enterprise does and interacts in many ways with business operations. Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the discipline involved with the capture, storage, and management of this kind of content across the enterprise. It makes information easy to find, use, update, and discard when the time comes.

Content can be categorized into the following types among others:

• High-volume production content, such as document imaging and computer output, archiving, and presentation
• Rich media, such as audio, video, and photos
• Web content, such as Internet, intranet, and extranet
• Collaborative content, such as office documents, discussions, and e-mail

Enterprise content management has the following objectives:

• Provide an efficient and secure solution for managing content within the enterprise, including enterprise-wide content storage, access, search, distribution, and retention. This is especially true with the current focus on corporate accountability and regulatory compliance.
• Build knowledge-based environments to leverage corporate know-how and expertise.

Importance of content management

Prior to discussing the specific aspects of the importance of web content management, we begin by discussing the underlying importance of content management. The ability to effectively manage content, and more importantly information and specific knowledge, directly affects your organization’s ability to succeed in the marketplace. Business information is, in most cases, the most valuable asset that you offer to your customers, employees, or business partners. Accordingly, that makes information, together with the ability to manage it, integral to the success of every business.

Value is the knowledge that you add before you offer something. Business value is based on the information that you share. This concept is true both for the production and for knowledge and service industries. Looking at where this information exists, you find that it is often divided and decentralized throughout organizations. Information is stored frequently as content. For example, critical information can include product descriptions, instructions, policies, key customer issues, competitive strategies, and so forth. The effectiveness of the information you offer, and in many cases the value that you provide, depends directly upon the ability to distribute that information in a timely and efficient manner.

Information within the context of web content

When your organization offers information via a web browser, this material is considered web content. Web content consists of two parts:

• The content
• The design or presentation of that content

Going forward, we explain this concept in greater detail and discuss the advantages of handling the content and the design of the content separately.
There are two approaches to creating, managing, and publishing web content:

• Static web content
• Dynamic web content

Static web content

Static web content is embedded directly into the design and placed statically on a web page. This type of content is most likely the result of programming rather than content authoring. Due to its static nature and embedded design, this type of content can be difficult to reuse and change.

Static web content solutions often require someone within an IT department, or a person who possesses web design and some web IT skills, to translate content into HTML before it can be posted to a web site or a portal. Accordingly, static web content is more difficult to use within a dynamic web site, which changes frequently and requires up-to-date information to deliver maximum value. Additionally, static web content is often impossible to reuse due to its embedded design.

Dynamic web content

Rather than embedding the information directly together with the design, dynamic web content treats the content and the presentation of the content as two distinct entities. By separating the web content from the presentation layer, you can manage and deliver content quickly and efficiently, independent of its presentation. The ability to manage both content and its presentation layer as separate entities is enabled most frequently by using web content management systems.

With IBM Web Content Manager, companies or organizations can put the information in the right people easily and efficiently, which is a key component in sustaining a competitive advantage. Authors do not need to handle the technical side of web technologies. Content that is created can be integrated with multiple uses and processes, distributed or shared throughout and beyond an organization. For example, a single product sheet can contain complete pricing information, including internal prices that you only share within your organization. By taking advantage of the multi-publishing feature, you can publish a subset of the same document for your customers, without needing to maintain separate documents.

Content management within the context of applications

Applications offered through a web browser also use content that is managed by a content management system. For example, a product catalog or online store contains content that is accessed through an application that usually provides a helpful navigation tool. With ever-growing volumes of critical information distributed across Internet portals, e-business applications, intranets and extranets in various formats, deploying and maintaining effective content management can be a significant challenge.

Web content management is not just about customers. It is important to employees, business partners, suppliers, and vendors because these groups represent the backbone of an organization. Making sure that they are equipped with the right information and can do business with your organization more easily than they can with your competitor is critical. A positive web experience motivates users to revisit the site like nothing else can. This is a challenge that is generally underestimated by most companies.

To compete in today's markets, providing information on demand is crucial. Content management is the key in this requirement. Such a powerful management tool, reaching a wide-spread audience, also exposes the risks that are associated with providing information to a broad audience. Make sure to include workflow, security, and structure to reflect organization policies in a web environment.

Overview of web content management

In the past, different forms of information, such as web content, e-mail, product information, or customer data, were kept in separate, disconnected content management repositories. Today, this is not a viable solution. To thrive in an on-demand environment, you need flexible, cost-effective content management solutions to manage all types of information, including structured data and unstructured content. You need content management solutions that enable data and content to be integrated with multiple applications and processes, distributed or shared throughout and beyond your organization. Furthermore, you need it structured and organized in a way that is best suited for your business.

The focus for today's businesses

To manage the exponential growth of business-critical information, respond faster to the market place, and increase employee productivity, a content management system must address three key areas:

• Responsiveness
  Streamlining operations and providing an integrated view of all forms of information can improve your customer relationships and enable your employees, partners, and suppliers to work together more efficiently. It can also help you reduce costs and capitalize on new opportunities.

• Productivity
  When employees spend more time looking for information they need to perform their jobs, such as documents, e-mail, reports, web content, they spend less time working and generating business. If they are not working with the latest information, they can miss opportunities and make costly mistakes. When customers cannot find what they are looking for on a web site, they leave frustrated and dissatisfied, no matter how good the information or prices might be. That can add up to a lot of wasted hours and missed opportunities. The effort to bring visitors back again is costly. Companies that give their employees a simplified, personalized, and easily accessible user interface to access and share critical information enjoy a competitive advantage.

