Content management proponents promise that the technology will deliver much: faster time to market and a host of process efficiencies, strategic security, abilities to publish simultaneously in multimedia, enabler of creation of new service type products, connecting directly with customers and more.

The case should be compelling shouldn’t it? So why is take-up slow and why are early adopters finding it difficult to justify the cost?

What is digital content management?

There are a plethora of terms surrounding digital content management. For many years content management in digital publishing has most recognisably meant streamlining the editorial process of getting content to Web, and content management systems of this type are in widespread use by many publishers. Web content management (WCM) system use has become widespread as more companies implement template-centred processes for delivering content to their sites. But the overall picture of what digital content management means to print publishers remains blurred as organisations question the relationship and placement of Web content management, document management, digital asset management, knowledge management, enterprise application integration, digital rights management, eBilling and customer relationship management systems.

Print publishing industry requirements for content management are unique. With the goal of cross-media publishing, the requirement to protect and improve the print publishing process is paramount while at the same time opening up new channels for delivering content, be they as eBook, PoD or digital print, or more recently personalised contextual content to consumers through PDAs or other devices that are attaining ubiquitous status. The publishing community has realised that the complexity of delivering content to all available outputs requires a new set of thoughts and strategies beyond the capabilities of WCM systems. Digital content management (DCM) was born in the 1990s and the technology has now begun to mature sufficiently for publishers to look at what and how it can be implemented.

There are many definitions of what digital content management is and encompasses, almost as many definitions as people involved in the many facets of the DCM industry! One definition that is commonly used is that enterprise DCM, that is organisation-wide at its widest scope, is a beginning-to-end set of digital processes encompassing four main sets of all activity:

• Authoring, editing and workflow;
• Digital asset management (DAM);
• Presentation or publishing;
• Delivery, incorporating digital rights management (DRM) and customer relationship management (CRM).

Each stage in this end-to-end process requires separate but linked technologies and is summarised in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Enterprise content management. Source: Pira International

Some key DCM applications and concepts

The view in Figure 1 of what DCM encompasses introduces several new concepts that differ from current print-centric workflows. These terms and activities are referred to throughout this article.

Separating content from presentation

For DCM to deliver the benefits of a cross-media publishing strategy, it is argued that the separation of content from its presentation is required, the goal being to fully enable fast assembly of products in multiple media. Publishers who are extracting content from Quark and PostScript workflows are realising that the costs of doing this for each new media opportunity are becoming prohibitive; the proprietary applications of today are now not the most flexible ones for the publishing of the future. So, the concept of creating and then managing content in a final publication-ready state before import into, for example, page layout applications is suggested. This has been termed “taking the wrapper off content”.

The value of assets versus product

Products, be they finished books, journals or other printed matter, are collections of individual assets such as text and images. How small these assets are depends on the nature of each publisher’s business and the value associated with individual assets. DCM takes a bottom-up approach to content in that the assets are the central important item, not the collected presentation of them in products.

Workflow management

By separating content from presentation, a greater focus on earlier stages of workflow in the creation and editing cycles follows. Greater standardisation in content formats and the inclusion of metadata are issues to be addressed here.

Digital asset management

Whether document management (DM) or rich media systems, digital asset management (DAM) is the core of content management. DAM systems are large databases with a wide range of functionality to ingest, manage, store and output or transform and output digital files. A fuller definition of what a DAM system is and does follows later in this article. DAM is positioned as the hub of content management.

Presentation

The act of publication in DCM is becoming known as the presentation of content, or the assembly of individual assets into products, for example either through page layout tools such as QuarkXpress or Adobe InDesign, or through WCM systems. For maximum flexibility and speed of operation the question of how much this activity can be automated is uppermost in debate.

XML

The importance of XML in cross-media publishing is becoming widely established. While it may be easier to understand the benefits of XML in directory, reference or journal publishing, and there are many adopters in these areas, XML use will spread and all publishers will need to develop XML capabilities. Why?

• XML enables data sharing across platforms and applications – data tagged with XML in one application can be understood in another application; new product and market opportunities are more readily addressed.
• XML allows the reuse of information more easily – content created in XML has a longer life span, enabling future readability as well as high value, saleable reuse today and tomorrow.
• It is easier to target content more precisely using XML than current alternatives and to extract relatively small pieces of content.
• XML can improve customer satisfaction – XML metadata capabilities help software to personalise end-user experiences without complex programming.
• XML is an open standard environment – XML is a critical component to completing the technology foundation necessary for e-business, removing direct dependencies between data and the software that uses it.
  

