Content management, or CM, is the set of processes and technologies that support the
collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium.
When stored and accessed via computers, this information has come to be
referred to, simply, as content or, to be precise, digital content. Digital
content may take the form of text (such as electronic documents), multimedia
files (such as audio or video files), or any other file type that follows a
content lifecycle requiring management.
The
process of content management
Content management practices and
goals vary by mission and by organizational governance structure. News
organizations, e-commerce websites, and educational institutions all use
content management, but in different ways. This leads to differences in
terminology and in the names and number of steps in the process.
For example, some digital content
is created by one or more authors. Over time that content may be edited. One
or more individuals may provide some editorial oversight, approving the
content for publication. Publishing may take many forms: it may be the act
of "pushing" content out to others, or simply granting digital access rights
to certain content to one or more individuals. Later that content may be
superseded by another version of the content and thus retired or removed
from use (as when this wiki page is modified).
Content management is an inherently collaborative
process. It often consists of the following basic roles and
responsibilities:
·
Creator - responsible for creating
and editing content.
·
Editor - responsible for tuning
the content message and the style of delivery, including translation and
localization.
·
Publisher - responsible for
releasing the content for use.
·
Administrator - responsible for
managing access permissions to folders and files, usually accomplished by
assigning access rights to user groups or roles. Admins may also assist and
support users in various ways.
·
Consumer, viewer or guest- the
person who reads or otherwise takes in content after it is published or
shared.
A critical aspect of content
management is the ability to manage versions of content as it evolves.
Authors and editors often need to restore older versions of edited products
due to a process failure or an undesirable series of edits.
Another equally important aspect
of content management involves the creation, maintenance, and application of
review standards. Each member of the content creation and review process has
a unique role and set of responsibilities in the development and/or
publication of the content. Each review team member requires clear and
concise review standards which must be maintained on an ongoing basis to
ensure the long-term consistency and health of the knowledge base.
A content management system is a
set of automated processes that may support the following features:
·
Import and creation of documents
and multimedia material.
·
Identification of all key users
and their roles.
·
The ability to assign roles and
responsibilities to different instances of content categories or types.
·
Definition of workflow tasks often
coupled with messaging so that content managers are alerted to changes in
content.
·
The ability to track and manage
multiple versions of a single instance of content.
·
The ability to publish the content
to a repository to support access to the content. Increasingly, the
repository is an inherent part of the system, and incorporates enterprise
search and retrieval.
Content management systems take the following forms:
·
a web content management system is
software for web site management - which is often what is implicitly meant
by this term;
·
the work of a newspaper editorial
staff organization;
·
a workflow for article
publication;
·
a document management system;
·
a single source content management
system - where content is stored in chunks within a relational database.
Content management expert Marc
Feldman defines three primary content management governance structures:
localized, centralized, and federated—each having its unique strengths and
weaknesses.
Localized Governance:
By putting control in the hands of
those closest to the content, the context experts, localized governance
models empower and unleash creativity. These benefits come, however, at the
cost of a partial-to-total loss of managerial control and oversight.
Centralized Governance:
When the levers of control are
strongly centralized, content management systems are capable of delivering
an exceptionally clear and unified brand message. Moreover, centralized
content management governance structures allow for a large number of
cost-savings opportunities in large enterprises, realized, for example, (1)
the avoidance of duplicated efforts in creating, editing, formatting,
repurposing and archiving content, (2) through process management and the
streamlining of all content related labor, and/or (3) through an orderly
deployment or updating of the content management system.
Federated Governance:
Federated governance models
potentially realize the benefits of both localized and centralized control
while avoiding the weaknesses of both. While content management software
systems are inherently structured to enable federated governance models,
realizing these benefits can be difficult because it requires, for example,
negotiating the boundaries of control with local managers and content
creators. In the case of larger enterprises, in particular, the failure to
fully implement or realize a federated governance structure equates to a
failure to realize the full return-on-investment and cost-savings that
content management systems enable.
Implementation
Content management implementations
must be able to manage content distributions and digital rights in content
life cycle. Content management systems are usually involved with digital
rights management in order to control user access and digital rights. In
this step the read-only structures of digital rights management systems
force some limitations on content management implementations as they do not
allow the protected contents to be changed in their life cycle. Creation of
new contents using the managed (protected) ones is also an issue which will
get the protected contents out of management controlling systems. There are
a few content management implementations covering all these issues.
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