• Compliance
  Effectively manage your content to address the increasing demands of government and industry regulations. Keep focused on your business goals and use compliance as a lever for change to affect process improvement and business transformation.

When looking at existing enterprises, specialized applications and databases are often established when it comes to business-critical information. IBM Web Content Manager becomes increasingly important for companies and organizations to leverage the complete spectrum of data assets within their enterprise and share it electronically among suppliers, customers, partners, and employees. Content that is created and managed from authors for the purpose of web publishing becomes only one component. Enterprise Content Management (ECM) provides a basis for the next generation of data management, enabling customers to collect, manage, and distribute all forms of business information. For example, an employee of a human resources department who updates a phone number in an internal application, has actually executed a step within a greater content management context. The changed number is simultaneously published to the web. It is mandatory to integrate content from a broad range of existing data sources. Open standards for content exchange are the key.

General concepts in web content management

In this section, we define concepts that are fundamental to understanding web content management and, more importantly, understanding the benefits that can be gained. The concepts include the separation of content and presentation, content creation and authoring, workflow, management, content publication, content aggregation, content integration, and content delivery.

Separation of content and presentation

As a foundation for understanding the benefits of IBM Web Content Manager, we must first distinguish between content and the presentation of the content. When a clear separation is made between content and how it is presented, you can understand how a single piece of content can potentially be rendered in multiple ways. For example, a single item of content, such as a news article, can be presented in any of the following ways:

• On a web page in a variety of formats, based on user preferences and personalization
• In a PDF file
• Downloaded to a smart phone
• Streamed as an RSS feed

The content is the same, but the presentation can be adapted to best meet users' needs within the context of their specific roles or preferences. This approach also guarantees a consistent view and usage of a web site. If the design changes, the content parts remain unaffected. Additionally, the content creators do not have to worry about the presentation of their content. This is important because content creators usually do not have significant knowledge of HTML.

Moving forward with this idea, key concepts and functional areas that apply to IBM Web Content Manager can be grouped in terms of dynamic presentation or content management.

Content creation and authoring

Content creation and authoring refer to the creation of content and information that is intended to be delivered on the web site. Content creators are guided through an authoring process, by using familiar applications, without having to learn new technical skills.

Workflow

The accuracy, relevancy, and recency of content is assured by automating the content life cycle, from creation to review, approval, delivery, and archival.

Management

Content becomes an asset as control of the web site is placed back in the hands of the users who understand the subject and customers best.

Content publication

After content is authored and approved, the content publication stage is where the content is released for delivery to the live site. The delivery can be a simple process, such as making a file available on a file system to a web server and advertising the URL. Or it can be a more complex procedure such as moving content through a complex workflow and into a production environment.

Content aggregation

Content aggregation occurs when content from various sources is brought together. In a simple web site, this occurs manually during the content creation phase. In a more dynamic and data-driven environment, the aggregation occurs at an application server level.

Content integration

Aggregation, transactional integration, and performance enhancing caching enrich the user experience.

Content delivery

Content must be delivered to the user in the appropriate (or desired) format. Most frequently, this implies delivery via HTTP by using browsers and similar devices. Alternatively, content delivery can refer to other publish-and-subscribe methods, data feeds, or web service protocols.

The need for a web content management system

It is a standard practice for most organizations to use a web content management system to assist with the process of delivering content to their intranet or Internet site. Consider, for example, a product page that details the features and advantages of a new coffee maker. The creation of the detail description and images can involve several people, including subject matter experts, image designers, proof readers, legal, and IT. If we achieve this through existing desktop office tools, it can be a quite arduous and time consuming process. If you use a web content management system, the process can be streamlined to allow distributed authoring, workflow, preview, and delivery of the finished article to the web site, and notification of the appropriate people. Without content being current, timely, and appropriately placed, the site can be perceived in a lesser light. From the content delivery process alone, a web content management system is a good choice.

With the content creation, approval and delivery process being the top capability that benefits from a web content management system, there are other areas that can lend weight to using a web content management system.

Ensuring that the web site has a consistent look and feel (branding) is extremely important, for brand awareness and for ensuring that visitors to the web site are familiar with the layout, presentation, and navigation to content. A web content management system provides a structured approach and framework to allow the separation of content and design while ensuring consistency where required. Componentization is also an area that the web content management framework offers. Componentization allows a higher degree of reuse and helps you to build more with less. This is another clear area where a web content management is a good choice.

Content and design are just two important aspects of any web site (intranet or Internet) that benefit from a web content management system. The following aspects are important to a web site:

• Content: The creation, approval, and delivery process streamlined to take advantage of your organization's distribution of knowledge and skills.
• Design: Separation of design from content to allow for the design process (in-house or agency) to deliver consistent branding of your business, its products, and services.
• Componentization: Reuse of assets to allow the business to deliver more with less, and save money.
• Standards: A system to employ best practices where accessibility is required.
• Integration and delivery: Providing a framework from which a business can integrate with systems, services, and information including growth from Web sites to portals and beyond.

With these concepts in mind, you can be reassured that you are making the right decision to use a web content management (WCM) system. While there might be many factors to consider, the following decision tree can guide you and provide a starting point to expand upon.