Most content management technologies now incorporate XML capabilities, as an asset type to be managed and/or as the metadata framework to support asset management.

Metadata

To successfully engage in e-business, answers to these types of questions are required:

• What do I own?
• Where is it?
• What format is it in?
• What rights do I have to use it?
• How much will it cost me?

Metadata management is becoming another critical to cross-media publishing and the realisation that those who know most of the answers to this are at the front of publishing businesses raises many technical and organisational issues.

Delivery

The importance of networks and infrastructure is further underscored by DCM technologies – whether it is to connect a PoD plant within a DCM system to pull out PDF files for print, or to deliver smaller digital files directly to consumers through personal devices. Integration with business applications follows and e-commerce and customer relationship management tools come into play here.

From where has DCM emerged?

In the late 1990s the hype of opportunity from all things ‘e’ created a wave of debate about how publishers, or content owners, could benefit from the world of electronic publishing beginning to open up to them. Cross-media publishing came to be adopted as the umbrella term for this set of opportunities – the production of multimedia products for distribution across many channels to emerging populations of consumers. Publishing, we were informed, would begin to be a process in which multiple products would be constructed, often simultaneously, maximising the value of the same content by reuse or repurposing (Figure 2).

In tandem, published content would need to be broken down into granular units of text, images and other content types and then stored independently of their presentation in printed pages to enable new products to be created effectively.

The Seybold Seminars conferences held in the US have been a main forum for discussion of how this future state would be achieved, and where debate about DCM flourished. It was argued at a high level that DCM would provide the support for four strategic aims:

• Enable cross-media publishing;
• Secure core assets;
• Deliver workflow efficiencies;
• Better understand and service customers.

Enabling cross-media publishing

Figure 2 illustrates some of the media channels through which many publishers are active. With the growth of market channels, personalisation, relevance and perishability are becoming key issues, and pressure on content lifecycles is growing; this focuses attention on cross-media initiatives. DCM technologies offer a means to streamline operations, deliver content across multiple platforms and generate revenue from new content-based services.

Secure core assets

Historically, publishing has not been very good at efficient management of its core assets. Silos of digital or non-digital files abound (‘stovepipes’ as some have said), in unlinked and different versions. Examples include raw material such as unmanipulated images, edited text, laid-out pages in-house or at typesetters, PostScript files at repro houses and final files at printers, let alone the three different sets of proofs sitting on the editors shelves. Web publishing is adding to this silo proliferation as stand-alone systems have been created to support Web channels. Publishers engaged in eBook publishing have added a further silo, usually at out-of-house service companies. The management of all these versions, formats and locations has become complicated and costly in human resource and financial ways, not least when it comes to updating products, and the result creates bureaucracy and inefficiency. DCM offers an opportunity to manage content in single, widely accessible and version-controlled means.

Figure 3. Repurposing workflow. Source: Pira International

Deliver workflow efficiencies

With people time and production as two of the largest costs in publishing, DCM also creates a framework for tackling workflow. At many levels, from locating content (how much time is spent in publishing companies simply finding the job bag or looking for that scan used in a previous book?) to creating a fully-developed digital workflow and delivering digital content to speed up the production process, DAM also makes it easier to reuse content in complementary products and reduces cost and time involved in doing this. Another way that DCM improves workflow management and reduces costs is that it allows publishers to move toward standardising content formats for text, images and other types of content, owned or managed.

As an example of improved workflow, one of the new media opportunities that print publishers are dipping their toes in the water with is eBook publishing. Figure 3 shows a simplified version of a book publisher’s print to eBook workflow. Book publishers such as Penguin and HarperCollins for example take finished print files, in file formats such as Quark or PDF, then contract third party service companies to repurpose these into the two main eBook formats. This workflow involves several acts of duplication, such as re-editing, re-assembling and re-proofreading the finished eBook.

By separating content from its presentation, text and images become readily available for product assembly in each way required for its publishing channel, as shown in Figure 4.

Instead of laying out new titles from a mass of files and images stored at desktop level, creative teams should be able to import the same text and images into each presentation application required at the same time from a DAM, safe in the knowledge that it is the correct version.

