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“Content, Management, System – The Construction of a CMS Evaluation Prototype from Communicative Perspectives”
Ironically, more content does not necessarily make for a better web-site, and indeed, some
web-site publishers find that as more material gets pushed online, it actually diminishes the
value of existing content: valuable material becomes harder to organize and be found by
impatient internal / external visitors. The Chart 1.01 of this dissertation on P.001 shows exactly
this contradictory dilemma to the IT department of all the organizations today.
For sure, a good search engine can surely help here, for most of the “content readers”. But
ultimately, the ability to develop user-centered navigational and metadata schemes and
enforce quality control mechanisms – likely with the help of a Content Management System
(“CMS”) for the “content contributors” becomes even more important.
Most companies started to address problems of content expansion by placing text into online
databases and using dynamic scripting languages to generate pages on demand. However,
they quickly learned that a database alone is not a content management system and by itself
doesn’t solve the key problems related to content production and publishing. Many companies
therefore resorted to building – piece-by-piece – homegrown Content Management systems to
address standard CMS issues that users predictably demand, like versioning, archiving,
personalization, syndication, and so forth.
Unfortunately, as the feature set of these do-it-yourself systems expanded, the weight of the
various applications typically began to fracture the foundations, leading to tremendous
end-user frustration and ultimately a search for packaged CMS solutions.
1.2.02 Better Communication with Market
Over the past couple of years, many companies’ web efforts have transitioned from simple
“web publishing” to more full-blown “e-business,” as they sought to take advantage of the
universal Internet platform to conduct core commercial operations online. It is now a truism
that content provides essential fuel to all e-business, and therefore this transition has served
only to increase the volume of content that companies must manage.
Whereas four years ago web managers might have overseen a single (and likely static) public
web-site, now they must juggle the demands of an Intranet, Extranet, possibly multiple public
corporate web properties, as well as the company’s participation in any number of Net markets
and partner sites. In short, corporate content now lives in a virtual ecosystem, compounding
the complexity of managing it.
This is particularly the case if the enterprise is trying to introduce automation and added value
to sales and marketing. The sell-side of e-business is where most of the expense and
overhead of e-commerce resides, and it is inherently a content-heavy process. In the B2B
realm especially, the transfer of knowledge to prospects is crucial if enterprise’s goal is to
de-commoditize the product line and promote a more solutions-oriented sale. Transferring
knowledge to top distributors and customers may well be essential for market survival3.
However, many companies are beginning to see the limitations of traditional electronic
catalogs. Catalogs excel at storing relational data (product price, size attributes, etc.), but
frequently run into difficulty managing complex documents, particularly those with granular
text and image elements, such as spec sheets, brochures, case studies, and user manuals. In
short, catalogs are not typically well suited to managing the very materials that help promote a
3
Zarnekow R; Brenner W: Content-management in service on demand-systems, WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK 1997, Vol 39, Iss 5,
pp 451-&, VIEWEG
Author: Vincent, Chung-Wei Lin 林崇偉
P.5