Content Management for Small and Medium Firms

A colleague wrote to me with some questions about how TechWrite can meet the needs of its customers in the future. Here's a revised version of my thoughts in response:

As always, your thinking is clear and raises the right issues. You're right, I don't want to create a staffing agency for writers. Even if you specialize in contracts for communicators, you compete with hundreds of other agencies. A publishing company, however, competes with only a few other firms, and those firms each have their own special character. One of those prospective competitors operates efficiently and pays attention to process. Successful firms have to pay attention to that.

Anyway, I think that a we've reached a point in our technology that a publishing company - especially one that publishes online - doesn't have to sustain the overhead required for office space and all the other expenses that go along with office space. Yes, working in one place has big advantages, but you can build a publishing firm as a virtual company.

Second, I think companies need help when they put a large amount of material online. They want to be efficient about it, and they want to serve their stakeholders well. One of our colleagues consults with companies about how to manage that process, but he doesn't do the work himself. He counsels firms about how to manage the process internally. Perhaps, though, they'd like to have an outside firm coordinate and execute the process.

Third, we've all found, as we work at various firms, that they have much material stored away on their networks. A lot of it is disorganized and out of date, but whatever shape it's in, much of it is still useful. Firms would like efficient ways to use these materials to meet current requirements. It costs a lot to create things from scratch. People with our skills know how to make good use of this valuable stuff lying around.

Printed materials are going by the by very fast now. Even publishing to a CD is something you rarely see these days. With broadband connections, the most efficient way to publish is via the internet, period. Yet the processes for doing so are still in early stages of development. That's why you hear so much discussion about content management systems: we're still figuring out how to do it. A firm like TechWrite Publishing can contribute, not only to the discussion, but also by helping firms accomplish key tasks in this area.

The emphasis in the discussion so far is to help large firms manage their content. Small to medium firms need similar help: it's obvious to them even if it's not so clear how to solve those problems. A common way to solve the problem is to hire a technical writer, stick the writer in a cubicle and tell the writer to create content for the next release. That method works just well enough that this approach hasn't changed much over the years. Much more efficient is to grasp the firm's publishing needs at the outset, and integrate publishing processes with other things the firm has going on.

I truly think TechWrite Publishing can help firms in this area. Experts like us can make connections between customers' needs and communications tasks. We can put processes in place that help firms communicate effectively, without spending more than they can afford. Old processes don't change easily, though, so TechWrite needs to persuade prospective customers that they can benefit a lot from taking a more comprehensive approach to their online publishing.

I like to produce good materials, but I don't want to be the writer in a cubicle anymore. Even though I like to write, organize, analyze, outline, design, revise, publish, research, learn, improve, and do all the other things that writers do, I don't like to leave things unfinished so much. Again and again, firms run out of money before they finish a project, or they leave a project unfinished for some other reason. Money is the universal language of decision making in business, as it should be, so the reason for ending a project before it's done usually comes back to money. That doesn't have to be the case, though.

Suppose you were able to offer firms a publishing process where the value of the investment was visible more quickly? Firms don't need immediate gratification, but they do want to see what they're getting. Writers continually make the case that their work is under-valued, that they can't make their supervisors see the importance of what they do. But we're stuck there. The standard statistic in our field is, look how much we were able to reduce customer calls to the call center. A lot of firms don't have call centers, though, and those that do aren't going to shut them down because they've improved their documentation.

So we have the difficulty that arises when ideas are a little ahead of their time. How do you create something new when old ways are well established? The established way is to put a writer in a cubicle, go through the proper development and review process, then put the new content out there and hope it does the job. The old way has worked well enough, especially for print publication.

Now we have all these new ideas that can help firms efficiently organize and publish their valuable content online. If the publishing processes are efficient enough, it would mean that publication projects actually get done, rather than languish. They languish because they lack proper planning and follow-through, and they lack clear processes adapted to online publishing. Better processes would address problems of efficiency, organization, easy access to information, and the like. More publishing projects would actually be completed.

I like marketing. I like sales, too, when I'm successful at it. I know, though, that these activities are hard to do alone. In fact, it's hard to accomplish almost anything of value alone. The accomplishments of productive teams are everywhere to see. Almost everyone wants to be part of a productive team. Perhaps TechWrite can create a team that meets genuine publishing needs. These needs arise with the growth of online publishing, and of course with the development of complex technology that people want to understand quickly. TechWrite can contribute in these areas, but it can't contribute so much under the old model of a lone writer in a cubicle.