New layout tools may be required to achieve this. Much has been mentioned about the advantages of storing text as XML data, because the usability of XML has been demonstrated in many publishing channels. Since most publishers use QuarkXpress for page layout, the question has arisen whether Quark should be the software of choice when considering storing text as XML and many are looking at the more modern and XML-savvy software that is Adobe InDesign, or even straight into PDF.

Where some book publishers spend approximately 25–30 per cent of turnover on production, the bottom line benefits of improved processes are evident.

Better understand and service customers

Since many publishers do not sell directly to end-customers there is a lack of knowledge about their customers. New technologies are already in use to deliver content directly to consumers that is contextual and time-sensitive and many are predicting that the market for this publishing activity will grow significantly. This will require DCM technology to manage granular assets for fast product assembly and delivery.

About digital asset management

Central to the concept of DCM is digital asset management. DAM systems, in essence large relational databases, perform many critical tasks such as ingesting, indexing, categorising and securitising digital assets, then enabling search and retrieval, transformation into other formats, assembly and export. DAM systems usually feature a wide range of functions that allow them to manage all rich media such as video, audio and animation as well as text and graphics. DAM therefore requires the creation of digital assets in workflow. Good DAM systems feature functionality to drive assets out into an assembly process that then means products can be generated manually using layout tools, or semi-automatically in template-driven processes.

The focus on content at an asset level is inherent in digital asset management, that is individual images or blocks of text or an even more granular view where investigation of document management systems may be of benefit. An asset orientation implies that security, versioning, transactions and search activities, for example, all rely upon the definition of an asset as an organising principle. There is general agreement that a digital asset is the asset’s content plus metadata, and metadata as already mentioned can include information about format type, rights and permissions, usage history etc.

To add value to assets stored by providing context to digital assets is the technique of categorisation. Organising digital assets into hierarchies (or webs) or related categories serves as a powerful organising principle, simplifies navigation and provides a powerful overlay onto other search techniques.

Buyers guide

DAM vendors sell a range of complex and small- to large-scale systems that deliver a host of functionality from image management on a local scale to global media company-directed enterprise applications that manage all types of rich media. They can promise assured around-the-clock operations, scaleable performance and distributed access to an entire organisation on an international level. Publishers need to address their own requirements in detail to determine whether large-, medium- or small-scale DAM systems provide the best fit for need, or indeed whether to build themselves.

Some of the market-leading rich media DAM systems may offer too much for now – most book publishers are not television companies and do not require frame-by-frame video ingest in their DAM, for example. The opportunity to purchase enterprise DAM systems on a component basis is not yet widely available; it’s an all or nothing basis and this may contribute to some publishers’ belief that the cost of these systems is too high.

The cost of software is but one part of a DAM decision. Many DAM vendors’ business proposition is to work in collaboration with system integrators; Artesia for example has a relationship with Accenture globally as well as other, smaller companies such as Rubus in the UK. Rarely will a DAM system be able to be installed in its out-of-the-box configurations. Issues such as alignment with workflow and configuration of taxonomies and metadata mean that development is almost always required. The role of the integrators is usually to determine what this configuration is and then carry out the development. The integrators argue that this approach strengthens the DAM proposition because a customer gets an optimised system.

Taken together, the vendor and integrator approach has many cost areas to consider when implementing DAM, such as:

• Requirements and system design;
• Software licences;
• Hardware, in particular storage;
• Technical implementations and deployment;
• Content migration;
• Training.
  

Publishers are aware of their own and others’ experiences of implementing WCM systems. Jupiter Media Matrix recently reported that businesses are: “drastically overspending on... content management systems” and that some companies that require a simple process are spending up to US$25,000 per non-technical employee on complex, fully functional WCM systems. For simple processes and small-scale DAM requirements, it may therefore be better to build yourself. However at an enterprise level for richer media than, say, single-image format management requirements, commercial DAM systems become more cost-effective.

There are content management vendors who say that they can deliver all the things that publishers require for a DCM strategy, workflow, DAM, assembly and delivery, but they are probably speaking optimistically at this time or rely on many relationships with complementary companies.

Some of the technological challenges

For successful content management strategies to work, publishers face many significant challenges, not least of which are organisational and changing workflows. Content management technologies are often different and new, for example XML, Java and Corba that feature widely in DAM systems.

One significant area already mentioned is the management of metadata with digital assets – the idea that designers and editors should input metadata may seem alien, but it is not so dissimilar to now, after all how many forms and how much bureaucracy is associated with editorial, design and production processes? One such application that may assist early metadata management is Adobe’s Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) that offers a way of incorporating a packet of metadata with the asset. That metadata can then be retained throughout the publishing process and read by applications at all stages, so for example a DRM application can read important information such as usage restrictions or royalty information at the point of delivery without any subsequent input of data. Although only at the moment a feature of latest Adobe publishing products such as InDesign 2, Illustrator 10 and Acrobat 5, it is promised to extend to all Adobe products and is available to other companies as an open standard. DAM partners of Adobe such as Documentum and Artesia look set to embrace XMP.

Aside from the challenge of new technology, the problems of integrating front office and back office technologies are apparent in many publishers. One reason for this may be that traditional publishing IT departments lack the skill and expertise in delivering technologies to support the creative front end of their business. Another reason may be because senior management lack the confidence to understand and promote new technology at a strategic and detailed level.

How does DCM integrate with or change workflows?

Incorporating DCM thinking in every stage of the content lifecycle presents a huge challenge to traditional publishers who have not changed workflow itself for many years – even the advent of DTP did not majorly affect the stages of workflow but more the medium in which to carry out the work.

Figure 4 shows the workflow of the future and represents some significant level of change. So how can this be achieved, and are there alternatives that may make this easier yet still enable cross-media publishing to be achieved?

Here are two scenarios and some issues for consideration.

Scenario 1: Full DCM implementation

A sensible strategy to adopt is to manage the wider process in chunks and appraise the success or otherwise at critical points. A DCM project that gains a life of its own and loses contact with business requirements is a recipe for disaster. Here are some of those parcels to consider:

Develop the DAM

The hub and finding the right DAM requires effort, analysis of requirements and fit with available systems.

Differentiate between assets and products

As already mentioned, print publishing has a product focus – the presentation on pages rather than the content of which it is comprised.

Experiment and build XML workflows

Experiment with small, smart and scaleable XML workflow. For consumer publishers this often begins in reference publishing although a lead has been taken by academic and educational publishers where lessons can be learned.

Define standards

Standards for asset formats and data are a key to success:

• Common data standards for assets and associated metadata;
• Common media formats for each media type (text, audio, video, images, graphics).
• Standards should enable content to be shared, not restricted.

Develop capabilities focused on achieving business objectives

Change capabilities as the business changes – there are a number of examples of early adopters whose DCM projects have gone awry as the external environment has changed but projects have developed their own life and end state.

Manage assets in format neutral ways

Examples include XML for text, or SVG (scaleable vector graphics) for images.

Incorporate metadata at an early stage

Although the idea of managing metadata in design or editorial teams seems alien, and difficult to sell to creative teams, options are emerging to assist this activity.

Assess new presentation technologies

Existing page layout tools will continue to work with asset management systems. Updated or new applications will offer more functionality in coming years.

Determine content migration strategy

Determining what assets have value is the first part of this activity, then resourcing how those assets are input into a DAM.

Scenario 2: Complementing existing workflow

While this may be an option, one benefit it does not deliver is the strength of separating content from presentation. Elements of the inflexibility of existing print-centric workflows when considering a move to dynamic cross-media publishing are maintained. For example metadata tagging may involve a team of librarians, and the delay and cost in storing, cataloguing and indexing content may make new opportunities infeasible.

The role of QuarkXpress or InDesign

One question raised is the future of page layout applications. Quark and Adobe are now fully locked in battle for the heart and mind of the industry. While Quark is still in a dominant position (as much as 90 per cent of the market), Adobe is active on a number of fronts. Important features of new page layout tools will be the ability to manage XML in/out, maintenance of metadata and functionality for seamless page to Web. Arguably Adobe is winning in these areas with developments such as XMP and many publishers are actively investigating the benefits of switching to InDesign.

Whatever path publishers choose, the importance of the choice of page layout application will diminish. This is despite Quark and Adobe striving to embed their software at the centre of content management. One view such as that offered by Adobe’s Network Publishing and their vision of simultaneous multimedia production places layout application technologies at the heart of the whole process. Although as argued this does not achieve the Holy Grail of taking the wrapper off content.

Although InDesign may be currently the more promising tool for assembling print products, because it has a modern and more comprehensive set of XML related tools, publishers still view the change from Quark with alarm because of the internal issues such as cost and retraining, and external factors such as relationships with prepress houses.

Who is adopting DCM?

Content management applications are being implemented across the world and in many industries. We may not categorise motor companies such as General Motors as publishers but GM produces a huge amount of printed information relevant to its products and is one early customer of Artesia’s TEAMS DAM system. Other industries implementing content management systems include pharmaceuticals, law and other media industries such as film and television.

In the consumer book publishing world the lead is being taken, as so often is, by US companies Simon and Schuster, Time Warner and Random House US. While almost everyone is discussing DCM it is difficult however to assess a take-up rate of DAM alone across the industry as a whole.

In the UK, one organisation that has devoted considerable time to understand and co-ordinating content management is Pearson. The Pearson management board is instigating a group-wide content management task force in 2001 in response to local initiatives across its publishing companies. One of those initiatives was at Penguin UK who, throughout 2001, developed a large-scale DAM pilot system. The purchase of Dorling Kindersley by Penguin’s parent Pearson in 2000 prompted this project because with DK came significant copyright-owned assets and Pearson’s business plan aimed to reuse these assets as multimedia products, both within the Pearson Group, such as through the online Learning Network, or in educational books by Pearson Education, as well as in the development of new electronic products to consumers.

With around 16,000 titles and many millions of individual assets, and potentially a global set of internal content management users, Penguin’s decision was to build a DAM with Artesia TEAMS and a UK integrator Rubus. Included in the scope of the project was the creation of the DAM as the digital hub to support revenue growth opportunities including PoD and digital print, eBooks, syndication activity, online learning, image sales as well as cost savings around collaboration and workflow. However, the realisation that the market for electronic products would not mature in 2001/02 as anticipated threatened the ROI on Penguin’s project and brakes were applied. Currently Pearson is moving forward on a global image management project as part of a wider Pearson digital library and is examining using the same asset management technology.

The organisational challenges on publishers Apart from a host of technological challenges, cross-media publishing will change the shape of publishing organisations in coming years. Some forecasts of the type of change include:

• Creative teams will become product managers rather than book editors or designers;
• Production teams will implement concurrent new workflows with new technologies;
• Metadata management will become critical;
• Interaction with databases will be a daily feature;
• IT/IS service focus will be more than ever on the front office;
• Enterprise-wide operations will concentrate focus on infrastructure and networks;
• Training and skills development will be fundamental to success.

Conclusion

Content creation, management, distribution and the ability to create new services are becoming mission-critical requirements for publishers. But inertia in developing the infrastructure of the future is created in part by the cost of delivering content management systems and the amount of skill and time required to build them. ROI on DCM projects is difficult to forecast because thinking usually only pertains to the existing and known. Perhaps the answer to this dilemma lies in a rethink to the approach of content management, to become one where publishers’ strategy lies in the dynamic creation of revenue-generating products quickly, regardless of the type of digital asset or the channel through which it is being pushed.

In the UK, book publishing compound sales grew from 1999 to 2001, but compound profits fell for the same period. Despite high-profile mergers and acquisitions, one conclusion is that it is becoming harder to find synergies as all companies become leaner. Cross-media publishing, while still immature, can lead publishers back into growth and this publishing of the future requires a digital hub from which digital files can be distributed into all channels.

The Publishing in the Knowledge Economy report acknowledges this and places content management as an essential recommendation for action: “Publishers need to invest in Digital Rights Management, Content Management Systems and Customer Relationship Management technology to better understand and service their end-users’ behaviour.”

Because, says PIRA and the DTI, there are three challenges the publishing industry has to meet to sustain growth in the future:

• Compete on a global scale;
• Improve understanding of end-customers;
• Meet the challenge of digital media.
  

If publishers fail to begin to address DCM as one future strategy, they face a threat to their businesses from declining sales per title and an inability to connect with consumers with new products. Business publishers who are moving downstream into service provision are showing how the use of content management technology can aid the process of revenue growth.

While there remains a large question mark over new technologies such as eBooks, 3G, digital TV and broadband, the danger of retrenchment means publishers could miss the next opportunity. This subsequent realisation that cross-media publishing sales growth is slow to take off has not lessened the requirement for publishers to consider DCM; rather it presents an opportunity to understand and assimilate DCM thinking into publishing processes rather than reacting at haste to external pressures.
 

Reference

1. Publishing in the Knowledge Economy: Competitiveness Analysis of the UK Publishing Media Sector (Executive Summary), written by Pira and co-managed by the DTI and UK Publishing Media, 2002.